All right. Hi everyone and welcome to another Hack Club AMA. Today we have Jared Friedman, who's a partner at Y Combinator, and Arnav Chauhan, who's a former Hack Clubber and whose chance meeting with Jared led to this AMA today, but I won't tell that story. I'll let them tell it. So, gentlemen, take it away.
Awesome. How should we do timing, guys? Should we start right now, like 1:00 on a dime? Do people tend to trickle in for a few minutes? I'll let you guys be the arbiters. Evan, your call.
They do, but I see no harm in starting now. We're recording.
Okay. I guess before we start... Oh, man. It's so hard to give a talk to a bunch of people that you can't see. Yeah. If we could get cameras on, that'd be great. Any chance folks could turn their cameras on? Oh, wow, that is so much better. Oh, look, it's real humans. It's not just your claw bots joining the call.
Um, well, I'm really excited to talk to Arnav and we loosely prepared some stories that we think you guys might find fun and interesting. But maybe to help us like do a better job of like speaking to the right audience, at least for me because it's my first time speaking to Hack Club folks, I'd love to get to know at least a couple of the folks on the call and just get a sense of who we're talking to. Is anybody brave enough to come off mute and just like introduce yourselves?
Hi, um, I'm Charlie. Um, I am 15 and I'm from Boston, Massachusetts. Um, I'm interested in like deep tech and um, hardware startups particularly. Um, uh, if you give me just 1 second, um, I can get some kind of show you.
I've been working on basically an autonomous glider for search and rescue purposes. Um, this is a circuit board I developed for that, but basically I'm trying to work on something to deliver supplies to areas that are hit by disaster and stuff. So, that's something I've been working on and that's the...
Well, that's cool. So, that circuit board is going to go inside like an autonomous glider?
Yeah, actually. I, uh, here's an earlier prototype of what I've been working on. So, yeah.
That's cool. You built that glider yourself?
Nice. Uh, Krish, it looks like you had your hand up. Do you want to go next?
Yeah. Hi Jared. Hi everyone else. I'm Krish. I'm from Delhi and I'm 17. I have my maths exam tomorrow. Um, actually today because it's past midnight. And I don't have something cool to show off like Charles because I'm actually building something software. Um, but I'm not going to pitch it over here. I want to learn from you and get your advice on how to make that idea better because right now it's just like I want to make something and I know what I want to do, but I don't know how exactly I should phrase it. So, I hope that I learn it here on this call.
Awesome. And thanks for joining from Delhi. I know it's like the middle of the night.
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm 18 years old. Um, I'm from Italy near Venice. And yeah, for me too, it's kind of like not late, 9:00 p.m. So, it's fine. And um, now um, I'm very interested in business. Like I'll be studying in ESCP, which is like a European business school. And also, of course, I'm interested in tech, otherwise I wouldn't be here. You know, Hack Club is very tech, you know, centric. And I hope to ask you a few of... I'm sorry, my English is usually much better. It's just that I'm kind of anxious talking to you since, you know, it's kind of like incredible and I kind of need to process things. Um, but yeah, I hope to ask you a few interesting questions later on.
That's great, Daniel. Um, it's really nice to meet you. Thanks for joining the call. Um, cool. Uh, small request for everyone who just joined. It would be amazing if as many people as possible could turn on their cameras just cuz it's really disconcerting to give a talk to like a bunch of like empty rectangles. I understand if you can't. I know folks might have like weird backgrounds or whatever, but you know, that'd be awesome. It'll feel more fun for everyone. Um, well, Arnav, should we jump into our little like mini talk?
Sure. Um, let me know where you want to start.
Yeah. Well, okay, I can start with a quick introduction. Um, my name is Jared. I'm one of the partners at Y Combinator. Raise your hand if you already know what Y Combinator does. It seems like most people. Okay, Y Combinator funds startups. We funded probably a lot of the companies that you've heard of like OpenAI, Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart, um, Zepto if you're in India, um, all came out of Y Combinator. And my story is, um, I was a high school hacker before Hack Club existed. Um, I started programming when I was in probably about sixth grade, um, and basically the internet didn't even exist then. So, the way that I learned how to program is I went to a Barnes & Noble's, which is this like bookstore that existed in America at the time and I bought a bunch of programming books, like physical books, and I brought them home to my computer and I like taught myself how to program. Um, my parents weren't programmers. My school didn't really teach programming. I just like kind of figured it out, just I imagine like the folks on this call and I've basically been programming since fifth or sixth grade ever since. Um, I ended up going to college. I studied computer science, but I dropped out after 3 years to do Y Combinator.
