How to Start a Start-Up: A Free Online Course from Y Combinator Taught at Stanford

If you have any entre­pre­neur­ial aspi­ra­tions, you’ve like­ly heard of Y Com­bi­na­tor (YC), an accel­er­a­tor based in Sil­i­con Val­ley that’s been called “the world’s most pow­er­ful start-up incu­ba­tor” (Fast Com­pa­ny) or “a spawn­ing ground for emerg­ing tech giants” (For­tune). Twice a year, YC care­ful­ly selects a batch of start-ups, gives them $120,000 of seed fund­ing each (in exchange for some equi­ty), and then helps nur­ture the fledg­ling ven­tures to the next stage of devel­op­ment. YC hosts din­ners where promi­nent entre­pre­neurs come to speak and offer advice. They hold “Demo Days,” where the start-ups can pitch their con­cepts and prod­ucts to investors, and they have “Office Hours,” where bud­ding entre­pre­neurs can work through prob­lems with the sea­soned entre­pre­neurs who run YC. Then, with a lit­tle luck, these new start-ups will expe­ri­ence the same suc­cess as pre­vi­ous YC com­pa­nies, Drop­box and Airbnb.

Giv­en Y Com­bi­na­tor’s mis­sion, it makes per­fect sense that YC has ties with Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, anoth­er insti­tu­tion that has hatched giant tech com­pa­nies–Google, Cis­co, Yahoo and more. Back in 2014, Sam Alt­man (the pres­i­dent of Y Com­bi­na­tor) put togeth­er a course at Stan­ford called “How to Start a Start-Up,” which essen­tial­ly offers stu­dents an intro­duc­tion to the key lessons taught to YC com­pa­nies. Alt­man presents the first two lec­tures. Then some of the biggest names in Sil­i­con Val­ley take over. Dustin Moskovitz (Face­book co-founder), Peter Thiel (Pay­Pal co-founder), Marc Andreessen (Netscape creator/general part­ner of Andreessen Horowitz), Maris­sa May­er (Yahoo CEO, promi­nent Googler), Reid Hoff­man (LinkedIn co-founder), Ron Con­way (Sil­i­con Val­ley super angel), Paul Gra­ham (YC founder)–they all make an appear­ance in the course.

You can watch the com­plete set of 20 lec­tures above, which cov­ers every­thing you need to start a start-up–from cre­at­ing a team, to build­ing prod­ucts users love, to rais­ing mon­ey, to cre­at­ing the right cul­ture and beyond. Alt­man’s site also fea­tures a rec­om­mend­ed read­ing list, plus a set of addi­tion­al resources. (Bonus: A George­town under­grad has cre­at­ed an ebook pulling togeth­er the class notes from the course. If you down­load it, please donate a few bucks so he can pick up some ramen.) The videos for “How to Start a Start-Up”–which will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es–can be found on YouTube and iTunes U.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Down­load Marc Andreessen’s Influ­en­tial Blog (“Pmar­ca”) as a Free eBook

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties