Stealth Startup Spy #154 - Y Combinator S24
An early look at the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch months before demo day! Full list available for download.
This newsletter is going to be a bit different…
We are giving you early access to the Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch. (If you’re reading this and the link doesn't work, it means the file was already taken down.)
This is 6 months in the making and we just can’t sit on this data any longer.
Over the past 6 months, we’ve been tracking the upcoming Y Combinator batch while many of the founders have been quietly building in stealth. (YC coaches founders on staying in stealth mode to build up hype leading up to demo day.)
Here’s how we do it….
Our team receives a real time notification in Slack every time one of these YC founders exit stealth and finally announces the company they will be showing off on Demo Day.
Eventually these companies will surface publicly with the official Demo Day being slated for later this year (September 2024) but here’s your chance to get an early look at the upcoming batch months in advance.
Download Full YC S24 Batch List
Here are some of the highlights from the upcoming Y Combinator Summer 2024 batch.
77% are building in AI (Up from 70% in the YC W24 batch and 57% of YC Summer 2023)
38% of the batch still has an element of remote teams (either fully or hybrid)
16% are women-founded companies
Only 6% of the companies have solo founders. The most common structure is having two founders, which accounts for ~68% of the total companies.
25 companies are still in stealth mode
8 founders are still “working” at their old employers while participating in YC
AI automation is a significant focus for many companies in this batch:
Automate the person taking orders at drive-thrus with a voice AI (Lilac Labs)
Automating the workers-compensation claims review process (Brighterway)
Automating home service business operations (Drillbit)
Automating visa applications (Parley)
Automate and monetize sports betting strategies (BeeBettor)
Automate the technical reports required for construction projects (SchemeFlow)
Automates debt collection calls for banks (Domu)
Automating BS work for founders - payroll, benefits, govt. filings etc. (Central)
FYI - This list contains founders’ emails so to avoid any mass emailing, we’re limiting the downloads to only 50.
Here’s some of the latest stealth activity from this batch (full list available here)
🕵️♂️ Founders Coming Out of Stealth
Real-time updates from founders who debut what they’ve been working on under stealth mode
David Pang: Co-Founder and CEO at Dimely
Background: Ex-Senior Manager at OneSignal, Wharton alum
Dimely is a copilot for B2B SaaS billing teams that converts contracts to invoices using AI.
Shubham Choudhary: Co-Founder and CTO at FirstWork
Background: Ex-Director of Engineering at Deel, ex-Rippling, ex-Amazon
Firstwork is a next-generation HR platform designed specifically for companies with dynamic workforce needs.
Bill Chen: Co-Founder of Zephr
Background: Ex-Retool, ex-Meta, ex-ByteDance
Zephr is an AI-powered task manager for customer-facing teams.
Shelden Shi: Co-Founder and CTO at Lilac Labs
Background: Ex-SWE at Flatiron Health, Founding Engineer at Symbolic, CS at UC Berkeley
Lilac Labs automates the person taking orders at drive-thrus with a voice AI.
Alexander Seutin: Founder and CEO at Drillbit
Background: Stanford CS/AI, Ex-Rivian/Apple/SpaceX/Adobe
Drillbit automates administrative and operational workflows for home service businesses.
🕵️♂️Key Talent Going Under Stealth
Illuminating clues left behind by world class talent and influential innovators who just went into stealth mode
Jeffrey Tsaw: Co-Founder at Stealth
Ex-SWE at Crusoe, ex-Apple, Carnegie Mellon MS
Coleman Smith: Co-Founder at Stealth
Ex-SWE at Crusoe, ex-Zillow, ex-Amazon, Stanford CS
Jake G.: Co-Founder and CEO at Stealth
Former founding team at Ophelia and Forage, UPenn alum
John Ta: Founder at Stealth
Former founding growth strategy associate at Roame (YC S23), UPenn alum
Paulo Antonio Bautista: Co-Founder at Stealth
Ex-Wonders, Ex-Ninja Van, Harvard MBA
These founders and companies are not yet listed in directories anywhere else.
Notice: We will ban anyone that sends mass mail merge campaigns or openly shares this list. Founders are busy and ignore mass email. If you want to connect, do it 1 to 1 with a hyper personalized message after you've done research on the company.
Stay Stealthy,
Drake
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