Reflecting on the Y Combinator W25 Batch

Today is the last day of the YC W25 batch, where Yash and I got to launch our new startup, TripleZip. It's been a wild ride and an intense 10 weeks that felt more like 10 months.

They don't have a sign outside the building so this lobby photo is the best we got.

I couldn't be happier with the huge amount of learning and the great community that we recieved as a result of participating in the batch. And now we're officially graduated!

Yash setting the cozy vibe on day 1 of our first apartment in Mission.

We spent our first month in an AirBnB in Mission while we waited for our dream apartment to become available. This apartment had a good kitchen, but we ended up almost getting exploited by the landlord in a scheme to pay his plumbing repair bills.

Yash walking around what would soon become our 'office' aka living room.

We were lucky to be able to move into this goregous loft apartment above Farley's coffee shop in Potrero Hill. It was old and had some small inconveniences but is overall very charming and has a beautiful view of the city.

The sunrise view of SF from our loft windows is unreal.

We've had a great time in the new apartment, even getting to know our downstairs neighbors Kat and Tommy, who have been very generous to us since day one. It turns out that they also founded a real estate tech startup! We found this common theme in SF, where every person we met was a startup founder or an investor of some sort.

Devika enjoying sencha on the balcony (the sencha was one of her valentines day gifts to me)

Devika and Audrey joined us for valentines weekend in the middle of the batch, which was perfect (even if we were still stressed by our deadlines in the batch). We needed the time to relax and connect with them. I'm grateful that they flew all the way across the country to visit us.

Our most difficult week, when we flew to Chicago for a customer meeting

Our time in SF was not all joyful and happy, though. The deadlines and goals of the YC batch were intense and we have not had 100% certainty in our business yet. This creates some natural feelings of anxiety as we work on our as-of-yet unproven product. Some weeks in the batch (especially leading up to fundraising) required us to have unsustainable schedules. In our new apartment with a much smaller kitchen and less time remaining, we stopped cooking our own food and relied on unhealthy take-out. We exercised very little and sometimes did not leave our apartment.

We generally did not take any days off during the batch, and worked from the moment we were ready in the morning until we went to bed each night, with some small breaks in the day for calling family or getting food.

Farley's vibes

Many noodles eaten here

How well will this slide age? 

The batch culminated in Demo Day, which was a massive event where hundreds of investors come to find meet founders and schedule investment calls. Supposedly there are some handshake investment deals made on the spot most years, but no one we spoke to experienced that this year. Demo day was fun but grueling and definitely the most socially demanding experience I've had packed into one day. We met many investors and were able to convince some of them to meet with us the following week.

Yash getting the most out of Cursor's new agentic feature

Fortunately, right in the middle of the batch Cursor released a new agentic mode which was immensely helpful for rapid development on TripleZip. I feel so lucky that we started right as this productivity revolution is taking off.

This high-power police interceptor gave Yash many parking tickets.

YC end-of-batch celerbation libations

We ended the batch with a big celebration at the YC offices where the group partners shared their advice on "not dying". Then we had our emotional goodbyes with everyone in the batch and made promises to stay in touch.

In all, the YC batch has been a huge new level of challenge for Yash and me. It pushed us far out of our comfort zones and has helped us grow so much in only 10 weeks. We're feeling super grateful for it and excited to see what the next chapter has in store!