How to Find YC Founders with Origami (2026)
Find YC founders with Origami by searching the YC alumni directory with natural language — filter by batch, industry, funding stage, company size, and location. Build enriched contact lists in minutes.
Founding AI Engineer @ Origami
Quick answer: To find YC founders, use the YC company directory for manual lookup or Origami for building an enriched contact list at scale. Origami can search YC alumni companies by batch, industry, funding stage, and location — returning founder names, emails, and LinkedIn profiles. In a test run, we built a list of 140 YC Series A founders in B2B SaaS in 6 minutes.
Why YC Founders Are a Valuable B2B Segment
Y Combinator has funded over 4,000 companies since 2005, including Stripe, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Coinbase. The YC alumni network is one of the densest concentrations of high-growth startup founders in the world.
If you sell to startups — developer tools, HR software, sales tools, accounting, legal, insurance, real estate, banking — YC founders are a natural ICP. They're:
- Well-funded (YC companies raise at higher rates than non-YC peers)
- Technically sophisticated (they know good tools)
- Founder-led buying (no procurement gatekeeping)
- Chronically short on bandwidth (they'll pay for things that save time)
- Connected (a good experience with one YC company often spreads through the network)
The challenge is reaching them. YC founders are heavily solicited. Cold outreach to generic founder emails gets ignored. The teams that break through either have a specific message tied to a specific signal or a warm introduction.
This guide covers how to find them, which data sources to use, and how to make your outreach actually land.
Where YC Alumni Data Lives
YC Company Directory
The official source. Available at ycombinator.com/companies. You can filter by:
- Batch (S23, W24, etc.)
- Industry tags
- Status (Active, Acquired, Public, Inactive)
- Location
Each listing includes: company name, description, batch, founders, and sometimes a website. Founders' LinkedIn profiles are often linked.
Limitation: no email data, no funding stage filter, limited by what YC has in their system.
Search for "founder" + "Y Combinator" as a keyword filter. LinkedIn's "Past Company" filter doesn't work well for YC since it's not an employer, but you can search company pages for recent YC batches.
Works for small lists but doesn't scale without Sales Navigator ($100+/mo).
Crunchbase / PitchBook
Both have YC as an investor filter. Crunchbase lets you filter YC-funded companies by funding stage, industry, and geography. Free tier is limited; Pro is $50–$350/month.
Origami
Origami combines YC directory data with Crunchbase-style funding signals and direct contact enrichment. You describe what you want: "Find founders of YC-backed B2B SaaS companies from batches W22 through S25 with 10–50 employees and recent Series A funding."
We ran that search. In 6 minutes, Origami returned 140 matching founders with LinkedIn profiles, company websites, and direct emails for 96 of them.
Filtering YC Founders by What Actually Matters for Your ICP
Not all YC founders are the same prospect. Here's how to filter intelligently:
By batch: Newer batches (W24, S24, S25) are at seed or pre-seed — spending carefully. W21–S23 batches are more likely at Series A/B — actively scaling tools and processes.
By industry: YC funds across dev tools, healthcare, climate, fintech, SaaS, consumer, marketplace, and more. Filter by the industry where your product fits.
By funding stage: Seed companies are evaluating every tool. Series A companies are building out their stack. Series B+ companies often have existing vendor relationships — harder to displace.
By company size: 1–10 employees means founder is still doing everything. 20–50 employees means they're starting to hire function leads who make tool decisions. 50+ means you need to find the right buyer within the org.
By geographic focus: Bay Area, NYC, and Austin have the highest concentrations. Remote-first companies are everywhere — and often have more budget for tools since they're not paying for SF office space.
Making Your Outreach to YC Founders Actually Work
Finding YC founders is the easy part. Getting a reply is harder. A few things that actually work:
Reference something specific. "I saw you just launched [product] and announced your Series A. We work with 3 other YC B2B SaaS companies in your space." Specificity signals you're not blasting a generic list.
Lead with value, not a pitch. YC founders see 50+ cold emails a week. The ones that get replies usually offer something useful immediately — a relevant data point, a connection, a free analysis. "I built you a quick list of 50 potential enterprise accounts that match your ICP — want me to send it over?" is a better opener than a feature pitch.
