Simon Willison’s Weblog

Does Y Combinator accept purely app ideas like WhatsApp, Flipboard, etc.?

24th February 2014

My answer to Does Y Combinator accept purely app ideas like WhatsApp, Flipboard, etc.? on Quora

Yes they do, but you’ll need to demonstrate that your team also has the ability to execute on the idea.

Posted 24th February 2014 at 10:16 am · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code? - 5th March 2026
Something is afoot in the land of Qwen - 4th March 2026
I vibe coded my dream macOS presentation app - 25th February 2026

This is Does Y Combinator accept purely app ideas like WhatsApp, Flipboard, etc.? by Simon Willison, posted on 24th February 2014.

startups 190 y-combinator 52 quora 1005

Next: What are good event venues to have a 100 person weekend hackathon in San Francisco?

Previous: Should I use Django forms or pure HTML in order to do not establish borders for the growth of my app?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe