Founder Stories
Real stories from YC founders.
How they got in. What broke. What scaled. Five free stories every month.
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How Brian Chesky funded Airbnb selling Obama-branded cereal
In 2008, before YC, Airbnb was broke. The fix wasn't a pivot — it was 800 boxes of cereal, $40,000 in revenue, and the willingness to look ridiculous in front of investors.
Brian Chesky · 6 min read
The 4-minute demo video that built Dropbox's first 75,000-person waitlist
Drew Houston couldn't get product/market signal because nobody understood what Dropbox did. So in 2008 he made a screencast aimed at one community — and woke up with 70,000 new users.
Drew Houston · 7 min read
The seven lines of code that became Stripe
In 2010, accepting a payment online required a merchant account, a payment gateway, weeks of paperwork, and PCI compliance. The Collison brothers shipped a competitor that worked in seven lines of curl.
Patrick Collison · 8 min read
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