70 of YC's 100 points are the team
YC scores every startup on a 100-point scale. 70 of those points come from just one thing. Last month we took our first BridgeFellows cohort to Y Combinator headquarters in San Francisco. Our fellows pitched and got grilled by Grey Baker (General Partner at YC) and Finbarr Taylor (Visiting Partner at YC). Afterwards, Grey walked us through the mental model YC uses to evaluate founders. Not their literal scoring system, but how they think about it. Imagine 100 points available. The pass mark for getting into YC and its $500K check is about 65. → Team: ~70 points. The strongest predictor of whether you'll build something big. Founders pivot, but the team stays. If they're exceptional, the eventual idea usually is too. → Idea / space: ~20 points. Being in a plausible space matters because it's where your team can actually find something big to build. → Traction: ~10 points on its own. Not required. But if you have real traction, it lifts your team and idea scores too. Most founders think you need revenue to get into YC. You don't. 70% of the W26 YC batch had $0 in revenue when they got in. Traction is not what gets you in. Team is. …
Saved during our own YC application.