The YC Spring 2026 deadline is approaching fast.

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If you’re early, scrappy, and building something people want, this is the most asymmetric bet you can make.

So I put together the updated YC Spring 2026 Application Pack.

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What’s Inside the YC X26 Application Pack:

1. The 13 YC Application Principles That Actually Matter

A tactical guide to what YC really looks for, backed by advice from Paul Graham, Dalton Caldwell, and founders who got in successfully.

It includes the exact frameworks, application breakdowns, and insider advice founders used to get into Dropbox, GitLab, Martin, and more.

2. 50+ Successful Applications (Dropbox, GitLab, Paystack...)

A curated sheet with real YC applications from previous batches, including legacy names like Dropbox and GitLab, and newer ones like Paystack and KeyWords AI.

Use them as references to model your own.

3. YC Referral & Outreach Lists (Partners + Alumni)

Two separate private lists:

• A YC partner list with emails, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, sector interests, and background

• A 100+ YC alumni founder list from recent batches, mapped by company, sector, and focus

YC is huge on referrals. Built specifically for targeted outreach and potential referrals.

4. Question-by-Question Answer Guide by Martin, Bolto, Shogun and Fluently’s founders.

A doc-style walkthrough of the YC application, with practical advice on how to answer each question, straight from founders who got in (Martin, Bolto, Shogun, Fluently).

No fluff. Just clear, tactical pointers for every field.

5. YC Latest “Request for Startups”

A curated doc of the sectors and startup ideas they’re actively trying to fund right now.

Use this to sharpen your positioning or pitch a better idea entirely.

If you’re applying to YC this current batch, this is the most complete, battle-tested prep you’ll find.

Everything you need to write a top-tier application in one place.

Subscribe today to unlock the full Fundraising Pack
You’ll also get access to:

1. 💰 The Family Office List: 1,000 active family offices investing in startups worldwide — with details on check size, stage, region, and direct contacts.

2. 𝕏 How to Raise on Twitter — The Twitter Angel Investor List: 1000+ top angels actively writing cheques — all on X.

3. 📘 The AI Founders Playbook: Lessons from OpenAI, Sequoia, Nvidia, LangChain, and Ramp on how to build and scale AI startups.

4. 📈 How to Get to Product-Market Fit: A step-by-step guide with real success cases like Notion, Canva, and Stripe.

5. 💸 The Angel Investor List: 1,000 of the world’s most active angel investors, including contact info and stage preferences.

6. 🔥 70 Pitch Decks That Raised Over $1B in 2024: The best decks from top startups that actually raised big. Design, story, structure—all decoded.

7. 🚀 50+ Pitch Decks from the World’s Most Successful Startups: Airbnb, Dropbox, Uber, DoorDash, Reddit, and more. The originals.

8. 🧠 Inside the Prompt Stack: How top AI startups like Cursor, Devin, Same.dev, and Replit are building moats without training their own models.

9. The Sequoia Fundraising Pack: The ultimate vault of legendary pitch decks, internal Sequoia guides, and tactical resources to help you raise like the best

🟧 As an extra: I compiled a list with ALL YC partners and another with 100+ YC alumni founders. Referrals are huge in YC. These including emails, Twitter/X links, conversation starters… enjoy ;)

Just keep it secret 🤫

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Hey everyone,

This week I’ve been thinking a lot…

Every top tier VC and founder is on X, from Elon Musk to Andrew Chen, it’s the best place to connect with investors and build a network

For some reason that quote stuck with me and gave me food for thought. Its true, EVERY investor or VC spends their time on X.

X is where tech culture is shaped, where investors signal what they care about, and where relationships in our world.

So what did I do?

