Inside The Hard Tech Startups Turning Sci-Fi Into Reality 

What big, ambitious hard tech startup are you building?

Hope this help: • LOI (Letter of Intent) • Sell showcase products • Build prototype fast • Show clear path actions • Work with credentials • 3D printed scale model • GOV location demand • Government grant • CAD simulation test • Innovate specific MVP • Chunk size beginning • Big Market To Derisk • Good Excite Storyteller • Be Frugal and Smart

Andromeda Surgical (YC S23) - autonomous surgical robots. We’ll be on here next time!

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming Up: YC's Focus on Vision 01:32 - Demonstrating Commercial Attraction 02:42 - YC's Model for Hard Tech 03:24 - Shifting Focus in YC 04:19 - Mindset Shift in YC 05:40 - Proving Technical Feasibility 06:37 - Presenting Progress Effectively 08:30 - Example: Boom 11:16 - Example: Cruise 16:43 - Example: Astranis 19:12 - Example: AstroForge 21:09 - Evaluating Risk in Hard Tech 22:18 - Example: Relativity Space 23:38 - Example: Heart Aerospace 25:29 - Example: Remora 26:40 - Example: Seabound 27:50 - Chemistry Example: Solugen 30:00 - Example: K Scale Labs 33:39 - Example: Astro Mechanica 37:12 - Vision Breakdown 44:09 - Mission-Oriented Solutions 45:01 - Prototyping Advancements 46:25 - Robotics Frontier 46:39 - Fundraising Strategy 47:58 - Outro

Wow, looks like I've finished this at 4:47 AM without taking a single pause. Loved it!

Great episode! finally something for hardtech founders.

Being someone who is building a hard tech startup, this was a phenomenal & incredibly relevant video. Keep up the brilliant work, YC!

Very inspiring, thank you!

What I would really want to see the panel do is to discuss in detail one specific company let's say Sea Bound and tear down, how the young college graduate went about building their team, day-in-a-life kind of experience but on podcast will be a good video.

Good thing YC is becoming more open… I pitched my space company 6 years ago and it was a no. Guess I’ll apply again….

Another great episode! ✨😉👍

Very interesting to see YC becoming more and more interested in hardware VS software

This is fascinating!

Amazing content 🔥

Perfect timing

Pretty encouraging!

Folks, more hardware content please, Thank you for this !!

The whole thing at 3:00 is all fun and game, the question is how to get into YC at all with 0 money until then? I mean let's take the the rocket ship example: how far would that thing have to be to get into YC? Prototype? LOI? schematics? idea?

I actually won a pretty big hackathon with a TEA-making robot :D. For my startup, I'm building something much bigger, cooler and more important

Being a hard tech founder is simultaneously the most painful and fulfilling thing in the world On one hand, you know that you are literally going to change the world if you make your company work And on the other, you're regularly fighting to make the business and the science work (and btw, these two not working is a default setting that you have to manually change 💀 ) Very painful, but very worth it :) This coming from a guy running a bootstraped biotech startup that's trying to make humans biologically immortal. Good luck hard tech founders !!! Wish you all the best.

This is what I'm talking about! • Hard Tech • Solo Founder • Compound Startup Things that YC always skeptical, guys open up your mind!!! Think no box.

Premises security as a service in SF as test grounds, seasonal farm hands as robots as a service, green energy hydrogen fuel vehicles, deep sea mining.

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Anybody noticed the innovation juice was not orange this time but darker. Hard tech is on another different level 😂😂😂😂

Wasnt Garry out till 12 August?

y combinator create a whatsapp option so instead of fill form and procedure directly send a idea , also tell it in next video after added it also single founders with idea dont have experience so help for next steps.

Cruise car in the thumbnails

Foundation of Search for the AI world

Live sports streaming application

Does hard tech necessarily have to be physical? Does it stand for "hardware tech" or is it short for "hard to make tech"?🤔 For example, what if it's a software project moonshot like "I'm going to build a complete integrated system to run an entire democratic government" or something. Maybe "hard tech" should refer just to physical, and "moonshot-tech" or "moon-tech" should refer to any wildly ambitious project, hardware or software. 🌔🚀 Or maybe "frontier-tech" for anything which if successful, would change society, globally.

Imagine being born in Africa no VC funding just you God and your failing start up i think it's not fair if yc care they should try reach me in Africa so that I may have a chance to pitch my idea

A friend is starting a company to grow wood in a laboratory instead of cutting trees: New Dawn Bio 🤓

No offence but Boom is not a very good example of a successful startup. Its an example of a startup that got good financing. They just burned a lot of money and 8 years later they are still developing. A lot of LOIs prove nothing when it turns out their plane is worth couple of Boeings. There is a reason why Concorde flew only couple of destinations, reason being cost of travel (10k per ticket from London to NY). Its like assumimg there is a huge market for 1 class tickets, there is not and 90% destinations you cant reach in 1 class. Your all acting out like they are next big thing and cant see the obvious, they are the next Theranos. Dont get me wrong its a greate idea but commercially its impossible to achive. Airline companies are on very thin margins and cutting cost on everything, so let's make smaller plane and 10x more expensive, but it is faster!!! Seems like a great idea said no one. I would rather give money to a company that is using new technologies to make a regular plane (e.g. carbon fiber cabin, hydrogen engines or modified engines so they can burn hydrogen, fly by wire, simplified design, planes made by 3d printing, this kind of stuff) so its lighter more efficient and costs half the money of a Boeing or Airbus. These old companies cant do that because they are old tech, huge and cant addapt that quickly to new conditions and new technologies.

@ycombinator hey yc, I’m a young man with big dreams, I have a great idea for a startup that I think could help change lives .. i’ve been trying to learn to start coding to create my mvp but I’ve come to realize the scope of the challenge at hand. I desperately want to pull this concept into creation , I have some money that I had saved for a car and was wondering if it would be wise to instead contract a developer to help produce my vision? - with much appreciation, Noah loyd

I just invest in asian companies to avoid pre IPO bullshit and the slowness of FNGU