I did Y Combinator as a founder in one of the earliest batches, basically around the time that Sam Altman was going through it. Um, and I moved out to San Francisco. I wasn't from here, but I moved out to San Francisco to do Y Combinator and be part of the whole like Silicon Valley tech world and I've been here ever since doing startups. And my main job these days is basically funding young technical founders. And um, we go all around the world at Y Combinator. We're going to India in a few weeks for anyone who's calling in from India. We'll be hosting an event called Startup School India. Um, and we go around the world to colleges and occasionally to high schools. We were at Thomas Jefferson and we've been to a bunch of other high schools encouraging people like you to take hacking seriously and to like build cool stuff and work with friends. And we find that often the people, you know, young people exactly like the people on this call are exactly the people who are going to end up starting really cool companies in 2 or 3 years. And so, we want to get to know you guys now.
Um, and the story of how I ended up here is Arnav and I met at a little event that we hosted at the end of TreeHacks, which is a Stanford-run hackathon. Um, and we struck up a conversation and he told me about Hack Club and he told me about his story. And um, even though you guys think that you showed up to hear from me, who I actually want you to hear from is Arnav because I think Arnav has a story that is like very relevant and probably quite helpful to you guys. And so, I actually want to have this start by having you hear the story of Arnav and what he is up to. And I think this would actually be really helpful for folks here who are interested in like taking their hacking more seriously.
Yeah. Um, thank you for the introduction, Jared. So, yeah, we were at TreeHacks. I couldn't go to TreeHacks cuz I'm not 18, but I could go to the YC thing afterwards. And so, I went up there and as I was about to leave, I decided why not and then I asked you, "Do you want to come, like, have you heard of Hack Club? Do you want to come on an AMA?" And that's why we're here today. So, a little bit about me, Arnav. I'm from North Carolina originally. I've been in San Francisco for the past 3 weeks now working at a healthcare startup. And so, I am in high school, senior year. So, if we go back to about 2 years ago, um, Build Space season 5, if anyone has heard of Build Space before. But it's like a 6-week program. They were like, "Come in with any dream or anything you're like really passionate about. Take 6 weeks." And they called it Nights and Weekends cuz they're like, "We know you're a student, you have a job, whatever. Just work on it whenever you get some free time and see how far you get." And so, this was during the summer between my sophomore and junior year. I didn't have much going on that summer. And so, I started building AI video analysis tools for tennis players and runners cuz I used to play both sports a lot. And so, it started as a side project, but I accidentally turned it into a company and it was just like I used to play a lot of tennis. I left my academy, saw a bunch of problems. And then I decided to combine two of my passions, sports and technology, and build OneFootGo, which is the name of the company. And so, school started and so, I had to take that on pause for a bit, but we were able to get a few customers, make some revenue. But um, last summer I was here for Startup School, which I believe it just was announced for this year's Startup School in July a few days ago. So, everyone should sign up for that. The highest ROI event I've been to.
But, there was a company called Vitalize. It's a healthcare startup. And they were hosting a poker night. This was the last day of Startup School, and I was flying out the next morning, and I didn't want to pay for any more food, and they had free pizza, which is why I went. But, I ended up staying until 4:00 a.m. just hanging out with the CTO and COO. And like at the end, they're just like, "Yeah, like great, awesome, like good to meet you." And so, a week later I came back to San Francisco for Neighborhood, which was another Hack Club program that was just bringing in a bunch of high schoolers to San Francisco. But, I ended up just, I was just at the office, and I was just hanging out here, and I would just do like a bunch of odd jobs and cool side projects around the company. And then in August, I started school again. Um, I got so bored after one semester. I was like, "I cannot handle this anymore." And so, I did a lot of winding and dining to the principal, superintendent, counselors, everyone at school. And I was like, "Could we make it so that I still finish school online, which I think everyone should finish high school at least, but finish school online and like still graduate in June, but I can move to San Francisco and work full-time at a startup?" And so, my weekdays, I'm in the office like 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., and then weekends, I'm also in the office, but I spend most of my time doing homework for school so they don't kick me out. But, it's been, I just finished week three, I think, and it's been like really amazing just being here. So, um, yeah. It's a little about me.
