Founder Residency
A 4-week program that pairs you with a digital twin of a senior investor. It pressure-tests your idea, tracks your traction, and sharpens your pitch — so you graduate ready to fast-track into YC, MARS, or raise from angel investors in the network.
Apply to JoinHow it works
What you graduate with
Two artifacts. Exactly what YC asks for.
Every founder who completes the program produces the same two deliverables a strong YC application requires — refined over 4 weeks with your AI investor coach.
YC-Style One-Pager
What are you making?
The problem — who has it, how painful?
The solution — what and why this approach?
Traction — users, revenue, conversations
Why you? — unfair advantage
Market — how big can this be?
Why now? — what changed?
Business model — how you make money
2-Minute Founder Video
Who you are and what you're building
The problem and who has it
Your solution and what you've done so far
Why you, why now
The ask / what's next
Your AI coach runs a practice pitch session before the final recording so you can sharpen your answers and go again.
The goal
Your startup. Your traction.
Don't have a key metric yet? We help you pick one. Already tracking something? We help you move it. The program ends when there's a number investors can look at.
0→47
users in 4 weeks
$0→2.4k
MRR from zero revenue
3→31
user conversations
Pick your metric
No traction metric yet? Your AI coach helps you define one based on your stage — users, revenue, waitlist signups, or conversations. Something concrete that investors care about.
Move the needle
Your coach builds a personalized plan to move that number. Each conversation adapts the plan based on what's working and what isn't. No fixed curriculum — just the next highest-leverage action.
Show the delta
At the end, you have a before and after. That traction report is what gets shared with partner incubators and angel investors in the network. Numbers speak louder than pitch decks.
Sample metrics above. Every founder tracks a different number.
How it works
Your digital twin of a senior investor
When you join, you get paired with an AI coach trained on the YC Startup School framework and real investor playbooks. It challenges your thinking, tracks your progress, and won't let you hide from the work.
Video conversations
Sessions designed by senior investors. Your AI coach challenges your assumptions, asks for evidence, and gates your progress — like a YC partner would.
Email check-ins
After each stage, your coach checks in via email: what did you learn, what shifted, are you working on the thing that matters most? Lightweight accountability that sticks.
Personalized, not prescribed
No fixed syllabus. Your first conversation shapes the plan. Each check-in adjusts it. The AI adapts to your business, not the other way around.
Built on YC Startup School — 17 topics, 20 years, thousands of companies
Who this is for
Founders who are close but not there yet
After graduation
Fast-track into incubators or raise from angels
Graduates get a readiness report shared with partner incubators and angel investors in the network — your idea clarity, traction trajectory, experiment quality, and pitch score. All backed by evidence from 4 weeks of real work.
Founder
Sarah Kim
completed the Founder Residency
Ready
Overall
4 / 4
Gates passed
92%
Check-in rate
Evidence-based, not self-reported
Your readiness report is shared directly with partner incubators and angel investors subscribed to the program. They get signal, not noise.
Traceable — Every claim links to a video conversation, email thread, or traction data point.
Comparable — Same framework for every founder. Easy for investors to evaluate across cohorts.
Honest — Gaps are flagged. A “Not Yet” score is a signal, not a failure.
Graduate into
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Applications reviewed within 2 business days.