How To Use AI In Your Startup

YC General Partners Brad, Pete, Gustav, and Nicola argue that every new startup must use LLMs and that moving to SF is now a prerequisite for staying competitive.

• US healthcare spend is ~$4T, with $1.3–1.4T in admin—most of it humans manually moving data between legacy software systems.
• Vapi (formerly Superpowered) grew from zero to powering a large portion of YC voice AI companies in under 15 months after relocating from Toronto to SF.
• Pivoting to AI fails when founders pick obvious approaches (e.g., ‘customer support agent #50’) without new customer insight or community immersion.
• YC GPs compare the current LLM wave to the 2007–2009 mobile wave: the biggest companies of the next decade are being founded right now.
• Replex automates UI localization and Gecko Security automates security engineering—both turn specialized skills into self-serve tools for software engineers.
• The fastest way to find healthcare AI ideas: sit next to a healthcare worker for a few hours and watch what repetitive screen tasks they do.
• Big tech incumbents should not be feared; ChatGPT is two years old and the category is still wide open for startups to move faster.

2025-01-15 · Watch on YouTube