Yeah, that's a pretty wild story, isn't it? Um, uh, this is the first time I've ever heard of somebody doing what Arnav did, and I thought it was really cool. I don't know how replicable it is exactly. Clearly, um, Arnav, you had to go to like pretty great lengths in order to like convince your school district to do that. But, I could imagine that like some version of what Arnav is doing is actually relevant to folks on this call. It's not that uncommon that we see high school students doing summer internships at startups and like coming out to San Francisco and like working full-time for a startup for three months. I did my first internship, I guess, when I was just a little older than you, Arnav. I did my first internship, um, like proper like sweet internship as a normal full-time software engineer the summer between high school and college. And that was an incredible experience for me. I came into college being so far ahead of my peers. Um, and I see a lot of people doing it, you know, one or two years earlier.
Um, it also seems not impossible that you could get some sort of like part-time remote job from home, um, even if you're in high school if you're a really good programmer. Like, why not, right?
100% and it's, um, I think like even so many people are telling me to drop out of school and not go to college and do all this. I still want to go, and I think it's just like there's so much more that can be learned. And I like schools, like they're institutions that have been around for centuries. Like, they still have value and credibility. Like, you can't just write them off. And it's also just an experience to have. Like, some of my parents' closest friends are people they met in college. I don't really want to miss out on that. But, it cannot be ignored the fact that the pace at which the world is innovating at right now, like you are doing yourself a disservice by not just like trying a bunch of different things, going working at startups, starting your own things. And it's like I think it's very important to be experimenting especially at this time.
Yeah. Arnav, if I can ask a couple questions of you, and then I think we're going to open it up to the audience cuz it's supposed to be an AMA, right? Um, but, um, how did you get good enough at programming while in high school that the Vitalize founders who are running like a pretty serious company were willing to take a bet on a 17-year-old and hire you to do a job that, you know, typically you have to be like 22 or older in order to do?
So, um, I started, so sixth grade and seventh grade, my family actually moved to India. And so, in India, this is like COVID. Everything was online. I was very like, I did not like online school at all, and I was just like not a fan. And so, I would just like keep like be on mute, keep my camera off, and then I was learning how to make iOS apps back then. And I remember I didn't have a MacBook, so I had to, there was this website like rent my Mac or something. And there was like a 5-second, it was a virtual machine that had a Mac running on it so you could code iOS apps, but I would click somewhere and it'd be a 5-second delay, and then like it would show up on the screen, and it's just like that's like, it was very painful to start. But, that's where I was really like enamored by like how easy it is, like I have an idea and like I can create it. Like, it's like it can just be something that's done. And so, experimented with that a little bit, and then I think the best thing I did was find something that I was passionate about. And that started with robotics. Um, so like eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th grade, tons of robotics. That was like hard like hardware, um, low-level like Java, C++. And then after that, like I started doing like AI video analysis with Sports Tech, which is like I love tennis, I love technology. And so, it was like if there's one pattern I noticed, it's like I wasn't learning to code just to like learn to code, but I was learning to code because like I had an end goal in mind. And that was like for AI video like for tennis players, like you shouldn't need a coach. Like, you should just be able to take a video and film yourself and get the analysis. Like, that was just like one of my motivations, and it's like learning to code just came along with that, and I think that was a very important thing because I think it's very easy to know how to code. Can you code something that people will use is like the actual question. And so, it's like if you can go out there with an end goal and go and just like create to achieve that end goal, not just like code to code, I think that's the most important thing you can do.
I like that a lot. And, um, I guess I'd be, I assume very few if any of the folks on this call have actually like worked as a software engineer at a startup. What is it like working at a startup, especially like, you know, at your age? And like what's it like like moving to San Francisco and yeah.
