Skip to content
JumpstartJoin Waitlist
Jumpstart // beta waitlist // YC SS 2026

Jumpstart2026

YC startup school puts the most technical

builders into one room.

Jumpstart helps them find each other.

Get on the list→
Scroll
01 / What // Why

What

What?

A way to find your cofounder, your collaborator, your hire, your friend.

One founder, picked for you, three times a week. The reason to meet is written for you. The opener is half-drafted in your voice. You hit send. The calendar invite drops on both ends.

Built so the right founder finds you, not the loudest one.

Specimen / a week's worth of drops
01 / Domain peerSample
MC

Maya C.

Toronto · remote

Building

Eval infrastructure for AI agents. Tests for trust, drift, and goal preservation in long-running autonomous systems.

Why you should meet

Maya builds the eval layer for autonomous systems. You build the autonomous systems. Worth comparing how each of you defines trust before drift kills the meeting.

Opener, half-drafted

Saw your eval suite for goal preservation in long-running agents. I am running into drift from the building side, not the measuring side. 30 min to compare notes?

ai-agentsinfraevalsresearch
02 / Cofounder shapeSample
JP

Jordan P.

San Francisco · going to SF

Building

Autonomous lab assistant for biotech wet labs. Vision plus arms plus protocol parsing. Solo founder, looking for technical cofounder.

Why you should meet

Solo founder looking for a robotics or ML cofounder for an autonomous wet-lab assistant. His talk-to-me-if line reads almost word for word like the kind of hardware founder you ship next to.

Opener, half-drafted

Read your card. The DIY-bioreactor-in-the-kitchen line is exactly the energy I am looking for. Coffee at Chase Center on day one?

hardtechroboticsbiotechcofounder
03 / Weird adjacentSample
DR

Devansh R.

Bangalore · going to SF

Building

Manufacturing automation for India SME factories. AI-driven QA on shop floors, cheap hardware, integrates with WhatsApp.

Why you should meet

He runs the India-to-SF bridge for SME manufacturing automation. You will be at Chase Center for two days only. The Bangalore supply-chain reality check is worth one of those meetings.

Opener, half-drafted

You can give intros across Bangalore and Pune. I am the SF software founder who has not stood on an Indian shop floor. That is a clean two-way trade. Saturday drink?

hardtechindiamanufacturingsme

Why

Why?

Six thousand founders. Two days. You will physically pass the right one and not know it.

Random networking eats your weekend and you still miss the founder building next to your bottleneck. Slack groups die in two weeks. LinkedIn is too noisy. Bookface is alumni only. We're sitting on the densest cohort anyone has put in one room and there's no good way to actually meet inside it.

A dozen good conversations change a year. The room has them. The hallway hides them.

First drop

Friday, May 15.

9:00 PM PT

00
DAYS
00
HRS
00
MIN
00
SEC

One founder lands in your inbox. Then every Mon, Wed, Fri at 9 PM PT.

Or just start your card

What are you building?

Stays on this device. Nothing sent yet.

What good lines look like

  • Robotics simulation for lab automation.
  • Eval infrastructure for AI agents.
  • Manufacturing automation for India SME factories.

Lead with the work. Skip the adjectives.

02 / The cohort, mapped

People,then people's people.

Week one, the algorithm picks for you. Tags, intent, what you wrote on your card. Three direct intros a week, opener half-drafted in your voice.

Around week four, the graph turns on. Founders you actually met can recommend the next drop. The algorithm weighs every recommendation. By Chase Center, you're meeting cofounders two hops from someone you trust.

Live route example

YOUMAYA C.AHMED K.
01

INTROS THAT EXPLAIN THEMSELVES

Each match arrives with the reason written and a short opener you can paste into iMessage. The matchmaker reads both cards before you do.

02

FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Each intro names two more people you should meet. By week three you stop guessing who's worth a coffee.

03

ONE FOUNDER CARD

Four lines: building, looking for, can help with, talk to me if. No DM clutter. No profile pic anxiety. No status games.

YOUMAYAJORDANDEVANSHRENAHMEDPRIYASARAKAIANANYALIORELI
cohort.graph // sample subset // n=12
Solid orange = direct intro. Faded = friend-of-friend route.
03 / See you at Chase Center

The room opensJul 25.Come find your people.

Six thousand founders, two days, one room. Most will leave without meeting the person they came to find. This is how you don't.

Bring me in→

Frequently asked

  1. Verified YC Startup School 2026 attendees only. We check your acceptance screenshot against the cohort list before you land on the waitlist. No screenshot, no entry.

JumpstartFor the family of 6,000

Made by an attendee. See you at Chase Center.

PrivacyContact