Y Combinator Introduces Early Decision Program: A New Path for Student Startup Founders Without Sacrificing Education

For decades, the Silicon Valley startup scene has idolized the college dropout. Pioneering figures such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg all left university early to establish their companies and amass fortunes. This ethos was further ingrained through initiatives like the Thiel Fellowship, which offers financial incentives for students to leave college and start businesses.

In alignment with this culture, accelerator Y Combinator has historically fostered a similar atmosphere without explicitly requiring students to abandon their education. Many of its most successful alumni, including Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Reddit’s Steve Huffman, and Stripe’s John and Patrick Collison, joined the program while still young and chose to forgo their educational pursuits to focus on building their companies.

However, YC is now challenging this narrative by introducing a new application track called Early Decision, designed for students who aspire to found startups but wish to complete their education first. This program allows applicants to apply while still in school, secure funding immediately, and defer participation in YC until after they graduate. For instance, a student applying in fall 2025 could graduate in spring 2026, then join the Summer 2026 YC cohort.

Jared Friedman, a managing partner at YC, explained the reasoning behind Early Decision in the launch video: “This program is tailored for graduating seniors who wish to embark on a startup journey but also desire to complete their education first.”

The idea for Early Decision stemmed from conversations with students, according to Friedman. Over the past year, YC has conducted more than 20 university tours and hosted AI Startup School, providing numerous opportunities to engage with students. “One of our most frequent pieces of advice is ‘talk to your users,’ and we follow this advice ourselves,” Friedman noted in an email to TechCrunch.

In the Silicon Valley ecosystem, dropping out has long been considered a rite of passage for aspiring founders. Programs like the Thiel Fellowship have even turned it into a movement, though it’s important to note that Peter Thiel himself did not drop out but earned both undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford.

YC’s decision to offer Early Decision represents a significant shift away from this tradition, suggesting that leaving school early is no longer the sole or optimal path to startup success. This announcement comes at a time when more young people are reconsidering the value of college and weighing the pros and cons of staying in school.

Early Decision also signals a maturing approach by YC towards long-term founder outcomes. The accelerator has traditionally been attractive to college-aged builders, but the decision to drop out was often implicit: participate now or risk missing the opportunity. Early Decision provides a compromise between academic completion and entrepreneurial ambition. This change could potentially broaden YC’s applicant pool to include more thoughtful, measured student founders who are dedicated to startup life but unwilling to forego their education in the process.

Sneha Sivakumar and Anushka Nijhawan, co-founders of Spur, which develops AI-powered quality-assurance testing tools, represent a success story from this new approach. They applied to YC through Early Decision in fall 2023 while still enrolled in school. They graduated in May 2024, joined the Summer 2024 YC batch, and have since raised $4.5 million.

YC emphasizes that the Early Decision program is open to both graduating students and those further along in their academic journey. This move signifies a belief that some of the most promising founders of the next decade may not have to choose between college and startups—they might be able to do both.

Early Decision also serves to strengthen YC’s competitive position in an increasingly crowded accelerator and seed funding landscape, offering students an appealing alternative to programs like Thiel Fellowship, Neo Scholars, Founders Inc, as well as Big Tech internships and graduate school pipelines.