Y Combinator Startup Podcast

OpenClaw And The Future Of Personal AI Agents

You’ve probably already heard all about OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot/Moltbot). The viral sensation is an open-source AI assistant that runs on your own device, connects with messaging apps you already use, and goes beyond chat to actually execute tasks like managing your email, calendars, files, workflows, and more. Now meet the man behind it. YC’s Raphael Schaad sat down with Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, to discuss the “aha” moment behind the viral personal AI agent, why local-first agents could replace many of today’s apps, and how personal agents will reshape the future of software.Chapters:00:00 – OpenClaw takes over the internet00:44 – Life after going viral01:28 – Why OpenClaw took off, what sets it apart02:56 – Bots talking to bots (and hiring humans)04:11 – From “God AI” to swarm intelligence05:07 – Peter’s original “aha” moment06:38 – Rebuilding the agent as a conversation07:38 – The moment it exceeded expectations10:21 – Are apps going to disappear?12:31 – Memory, data silos, and ownership14:39 – The privacy reality of personal agents15:05 – Letting the bot loose in public Discord16:55 – Giving an agent a personality18:19 – Contrarian building philosophy20:09 – CLIs vs MCPs21:28 – Building for humans first21:46 – The road aheadApply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/applyWork at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

We're All Addicted To Claude Code

Wondering why your maker-turned-manager suddenly seems distracted in meetings? Maybe they're addicted to coding agents! In this episode of Lightcone, Calvin French-Owen — a co-founder of Segment and former engineer on OpenAI's Codex team — joins us to talk about why coding agents suddenly feel so powerful, the differences between Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor, and what the future of work will look like.

How To Get Your First Customers

When you're starting out, it isn’t enough to just build a minimum viable product. You also need a minimum evolvable product - one that can adapt to the needs of those critical early customers. In this episode of Main Function, YC General Partner Ankit Gupta offers an update to the classic MVP playbook. He’ll outline strategies for getting your first customers, the power of adaptability and how feedback from early users will ultimately shape the future of your product and your company.Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/applyWork at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobsChapters:00:00 – The Minimum Evolvable Product00:46 – Finding the First Believers01:29 – Counterintuitive Rules To Get Early Users02:10 – Learn Fast, Don’t Fear Churn02:52 – How Early Users Shape the Market You Enter04:22 – Tesla Case Study05:14 – How To Build To Evolve

Inside The Startup Building Reusable Rockets

Stoke Space is racing to build the world's first fully reusable rockets that can launch, survive reentry, and fly again and again. In this episode of Hard Tech, YC’s Aaron Epstein sits down with Stoke Space co-founders Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman to find out why they chose to take on one of the hardest problems in rocket science, how an obsession with efficiency gives them an edge, and what full reusability could unlock for the future of spaceflight.Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/applyWork at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobsChapters: 00:00 —

What Surprised Us Most In 2025

2025 was the year AI stopped feeling chaotic and started feeling buildable. In this Lightcone episode, the YC partners break down the surprises of the year, from shifting model dominance to why the real opportunity is moving back to the application layer, and why the next wave of AI startups may be just getting started.