Who it is for
- Open to founding teams anywhere in the world, including the UAE
- No prior funding or revenue required
- Applications are reviewed as a team and an idea, not a finished pitch deck
All programmes
Global
Y Combinator
The original Silicon Valley seed accelerator, running two cohorts a year from San Francisco.
- Who it is for
- Idea stage, Pre-seed, Seed
- What you get
- Funding, mentorship, community, international expansion
- Where
- Global
- How to apply
- Apply on ycombinator.com (opens in a new tab)
What you get
$500,000 total investment - $125,000 for 7% equity plus a $375,000 uncapped, MFN safe - per YC's publicly stated deal terms.
YC has changed these terms before; confirm the current structure on ycombinator.com before applying.
- Weekly group office hours with YC partners through the batch
- Access to the full YC alumni and current-batch network
- Investor introductions and Demo Day at the end of the batch
- Bookface, YC's internal resource, hiring and fundraising platform
How to apply
A written online application, plus a short interview (in person or by video) for shortlisted teams. No warm introduction is required or helps.
- Timing
- Two fixed batch starts a year (broadly winter and summer); exact application windows move year to year - confirm the current one on ycombinator.com before treating any date as fixed.
About the programme
A large and growing share of every recent batch is AI-native, and YC's published deal terms and alumni network are what most founders mean by "apply to an accelerator."
- Run by
- Y Combinator
- Length
- 3-month in-person batch in San Francisco, twice a year
- Sectors
- All sectors, with a large AI-native share of recent batches