Instead of building another inbox-driven investor list, I spent the week compiling 1,000+ Top Angel Investors on X 😅

The goal is straightforward:
help founders raise by engaging investors where they already pay attention, not where they ignore messages. So instead of optimising for inbox volume, I spent the week mapping every top angel investor I could find who is both actively writing cheques and active on X 💰

This list only includes angels who:

• have invested recently

• still take first meetings

• write early cheques

 For each investor, we compiled a subset of:

- Conversation starters
- LinkedIn and Twitter links
- Personal emails (ones available)
- Sector and stage focus
- Recent portfolio companies

The point isn’t to send more messages. It’s to send better, more personalized ones.

Follow them. Engage with what they care about. Show up in their feed before their inbox. By the time you reach out directly, you’re no longer a stranger.

If you’re raising now (or planning to) this should save you weeks, if not months🔥

Hope it’s useful 🙏

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Fundraising isn’t hard because “there aren’t enough investors.”

It’s hard because you don’t have a clean system to answer:

• Who exactly should I contact?

• How do I reach them directly?

• Which ones match my stage + geography + sector?

So over the last 3 years I’ve curated what I wish every founder had on day one:

The Ultimate Investor List of Lists: 8 investor databases (6,600+ entries) built to help you build a pipeline fast.

What you get inside

What’s included:

1. 💰 1,000 Family Offices investing in startups

2. 💰 1,000 Most Active Angel Investors

3. 💰 AI Unicorn Angels (Lovable, Cursor, Mercor, Polymarket, Synthesia, ElevenLabs)

4. 💰 160+ No-Warm-Intro-Required Investors (checks from cold emails/DMs)

5. 💰 300 Most Active Seed VCs worldwide

6. 🗽 1,000 Corporate VC funds

7. 🏛️ 3,000 LPs (HNWI → institutions)

8. 🟧 Top 150 accelerators/incubators/micro-VCs

1. The Family Office List

A curated list of 1,000 active family offices investing in startups worldwide, including investment details, preferred stages, regions, and direct contact links.
Best for: bigger pre-seed/seed rounds, strategic capital, long-term holders.

2. The Angel Investor List

1,000 of the world’s most active angel investors.
Includes investor type, stages, regions, and direct profiles so you can reach out fast.
Best for: pre-seed and seed, fast checks, fast decisions.

3. The AI Unicorn Angel List

Angels who backed Lovable, Cursor, Mercor, Polymarket, Synthesia & ElevenLabs (the people who consistently see the best deals early).
Best for: AI founders who want investors that “get it” instantly.

4. 💰 The No-Warm-Intro-Required Investor List

160+ investors who have actually written checks to founders who DM’d, cold-emailed, or pitched without an intro.
Best for: anyone without a strong VC network (or who wants speed).

5. 💰 The 300 Most Active Seed VC Investors 🌍

The ultimate list of the most active early-stage VCs worldwide, featuring fund names, websites, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, focus, stages, and number of investments.
Best for: seed rounds, repeatable outreach, building a real pipeline.
🗽 The Corporate Venture Capital Fund List

A curated list of 1,000 global CVC funds, with stages, regions, LinkedIn profiles, and insider details.
Best for: strategic distribution, partnerships, credibility, enterprise GTM.

6. 🏛️ The LP Investor Database

3,000 LP investors (HNWI to funds of funds and institutions).
Best for: fund managers, SPVs, syndicates, scouts building their LP base.

7. The World’s Top Accelerator Programs List

The world’s top 150 accelerators, incubators, and micro-VCs, including funding types, locations, and contact info.
Best for: structured fundraising, accelerators, early validation, intros.

What the lists include

Across the lists you’ll find (depending on the database):

• Investor / fund name

• Investor type (angel, family office, VC, CVC, LP, accelerator)

• Investment stage (pre-seed, seed, Series A…)

• Geography / regions

• Sector focus / keywords

• Websites

• LinkedIn profiles (direct links)

• Twitter/X profiles (when relevant)

• Investment activity (e.g., number of investments, recency signals when available)

• Extra notes that matter for targeting (preferences, context, positioning)

The goal: you can filter, shortlist, and contact people in minutes.