Yeah, the, um, this is something I've noticed over the past few days, and it's like as a high schooler, that's fine. As a minor, there's so many like, there's such a unique set of problems that there are to like moving to a whole different city. And it's like finding work is fine. Like, if you have that, that's fine. But, it's like you can't sign a lease. How are you going to live somewhere? You can't sign your own offer letter. Like, my offer letter had my mom's signature next to it cuz I legally couldn't sign a contract on my own right now. And it's like that has been like one of the, it's been an interesting thing to navigate, but I have some friends that I'm staying with right now, and we're figuring things out. But, just like being at a startup is so much more fun than sitting in a class, and it's I think it just boils down to how much autonomy you get. And it's like right now, like I spend the weekends just like using cursor to poke through our entire codebase. And like I found bugs that were there from like two years ago that no one else found cuz they were in a part that was like relatively unused. And it's just like I get to poke around so many things that people have done before me, and it's like I kind of understand what they're doing. And it's like remote versus in-person, the great thing is if I don't understand something, I just turn to my left, and I ask my boss, and it's like, "Why'd you do it that way?" And then I understand like the whole business reasoning of why that was. Um, as a company, we're doing healthcare software. We sell directly to hospitals. One of the like core tenets of YC is just like talk to your users. Like, make something people want. Our company has a policy for at least like three days every single month. Every single engineer, product manager, designer, like everything, they have to go out to a customer site, talk to like nurses at hospitals that use our software, understand like where their issues are, not from like a support ticket, but it's just like it's very magical to see something that you've created or like had a hand in creating being used by someone. And like when you can go there and understand what their problems are, you can A, teach them how to do it, or B, you could just like, there was one Uber ride back to the airport where I was just writing code for a feature, and then we moved it to prod, and it's like this was a problem that they were facing a few days ago, and it's like three days later now it's fixed. And it's like that's just a speed that's like you just won't find at like a traditional like massive company. And there are benefits to working at a massive company, too. But, it's like right now, there's so much I'm learning, and like the pace at which I'm learning is just like off the charts.
That's really cool. Um, and I guess, um, since you mentioned Startup School, that was one of the things I actually wanted to mention to the folks on this call because we just opened up applications for the one that we're running this summer. Can you maybe just like tell people like what is Startup School? What it was like?
Yeah. So, Startup School was, uh, I think the best three days I had like last like in the year of 2025. And, um, I originally wasn't going to go, but I was, yeah, like two days before I texted a friend cuz like there was stuff going on at home that I didn't really want to miss. But, I texted a friend like Thursday night, I believe, or like Wednesday night. And I was like, "Should I go? Like, is it really worth it?" And then she's like, "See, like the worst that's going to happen is you're out 300 bucks, and you met a ton of cool people." And I was like, okay, I guess why not. And so I took the risk, I booked a flight ticket, and I came over. And Startup School is, I love it because it's like every single cool person in the world, they're all in town for like 3 days. And it's like that happens at other events, but Startup School is meant to be for like students and stuff like that. And so it's like I think there was an Instagram group chat that a bunch of high schoolers created and I think there were like 40 of us in there. It's still active. Like people text in there every now and then and it's like I was just like very like, there's so many people I met there that like I'm still friends with today, like very close friends with. Like my current roommate, like I met him at Startup School. And it's like that's just like, I think there are very few opportunities where you're going to see such a high density of like creative and like talented and like passionate, motivated, like all those types of people are very hard to find at home. Like you have to go looking for them. Over here, you walk and it's like you're having dinner and the group next to you is having dinner and they're having dinner and they're all like cracked people and like really fun conversations. And even if you don't like end up moving to San Francisco or anything, it's like you have seen like your worldview expands a bit, which I think was the most valuable part for me.
That's a really good way of putting it. Um, and incidentally, for folks who are in India, um, since I see a few people who I think might be in India, we realized that it was very hard for young people in India to get a visa and travel to the US for it, not to mention expensive. And so we decided to basically clone it. And so we're going to run Startup School India in India in a couple of months to make it easier for people who are in India to have that same experience. Um, yeah, cool. Um, what else should we talk about, Arnav, before we open it up for the AMA?
I think I'm happy to let people ask questions now.
Okay, cool. Awesome. How do you guys like to run these AMAs? Do people just like come off mute and just say a question? Should people raise a hand? What works best?
So generally we have the moderator, which in this case would be Arnav, call on people who have their hands raised. And alternatively, if you can't or don't want to speak up through voice, you can also put your question in the chat and Arnav will read it.
And so I'm going to, I want to kick it off with one of my personal questions first. Um, so I'm going to start with, as students, most of us are in high school, like all of us are in high school, and it's like we have little to none domain knowledge that would allow us to tackle hard problems in like very deep industries. What's the best way to prove credibility like in such moments without like having to work at a startup to work in like healthcare, like AI, like I am right now? But it's like how is that possible to like get that type of credibility while being a 17-year-old?