Go through the network. If you have any YC connection — alumni, investor, advisor — a warm intro is 10x more effective than cold email. Origami can help you find first-degree connections between your existing customers and your target founders.
Time it to signals. New funding announcements, new product launches, and new job postings are all moments when founders are open to new tools. See what is signal-based prospecting for how to build this into your workflow.
Origami vs Other Tools for YC Founder Lists
| Tool | YC Coverage | Contact Data | Price | ICP Filtering |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origami | ✅ Good | ✅ Email + LinkedIn | $29–$129/mo | ✅ Natural language |
| YC Directory | ✅ Official | ❌ No contacts | Free | ⚠️ Limited filters |
| LinkedIn Sales Navigator | ⚠️ Manual | ⚠️ InMail only | $100+/mo | ⚠️ Complex |
| Crunchbase Pro | ✅ Good | ❌ Limited | $50+/mo | ✅ Good filters |
| Apollo | ⚠️ Partial | $49+/mo | ⚠️ Filter-based |
Origami's advantage for YC prospecting is the combination of natural language filtering and direct contact enrichment. You don't have to know the exact filter structure — just describe who you want and the AI finds them.
Step-by-Step: Build a YC Founder List in Under 10 Minutes
- Go to useorigami.com
- Type: "Find founders of YC-backed SaaS companies from W22–S25 batches with 15–75 employees. Include founder name, email, LinkedIn, and company website."
- Review the list — filter any that don't fit your ICP
- Tell Origami to refine: "Remove any consumer-focused companies" or "Only include companies with B2B revenue"
- Export to CSV
You start with 1,000 free credits — enough for a meaningful first YC list.
For enriching existing lists from YC's directory or Crunchbase exports, see our guide on how to enrich a company list with contacts.
YC Founder Segmentation by Batch and Stage
Not all YC founders are equally accessible or equally relevant as prospects. Here's how to think about segmentation:
Recent batches (S24, W25, S25): These founders are 0–18 months post-YC. They're building fast, burning through their initial funding, and evaluating every tool. Reply rates on well-timed cold outreach are higher — they're in active vendor evaluation mode. Downside: less funding (seed-stage), smaller budgets, higher churn risk.
Mid-vintage batches (W21–S23): These founders have been at it 2–4 years. Many have raised Series A/B. They have larger teams, established tool stacks, and higher switching costs — but also more budget and more professional buying processes. Better for higher-ACV products.
Legacy batches (pre-2020): Companies that have been around 5+ years from YC. Many are now 100+ employees. Some are household names (Stripe, Airbnb). Treat these like any mid-market or enterprise account — find the right department head, not the founder.
The YC Series A sweet spot: W22–W24 batch companies that raised Series A in 2023–2025 are the best segment for most B2B SaaS tools. They have money, they're building out function-specific tooling for the first time, and the founder is often still involved in tool decisions.
YC Founders Who Are Hard to Reach vs Easy to Reach
Some YC founders are highly accessible. Others have effectively disappeared into building.
More accessible: Founders who are active on Twitter/X, posting LinkedIn updates, speaking at events. These founders are visible and responsive to well-crafted outreach.
Less accessible: Founders at high-growth YC companies post-Series B who have delegated all vendor conversations to their team. You won't reach them via cold email. You need a warm introduction or to reach a function head instead.
Most accessible: Founders at early-stage companies (seed/pre-A) who are still doing everything themselves. They respond to cold email, especially if you're offering something immediately useful.
Origami can help you filter by company stage and size to find the founders who are most likely to respond to outreach at your product's price point.
The YC Demo Day Calendar
YC runs two batches per year: Winter (applications in fall, Demo Day in March) and Summer (applications in spring, Demo Day in September). The 3–6 weeks after Demo Day are when batch companies are actively fundraising and getting their stacks set up.
If your product is relevant to early-stage companies, the 60-day window after YC Demo Days is the best time to reach recently graduated founders. They're not in full build mode yet, they have fresh capital, and they're open to new tools.
Demo Day dates for 2025: Winter Demo Day was in March 2025. Summer Demo Day expected September 2025.