Y Combinator - What it's ACTUALLY Like

Founders of usedash.ai (Dhruv Roongta, Pranjali Awasthi, Harsha Gaddipati, left to right)

YC Experience

The most underrated part of YC isn't the funding or even the mentorship—it's the batch. Being surrounded by 200+ other founders building everything from AI agents to biotech companies creates this unique energy. You're constantly learning from others' experiments, sharing resources, and pushing each other to move faster.

Environment is quintessential in the startup world, and is an incredible motivator. When everyone around you is solving hard problems at breakneck speed, you can't help but raise your own bar.

The San Francisco Effect

But YC is just part of the broader SF startup ecosystem. The warmth of the SF startup community blew me away. Founders, engineers, and YC partners made time for coffee, walks, and real conversations about where AI was headed. That openness and willingness to engage is truly unique to this city.

SF is genuinely unmatched when it comes to ambitious energy.

"ChatGPT with Hands"

Here's the thing about current AI: it's good at understanding and generating text. However, doesn't actually do anything. ChatGPT could write emails but couldn't send them. Claude could analyze data but couldn't update your spreadsheet.

So we built "ChatGPT with Hands."

Imagine an AI agent that could complete entire workflows autonomously. Connect to Gmail, Slack, Notion, Linear, Google Sheets—all the tools knowledge workers use daily—and execute tasks end-to-end.

The technical challenge was definitely interesting. Building an AI that can navigate complex software interfaces, understand context across different platforms, and execute multi-step workflows reliably required lots of infrastructure work. But my previous experience and hackathon wins taught me about AI inference speed, and my time at big companies showed me how to build products that scale.

Takeaways:

Move fast and iterate quickly. SF taught me that momentum creates information. Every conversation, every user interview, every prototype iteration gave us data to make better decisions.

Build for your own frustrations. The best startup ideas often come from daily pain points. If you're manually doing something repetitive, chances are millions of others are too. Plus, you will be more passionate and knowledgable about it.

Build what people want. Enough said.

Success isn't easy, but I'm confident in our mission.

Dhruv Roongta is a co-founder of Dash (usedash.ai), Y Combinator S25. He previously interned at Pulse (YC S24) as well as Groq, and won CalHacks 10.0 and HackMIT '24.