Y Combinator is relaunching its Startup School as a Continuous Program

Back in February 2018, we wrote about Y Combinator (YC) after the company launched its free online Startup Investor School to train new startup investors. YC is a seed money startup accelerator launched in March 2005. Over 2,000 companies have been launched through Y Combinator including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox and Twitch. Y Combinator was founded in 2005 by Paul Graham (one of the two people we follow on Twitter), Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Tappan Morris.

Membership in Y Combinator is exclusive and highly sought after by startup founders. Alumni of the startup incubator include Airbnb, DropBox and Reddit, among several others whose projects were later acquired by Google or Facebook. The combined valuation of the top YC companies was over US$155 billion as of October 2019.

Y Combinator Startup School is a free online course for founders actively pursuing their own startup. The goals are to encourage and inspire people to consider starting a company as a way to positively impact the world. The course also teaches people how to start a startup, and equip them with the resources and tools to help prepare them now and in the future. Over 100,000 founders have signed up for Startup School since 2018.

Yesterday, Paul Graham announced on Twitter that the company is relaunching its Startup School (SUS) as a Continuous Program to enable the accelerator program serve many more founders than the traditional annual course they’ve been running since 2017.

“We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as a continuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders than the traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017,” Graham said.

"We’re excited to announce that Startup School (SUS) is relaunching today as a continuous program. This change will allow us to serve many more founders than the traditional annual course we’ve been running since 2017."https://t.co/0Xw8mlTawC

— Paul Graham (@paulg) June 17, 2020

In addition to the change to continuous admissions, YC has also revamped the Startup School experience to double down on the things our founders have found most useful. Through thousands of founder surveys and dozens of interviews, we’ve discovered that founders get value from SUS in three key areas: curriculum, accountability and community. For the new relaunch, YC is providing exclusive forums for later-stage companies where they can discuss issues specific to their situation.

“We’re also improving the matching algorithm used for our weekly small-group video calls. Finally, we have new features planned for local founder communities in hundreds of cities around the world, but we’re waiting to roll those out until in-person meetups become less of a safety risk.”

The program is highly recommended for founders who’re actively working on their company for 20 or more hours a week. Benefits include access to weekly update tracking, group sessions, a vibrant founder community and exclusive deals from YC partners. Any interested startup founder can enroll in the new program and sign up here.