For years, Silicon Valley has celebrated the narrative of the college dropout. Entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg left university early to launch their ventures and ultimately became billionaires.
This mindset was later formalized through programs like the Thiel Fellowship, which is well-known for offering talented students $100,000 to leave college and pursue entrepreneurship.
Y Combinator, the renowned startup accelerator, has also quietly supported this tradition for a long time. While it never directly told students to leave school, many of its most notable graduates—such as Drew Houston of Dropbox, Steve Huffman of Reddit, and John and Patrick Collison of Stripe—joined YC at a young age and left their studies to focus on building their companies.
But now, YC is shifting that perspective.
YC has launched a new application path called Early Decision, aimed at students who are interested in starting companies but want to complete their degrees first. This track lets students apply while still enrolled, receive acceptance and funding right away, and then postpone their YC participation until after graduation. For instance, a student applying in Fall 2025 could finish school in Spring 2026 and then join YC’s Summer 2026 cohort.
“This is meant for seniors who want to launch a startup but also wish to graduate before diving in,” explained YC managing partner Jared Friedman in the program’s announcement video.
Friedman mentioned that the inspiration for Early Decision came from student feedback. “Between last summer’s AI Startup School and more than 20 university visits over the past year, we’ve had plenty of chances to hear from students. One of YC’s core recommendations is to ‘talk to your users,’ and we practice what we preach,” he shared with TechCrunch via email.
Within Silicon Valley, dropping out has almost become a rite of passage for those aspiring to be founders. Initiatives like the Thiel Fellowship have made it a trend (though it’s interesting that Peter Thiel himself completed both undergraduate and law degrees at Stanford).
That’s why YC’s new approach marks a significant departure from the long-standing belief that leaving college early is the best—or only—way to succeed in startups. The timing is notable as well, as more young people are questioning the value and costs of higher education and weighing the pros and cons of staying in school.
This initiative also signals YC’s evolving perspective on supporting founders for long-term success.
YC has always attracted young entrepreneurs, with founders of companies like Loom, Instacart, Rappi, and Brex joining while still in their teens or early twenties. Previously, there was often an unspoken expectation: participate in YC now or risk missing out.
Early Decision eliminates that dilemma, providing a compromise between finishing school and pursuing a startup. This change could encourage more thoughtful and cautious student founders to apply—those who are passionate about entrepreneurship but do not want to forgo their education.
In its announcement, YC spotlights Sneha Sivakumar and Anushka Nijhawan, co-founders of Spur, as examples of this new path. Spur develops AI-driven quality assurance testing tools, and the founders applied to YC through Early Decision in Fall 2023 while still students. They graduated in May 2024, joined YC’s Summer 2024 batch, and have since secured $4.5 million in funding.
YC emphasizes that the program welcomes both those about to graduate and students earlier in their studies. The bet is that some of the most promising founders in the coming decade won’t have to choose between school and startups—they’ll be able to do both.
This strategy also enables YC to attract top talent sooner in a landscape where accelerators and seed funds are increasingly competitive, offering students an alternative to programs like the Thiel Fellowship, Neo Scholars, Founders Inc, as well as internships at major tech companies and graduate school tracks.
