20 YC (W26) Startups For Your Business

Mar 25, 2026

∙ Paid

YC W26 is live. 199 Startups. 89% of them AI First.

Some investors are already calling W26 the strongest YC batch ever.

One of the most cited comes from Rebel Fund:

around 35% of W26 startups fall into the top 20% of companies by predicted unicorn potential, nearly double the historical baseline

And that’s exactly why most founders will get this wrong.

They’ll see a list of impressive companies, maybe skim a few, and then move on. But they won’t engage with what actually matters:

Some of these startups are not just interesting companies, they are tools that can give you a real advantage today

And if you look at YC this way, it stops being just an accelerator.

It becomes one of the best databases of new tools in the world.

So instead of looking at YC as a list of startups, I approached it differently.

I went through all 199 companies in W26 and filtered them using a simple question:

Would this help me move faster as a founder?

No long-term bets.
No “future of X”.
No tools that require months of integration.

Only things that can:

Here’s a curated selection of 20 YC W26 startups that can actually help you in your day-to-day as a founder.

This isn’t a generic list. It’s a set of tools I would genuinely use.

I organized them by workflow, not by category because that’s how you actually think when you’re building.

You’ll find the right startups depending on what you’re trying to improve:

Just a quick note before you go!

The full list (with all 20 tools and breakdowns) is only available to premium subscribers.

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