Here’s the Ultimate Investor List of Lists 👇

Check it out with the free trial (no strings attached), or jump straight into premium if you’re ready for the full scoop👇

Get 30% off forever

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This makes investors work harder.

And reduces your chances to go to an Investment Committee with investors loving you.

Sometimes, a messy data room can even make associates stop analizing the company and cool down the deal.

The data room template that VCs love

I thought it could help to build a data room with the exact structure that VCs need. The template is simple but powerful (both for seed & series A rounds)

It also includes:

- Financial forecast model template (excel)
- Other fundraising resources (how to raise capital when your startup is dying + how to get VCs to compete to invest in your startup + how to calculate market size)

Still a free subscriber? Upgrading to a premium subscription will give you access not only to these invaluable post but also to the entire archive of articles published on Product Market Fit. You’ll gain insights, resources, and strategies that have already helped hundreds of founders

The dataroom template by Guillermo Flor:

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The top 20 firms (out of approximately 1,000 total VC firms) generate approximately 95% of the Venture Capital industry’s returns.

Every year, about 15 truly great companies are born.
Companies that will define markets, reshape industries, and create billions in value.

And around them, thousands of VCs compete to get in.
But only a handful will win.

Welcome to PMF, the home to +50K founders & investors worldwide. Here we share the top resources & knowlege to build generational companies. Sponsor it at g@guillermoflor.com & be together with brands like Replit, Figma, Framer & more

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Venture capital looks like a market full of opportunity, but it’s not.
It’s a game of access.

Every year, thousands of funds fight to back the same few companies. Most of them never even get close.

At the earliest stages, anyone can meet founders. But once a startup shows real signs of being special, everyone notices. Revenue traction, product velocity, or a strong founding team — the signal spreads fast.

Suddenly, the same 15 or 20 firms are competing to invest. The difference is that Tier 1 firms don’t really need to compete. They have the brand, the capital, and the reputation that founders already want.

That’s how venture works in reality.
Founders are the ones deciding who to work with, not the other way around.

So when a breakout founder starts raising, they’ll have a long list of offers — but the names at the top are always the same: Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark, Index, Lightspeed, Accel.

They choose them because raising from a top firm is a signal. It helps them hire better talent, close customers faster, and attract stronger future investors.

Tier 2 and Tier 3 firms simply can’t offer that. They might be great investors, but they don’t have brand gravity.

Even if they invest in a good company early, it’s nearly impossible to repeat. Because they don’t control the next rounds, and they can’t follow on with larger checks.

Meanwhile, Tier 1 firms manage billions. They can write a $20M check at Series A, $50M at Series B, $100M at Series C. Their multiple might be smaller, but they make it up with scale. That’s how they compound.

This creates a feedback loop where the same few funds keep winning.
They get the best deals because they’ve already won before.
And that reputation keeps growing.

The rest of the market fights for scraps — hoping to find one undiscovered gem that the top firms missed. But in today’s world, information spreads too fast. If a company is truly great, everyone knows it in days.

That’s why most VCs can’t generate real returns.
The market has become too concentrated, too global, and too competitive for small funds to stand out.

Example: every VC in Europe (and the world) wanted to invest in Lovable. They chose Accel to lead the round.

How Andreessen Horowitz Broke the Pattern

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this picture was published with an article by Fortune in 2023, right after Thrive Capital lead a tender offer financing of OpenAI shares that valued the startup at $86 billion. In august 2024, some reports said Thrive was investing another billion in OpenAI.

Josh Kushner started Thrive Capital at age 24. Now it manages +25 billion.

You are probably wondering, how’s it possible I haven’t heard about it?

Well it’s because of their intention of staying unknown.

This is their story:

VC isn’t the only way to raise money. you can also get Venture Debt from founderpath

Apply now

Want to sponsor PMF Newsletter? Email me at g@guillermoflor.com

1. Founding and Joshua Kushner’s Vision (2009–2011)

Thrive Capital was founded in 2010 by Joshua Kushner at just 24 years old.

