r/ycombinator: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

Most posters are first-time or would-be founders asking how to find customers, whether an idea is good enough to apply with, or what gets an application rejected. Replies explain basics like validation and pricing without talking down, though the tone is direct. General startup questions with no link to Y Combinator get told they belong in a broader startup subreddit, and the rules ask you to search before posting.

• Applicants and people planning to apply, asking what the partners look for.
• Solo and first-time founders with a built product and no customers yet.
• Developers who have built something and do not know how to launch it.
• A smaller group who work at or have been through Y Combinator companies and share what it was like.
• Service providers and job seekers looking for startups to work with, who are posting against the rules.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/ycombinator.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up41%
• Removed by Reddit's filters13%
• Held by AutoModerator39%
• Removed by moderators6%
• Deleted by the author2%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Read the stickied post at the top of the sub.

2. 2

   Don't be a jerk.

   No trolling or harassment. Flame wars don’t contribute to discussions, and don’t help anyone.

3. 3

   Use the search before making a new post.

4. 4

   Use the megathreads for requests for feedback and the current application cycle discussions.

5. 5

   No self promotion.

6. 6

   No hiring or co-founder search posts.

   Everyone is constantly either hiring or on the lookout for a co-founder. Please use the cofounder matching tool at https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching.

7. 7

   No memes, politics, or shitposts.

   Find another sub for that. Low effort posts will be removed.

8. 8

   No solicitation of surveys, DMs, external groups, etc

   Posts in this sub should be applicable to other members of this community, or promote discussion. Not requests that only apply to the poster.

9. 9

   No unplanned AMAs.

10. 10

    No discussions about VCs or other accelerators.

    These posts are better fitted for r/startups or r/startupaccelerators — you’ll likely get more insights there.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/ycombinator has about 206,000 members and around 12 posts a day. It is a question board for people orbiting Y Combinator: applicants, early founders, and a few people inside its companies. The median post is about 110 words, 70% of titles are questions, and the comments are where the value is. Posts that take off get long threads, and the top post in our sample has more than 130 comments.

The subjects are the early-stage staples. How to get first customers with no budget. Whether to sell a product before it exists. What gets an application rejected. Why so many funded AI companies seem to share one idea. Replies are short, around 25 words, practical and unsentimental. Someone who has spent years on an idea nobody will fund gets told plainly what investors would hear in their pitch.

The moderation is the thing to plan for. Ten short rules rule out most of what a founder naturally wants to post: a launch, a feedback request, a hunt for a co-founder, a survey. In our sample fewer than half of posts stayed up. Rule-breaking posts do appear in the feed, such as developers offering their services, but they sit at one point with no replies.

What lands

• A big open question about where startups are heading now that software is cheap to build. That was the top post, at about 120 points.
• A practical how-to question most founders share, such as how to launch with no money.
• A first-hand account tied to Y Combinator itself, like attending one of its events and what it was really like.
• An honest dilemma from your own experience: a failed first product and whether to pre-sell the second one.
• A pointed observation about the current batch or funding climate, phrased as a question.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts held by AutoModerator, about 39% of the sample. This is the largest group and happens before a moderator reads anything.
• Posts about a product or publication you run, including list articles ranking companies in the current batch.
• Generic prompts that are not about Y Combinator, such as asking what everyone is betting on next or roll calls for a batch.
• Pitches for an idea framed as a question about who would pay for it.
• Hiring, job seeking and co-founder search posts, which the rules send to the official co-founder matching tool.

The unwritten rules

• Tie the post to Y Combinator. A general startup question gets a reply pointing you to a broader subreddit, and the mods can treat it as off topic.
• Do not name your product in the post. Even a line saying you are not promoting, followed by a link, is the pattern the rule exists for.
• Saying you are in or work at a YC company earns attention. Claiming it loosely does not, and people ask.
• Expect blunt replies. Commenters will quote your own sentences back to you and explain why an investor would pass.
• Links are rare in comments, about 3% carry one. Advice here is given in plain text.

Self-promotion

The rule is one line: no self promotion. Next to it sit rules against soliciting surveys, DMs or external groups, and a rule sending feedback requests to a megathread. Together they leave no approved way to present your startup in a post. In practice some promotional posts slip into the feed, including product write-ups with disclosure and service offers, but they get no engagement, and moderators removed about 6% of sampled posts on top of what AutoModerator held. The megathread is the only place a product belongs. Everywhere else, ask the question you would ask if you had nothing to sell.

How people write here

Typical post length

109 words

Typical title length

10 words

Titles phrased as a question

70%

Typical comment length

25 words

Comments that include a link

3%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/ycombinator.

• startup 104 posts
• founders 69 posts
• startups 55 posts
• founder 35 posts
• idea 56 posts
• early-stage startup 15 posts
• early-stage 21 posts
• yc startup 13 posts
• companies 36 posts
• product 46 posts
• company 46 posts
• react native 11 posts
• product requires 7 posts
• offering suggestions 7 posts
• next.js along 7 posts
• love books 7 posts
• kitchen assistant 7 posts
• kitchcue 7 posts
• iterations instead 7 posts
• giftzy 7 posts
• gifting platform 7 posts
• films storytelling 7 posts
• consistent improvements 7 posts
• books films 7 posts
• ai-powered kitchen 7 posts
• traction 15 posts
• stage 21 posts
• yc companies 8 posts
• investors 15 posts
• successful 18 posts
• rough draft 7 posts
• honest instead 7 posts
• paul graham 6 posts
• needs plenty 6 posts
• equity hey 6 posts
• tech 24 posts
• worked 33 posts
• co-founder 12 posts
• love 40 posts
• node.js 11 posts

Recurring topics: startups, startup, ai, founder, founders, idea, feedback, tech, technical, yc.

Posts that did well

• With software creation easier than ever, what’s the 'next thing'?121 upvotes · 131 comments
• How should you launch your startup (with $0 budget)?32 upvotes · 23 comments
• I went to the YC event in Stockholm and came home with one good connection28 upvotes · 7 comments
• How do AI Startups raise so much money if the Idea stays the same?26 upvotes · 16 comments
• Should you pretend your product exists?15 upvotes · 18 comments
• Helping Out10 upvotes · 26 comments

Growth

1. 20124
2. 20137
3. 201412
4. 201519
5. 2016249
6. 2017458
7. 20204.8k
8. 20218.6k
9. 202211k
10. 202327k
11. 202482k
12. 2025160k
13. 2026206k

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• r/Femalefounders
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Common questions