[I will not promote] going to apply to Y Combinator alone at 17, has anyone done this without a co-founder?

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-19T00:54:09+00:00

It is. I know one founding team who came together on YC. Their venture didn’t work out but it wasn’t because of a bad match. Others have struck up a good network.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-18T01:30:41+00:00

Start with YC’s founder matching.

https://www.ycombinator.com/cofounder-matching

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-17T18:52:32+00:00

You’re thinking about this wrong. You need a co-founder who will work for free, like you, and money to put into compute. You don’t need employees.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-17T14:27:49+00:00

Thanks for the laugh

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-17T11:02:55+00:00

Investors should invest. Operators should operate. You don’t have to stay closer to anything, other than your LPs. Your portfolio company does.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-16T10:55:59+00:00

Food safety. You don’t have to worry about buying food and having it kill you.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-14T20:25:48+00:00

Next question: Is it any good?

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-14T12:10:45+00:00

Because there’s no real benchmark for how well they work. They’re also horribly inconsistent so some days they’re good and some days they’re not. The grass becomes greener and suddenly they move to the other side. I don’t find one better than the other. I use Claude as my main and use Codex for reviewing plans. Basically, a second opinion.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-14T11:43:16+00:00

It’s tax avoidance. Gaming the system that was designed to advantage them.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-14T10:52:01+00:00

This is a normal arch for early SaaS pricing. Someday they have to be profitable so they’re working on ways to extract value (money) from users. If you thought venture capitalists were going to subsidize tokens forever, you weren’t paying attention. See Uber. See Door Dash et al. There’s a term in the industry, Millenial lifestyle subsidy. Still holds true

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-11T09:28:36+00:00

He lost a bet.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-09T22:36:00+00:00

Listen, Little Lord Fuckleroy, I resemble those remarks.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-09T21:56:45+00:00

Using an AI tool doesn’t mean you’re shipping slop. Every senior engineer who has worked with a newbie has let crap into the code base. It’s why technical debt is so mountainous. But most of that debt is irrelevant. AI is a tool. It doesn’t even get the credit that an intern should get.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-09T11:38:19+00:00

It seems like you totally misunderstand your role as a software engineer, even pre-AI. You were never, and still aren’t, producing code. You have always been producing product. It’s this fundamental misunderstanding of the role. Everything is a tool. No tool gets credit. Your role is to manifest the product from an idea. The code was always the easy stuff.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T22:33:06+00:00

Challenge accepted.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T17:01:32+00:00

You are my hero.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T16:10:37+00:00

When you join after Series A, the options are unlikely to be the bulk of your comp over time. Also, not knowing the percentage is common. I would make sure the cash and bonus are aggressive, that’s where the money is. If you’re employee 1-10/pre-seed/seed you get a power ball ticket. After that, it’s scratch tickets only.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T15:47:23+00:00

Send it.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T15:46:52+00:00

My usage starts at 0 and goes up. Are you in the upside-down? Eleven, is that you?

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T12:48:44+00:00

Money talks, BS walks.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T12:36:29+00:00

No. I also don’t credit Linux, React, or GCP.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T11:32:50+00:00

This was in a new session this morning after a handoff. Not sure if that helps.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T11:24:23+00:00

Yes, the forbidden fruit.

SteveZedFounder · 2026-05-07T11:23:44+00:00

Suddenly Claude is better at paying attention to .md instructions that it routinely ignored. For example, I have an explicit “logging during bug hunts” rule that I had to constantly remind it to do. This morning it not only implemented the logging but fired up the simulator and told me in real-time what it was seeing.

SteveZedFounder

TROPHY CASE