Kushner, a Harvard graduate (B.A. 2008, MBA 2011) and former Goldman Sachs analyst, launched the firm with an initial focus on early-stage media and internet startups.

He secured $5–10 million in seed funding to start Thrive – notably $5 million came from Joel Cutler of General Catalyst, who mentored Kushner and helped introduce early investors.

By 2011, Thrive raised its first institutional fund of $40 million with backing from prestigious institutions like Princeton University’s endowment, the Wellcome Trust (UK), and tech luminaries such as Peter Thiel, with General Catalyst again anchoring the fund.

Kushner’s motivation was to build a new kind of venture firm rooted in long-term vision and close founder relationships, an ethos influenced by his family’s immigrant hustle and his own entrepreneurial forays (he co-founded a social gaming startup called Vostu while in college).

From the outset, Thrive’s mission was to “build and invest in internet, software, and technology-enabled companies” and be patient, value-added partners to founders.

2. Early Growth and Milestones (2012–2014)

Thrive I and II gave the firm a solid start, enabling early bets on what would become iconic startups.

Thrive became one of three firms to invest in Instagram’s $50 million Series B round in 2012 (at a $500 million valuation); when Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion shortly thereafter, Thrive doubled its money within 72 hours.

This quick win boosted Thrive’s profile. Other early investments included Warby Parker, Codecademy, Spotify, Nasty Gal, MakerBot, and ResearchGate, reflecting a focus on consumer internet and digital media disruptors.

By 2014, Thrive had launched Fund III ($150 million in 2012) and Fund IV ($400 million in 2014) to capitalize on a growing pipeline of deals.

In its first four years, the firm raised roughly $200 million and established a reputation for spotting consumer-tech trends (e.g. social, e-commerce) ahead of the curve.

Notably, Kushner operated under the radar in these early years – Thrive’s website was famously minimal (“just one sentence of text”) and the firm maintained a “secretive presence”, avoiding the flashy self-promotion common among VCs.

This low-profile approach belied the strong network Kushner was quietly building and his ability to win competitive deals despite being based in New York (away from Silicon Valley’s core).

By 2014, Thrive’s lean team and founder-focused philosophy were firmly in place, setting the stage for larger funds and broader ambitions.

3. Expansion and Notable Investments (2015–2018)

As Thrive’s momentum grew, so did its fund sizes and the scope of its investments. Fund V (2016) closed at $700 million and Fund VI (2018) at $1 billion, a testament to LPs’ confidence in the firm.

During this period, Thrive transitioned from exclusively early-stage deals to a barbell strategy: still backing seed-stage startups while also chasing growth rounds of breakout companies.

For example, Thrive led a major investment in Robinhood in 2017, joining its Series C when the stock-trading app was valued around $1.3 billion – that bet paid off as Robinhood soon became a fintech unicorn and later went public.

Thrive also gained exposure to enterprise and fintech winners: it invested in Slack, GitHub, and Stripe, companies that would achieve multi-billion valuations or exits. In healthcare, Joshua Kushner co-founded Oscar Health in 2012 and Thrive invested in it as it scaled; Oscar brought a tech-driven approach to health insurance and would later IPO (albeit with mixed results).

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and I interviewed Anna Piñol, ex Y Combinator founder & partner at NFX, a Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm with 25 unicorns 🤯

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If you want to sponsor Product Market Fit email us at g@guillermoflor.com

Anna Piñol moved to SF for a Stanford MBA and stayed there. She's works & invest with some of the smartest minds in Silicon Valley.

This podcast is a masterclass about Venture Capital and startups.

In it you’ll learn:

1. How to become partner at a top Silicon Valley VC. The path from Amazon Spain to Stanford to leading investments at NFX.

2. How to identify the 20 companies that matter each year. Why VCs focus on extreme outliers and how they filter for them.

3. How to make contrarian bets. Why consensus can be dangerous in venture and how trust inside a fund enables bold decisions.

4. How venture capital really works. Fundraising from LPs, structuring a fund, deciding on follow ons, and why the power law drives every decision.

5. How to build defensibility through network effects. Why 80 percent of tech value comes from them and what it means for founders raising at seed.

Help us go viral by reposting on X

🔒 NFX Growth Guide (for paid subscribers)

If you want to go deeper, I pulled together four resources that NFX partners often reference when evaluating companies.

These are not theory pieces, they are playbooks that founders use to raise capital, design defensible products, and scale growth.

They include:

1. The Network Effects Bible

2. The 16 Types of Network Effects

3. The Upgraded GTM Playbook

4. The 12 Wedges of Growth

Check it out with the free trial (no strings attached), or jump straight into premium if you’re ready for the full scoop👇

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Two years later, their company, Gradient Labs, closed a $13 million Series A round in just one week.

The round was led by Redpoint Ventures with LocalGlobe, Puzzle Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures and Exceptional Capital joining in.

What made investors move so fast?
• They built investor relationships months in advance through warm conversations, regular updates and trust before pitching.
• They focused on a very specific problem, AI-powered customer operations for fintech, rather than a broad AI idea.
• They showed real traction with one million dollars in annual recurring revenue in just four months, a live product and paying customers.
• They had strong founder market fit. The team had years of experience building machine learning systems for fraud at Monzo which gave them unique credibility.

As CEO Dimitri Masin explained:

“When we opened the round, we were not another cold pitch. We had a live product, proven traction and a very painful problem in a regulated space. Investors could see we were not chasing hype, we were solving something real.”

In this week’s premium edition of Product Market Fit, subscribers will get exclusive access to Gradient Labs’ actual Series A pitch deck, the same one that helped them raise thirteen million dollars in only seven days.

Inside the deck you will see how they structured the narrative, used metrics to back up every claim and positioned themselves as the only team that could solve this problem at scale.

If you are preparing to fundraise soon, this is one example worth studying closely.

[Upgrade to premium to get the Gradient Labs deck →]

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In this newsletter, you’ll learn:

1. What Naval Ravikant looks for in every founder he backs

2. A full list of his known investments & LinkedIn links to each founder (in case you want to reach out… or ask for an intro)

Let’s get to it!

🔒 PS: This is a premium subscriber newsletter only. Check it out with the free trial (no strings attached), or jump straight into premium if you’re ready for the full scoop👇

PS: I am building an AI Agent together with one of the engineers that developed the world’s most known voice AI.

The agent sends a weekly email (soon daily & connected to calendar) to help you: connect with who you want to attract (customers, talent, investors, founders) and learn about what you need (AI, fundraising, growth).

We called it Alfred. Try it out!

Alfred

Opening 14 day free trial for 5 early adopters

Hey, thanks for subscribing to Alfred…

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10 months ago · 3 likes · Guillermo Flor

Naval Ravikant is the philosopher-king of modern entrepreneurship.

Naval famously simplifies complex ideas about startups, wealth, and happiness into no-fluff mental models that just click. His philosophy has guided millions, including me, through the chaotic world of startups and investing.

Last November, I immersed myself into his mindset and principles, unpacking his essential mental models and interviews, his blueprint for how to get rich (without getting lucky), his curated list of life-changing books, and insights from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson.

Recently, I dove into his podcast, How to Angel Invest, and did some extra research, to decode his core investing strategies.

If you’d like to sponsor the Product Market Fit, email me at g@guillermoflor.com

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My name is Guillermo Flor and I’m an entrepreneur turned Venture Capitalist

Remember to subscribe and share if you found it valuable!

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The Venture Capital industry is changing forever. High valuations, low liquidity and AI is changing everything, and the Tier 1 VCs know it and are adapting to it.

VC as we know it is dead.

Is Venture Capital Dead?

Pitchbook recently released their US Venture Captial Ecosystem review and the metrics confirm the highly complex market situatio VC is living at the moment.

Now, what’s going on?

Venture Capital has got as competitive as ever due to the high amounts of funding raised since 2019 that inflated the market and the startup valuations.

There’s still so much dry powder in the market and together with the AI feverr, valuations are still highter than ever but funds are seeing very few exits and little liquidity.

This is obviously making it harder for new managers or managers without amazing returns to fundraise with LPs losing their appetite for high risk low potential investments.

There probably will be a big consolidation into big funds that have access to the best founders and best deals.

Alternative solutions? Investing temporily in other asset classes

That’s exactly what some top-tier VC firms are doing.

Lightspeed, Thrive, a16z, Sequoia.

They’re not just waiting around for IPOs.

They’re acting like Private Equity firms — launching, acquiring, and rolling up companies.

Venture Capital is starting to look a lot like Private Equity.

Lightspeed: the turning point

Lightspeed Venture Partners just became a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA).

This isn’t just a legal formality.

It’s a massive shift in how they can operate.

As an RIA, they can now:

• Buy public stocks

• Invest freely in secondary shares

• Do buyouts

• Build roll-up strategies

And they’re not alone.

a16z made the RIA move back in 2019. Since then, they’ve launched a wealth management arm, jumped into the Twitter buyout, built a massive crypto operation, and started behaving more like a governance-heavy PE firm than a typical VC.

Sequoia killed the classic fund structure and moved to a single evergreen vehicle — no more 10-year cycles, just long-term bets and flexibility.

General Catalyst? They stopped calling themselves a VC firm altogether. They bought a hospital system, started building AI companies in-house, added a wealth division… and now they go by “Transformation Company.”

Thrive Capital launched Thrive Holdings, a $1B vehicle to buy and build AI-first companies. Not just investing — operating.

So… what do you do with this information?

This isn’t just an industry trend.
It’s an opening.

If VC is turning into PE, and top firms are evolving into operating platforms — there’s room to build around that.

Here’s where the opportunities are:

Hey everyone! The content below is premium access only! If you want to check it out subscribe or access the free trial below!

Subscribe now

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I wanted to share with you my newest project: The AI Opportunity

Check it out and let me know what you think! Now, let’s get to the point 👇

What are investor decks actually for?

The investor deck is the presentation to sell your company. You use it to get your foot in the door in an investment process.

Analysts in Venture Capital funds screen hundreds of deals every year, and they have very limited time so they can’t really go through long detailed explanations of companies at first. Their job is simple: filtering in the companies that fit their investment criteria and filtering out the ones that don’t.

The purpose of your investor deck is to give out the information that allows analysts to check there is a fit while creating at the same time interest and excitement for them to talk with you.

Remember, fundraising is exactly like selling, and it’s even easier, since your buyers (the VCs) have a structured funnel to invest that you know how it works. Imagine you were selling a product that all your potential clients were looking for. I would be easy to sell right? To fundraise you have to focus your energy on moving through each one of the stages of the investment process. At each stage your only purpose has to be to move towards the following stage, it’s that simple.

The main objective of the investor deck is to move through the first stage of the investment process: sourcing and filtering out and afterwards to have a base document to go to when the associates start the analysis.

What to show investors and how?

Join our Premium Newsletter: The Product Market Fit+

You’ll unlock access to database of investorrs, exclusive interviews with founders and investors, long-form case studies, and tactical guides.

All are designed to help you become a better founder and investor and be ahead of the curve.

Upgrade to paid to unlock this newsletter

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The good news is that countless founders have walked this path, and we can learn from their experiences. In this friendly but analytical guide, we’ll break down how to fundraise as a first-time founder, drawing on insights from legendary entrepreneurs/investors like Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman, and Peter Thiel.

We’ll also cover modern strategies (from SAFE notes to accelerators) and how the 2024–2025 funding climate has changed compared to a decade ago. Let’s dive in!

Build First, Fundraise Second (Marc Andreessen’s Core Advice)

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