CEO, Pair AI · Y Combinator W23
Bestselling author of "Swipe to Unlock" and a founder who has raised over $4 million in seed funding. Parth went through Y Combinator as a founder. He teaches the application from the applicant's side, not YC's.
CTO, Pair AI · Y Combinator W23
Engineering thought leader whose work has drawn over 10 million views. Jason co-built the course to put the same preparation Silicon Valley founders take for granted in front of founders everywhere.
Most YC advice comes from one of two places: content marketers who have never applied, or investors describing what they want to see from the other side of the table. Neither tells you what it is like to sit where you sit, with a half-finished application and a deadline, deciding what to write in a small box.
Parth and Jason teach from that seat. They drafted the answers, cut them, recorded the founder video, sat the interview, and signed the two SAFEs. The course is built from their own admitted application and from real applications of other admitted companies that appear inside the lessons. When a lesson says an answer works, you are looking at the answer that worked.
Each instructor covers the ground they know first-hand. The application modules walk the written form question by question, the way they worked through their own. The video module covers the founder intro and the product demo, the two clips YC asks for. The interview module is a first-person account of the room, which matters because YC publishes nothing about the interview format. The guest interview with YC’s CEO adds the one perspective founders cannot get anywhere else: how the person who decides describes what they look for.
Everything on this page can be checked. The instructors are named, their company and batch are public, and the testimonials carry the real names of YC founders.
The complete syllabus lists all five modules and every lesson title.
Plus a guest interview
Garry Tan
CEO of Y Combinator
An interview clip inside the course. Hear how the person who decides thinks about applications.
No. The course is taught by Y Combinator alumni, founders who went through YC, and is independent of Y Combinator. It is not sponsored, operated, or endorsed by Y Combinator.
No. Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator, appears in the course only as a featured guest insight, in an interview clip. He is not an instructor, author, or endorser of the course.
Parth Detroja and Jason Goodison, the founders of Pair AI, who went through Y Combinator as founders (W23). They teach the application from the applicant's perspective.
They applied to and got into Y Combinator as founders, and have built and raised for their own company. The course reflects that first-hand experience of the application and interview.
Start with Module 1 · “Welcome”