Prove credibility to whom?
The customer. So right now a big problem that we're seeing is like when we were starting especially, it's like no one took us seriously cuz it's like three college dropouts are coming to you and being like, "Hey, we're fixing some of your problems. Like use our product." And it's like the incumbents have such a big foothold in the like especially in healthcare where change is like glacial at best. It's very hard to like go in there and like it took 9 months for our company like to get our first pilot and that meant it was a hospital in Knoxville, Tennessee that we had to get, um, they were literally sleeping in an air mattress in the back of their car for like 2 months in the parking lot of the hospital. And that's how they were able, and like 3 months of that is how we were finally able to get our first pilot customer.
And this is the Vitalize founders?
This is a little bit before you joined, right?
This is, yeah, 2023. End of 2023.
And they were a bit older, I assume. They were like college age, not high school.
And even for them it was hard.
I mean, I think you're right. I think for high school students selling software to a hospital would be even harder. Not impossible, but like certainly like playing the game on like hard mode, you know? Like, uh, um, what would I do? What would I do? Well, one thing I might do is I might go after an easier customer base. Like it might be unrealistic as a 16-year-old to convince like a large hospital with, you know, like a giant hospital building to use your software. But if you're interested in healthcare, maybe you could go down the street to the local like dentist's office or the local ophthalmologist's office or something like that and find it, you know, like 100 times easier. Um, you know, if you can find a customer that has no alternative. Like there's, they, you know, like a large hospital can hire software engineers to build internal software. A large hospital probably even has a couple of like software engineer-ish people on staff, but your local ophthalmologist or your local like dentist does not. And like if you can go to people who have no alternative, um, you know, there's probably low downside for them to like try the random 17-year-old who shows up at their office and offers to help. And if you seem like you're genuinely interested in solving their problems and maybe you offered to build something first before trying to charge the money, they don't really have much downside to like letting you build something and coming back and seeing if it's useful for them. And if it's useful, why wouldn't they pay for it? It doesn't really matter who built it. Like it only matters if it's useful. This is the beauty of startups, which is like out there in the like job seeking world, you know, if you try to go apply for a job at Google or something like that, the Google recruiters care a lot about who you are. And if you're like a random 16-year-old in India, they're going to be like, "We don't hire 16-year-olds. Sorry." Um, but if you build something for a customer, the customers don't really care who built the thing. They only care whether the thing that you built solves a problem that they have. And this is one reason why like really exceptional young people often find that being a startup founder is a thing that enables them to accelerate their career dramatically because they're not held back by whatever, you know, assumptions and biases like people in the corporate world have about what young people are able to do. The customers will let them move as fast as their capabilities allow them to move. They're being judged ultimately by like the work that they're able to do as opposed to like what their resume looks like.
Awesome. Good to know. Good to know. Um, Myuran, I think, I hope I pronounced that correctly. I think you had your hand up first.
Oh, hey Jared. Uh, Myuran from India. I also have excellent like my knowledge and dynamics of, uh, I'm very interested in privacy tech as I believe with the awareness of AI, awareness of privacy is also increasing. Uh, my question is, have you ever funded a privacy startup which failed? Uh, and I want to know the reason. Also, I have another question. Uh, what privacy tech in 2026 you are most excited for?
Sure. Have we ever funded a privacy company that failed? Sure. I think we've probably funded an X company that failed for all values of X. Um, uh, I mean, there's all kinds of reasons why companies failed. And I think probably a lot of the privacy companies that we funded failed for reasons that are totally unrelated to the fact that they were privacy companies. They failed for the reasons that startups often fail, which is like the founders can't get along and decide to break up or they just lose interest or just like they can't really figure out like how to make something that people want. They get discouraged. They decide to do other things with their lives. All the common and totally normal reasons why people would stop working on a startup. And there's nothing wrong with that. Um, I would say if I had to name one reason why I have seen, this isn't exactly the question that you asked, but perhaps it'll be helpful for you. If I had to name one specific reason that I have seen privacy companies fail that is specific to them being privacy companies, I would say it's this. It's that most people just don't care that much about privacy when push comes to shove. Like there's a lot of like press about it. Journalists love to talk about privacy. There's a lot of like social media stuff about privacy. Programmers like to talk a lot about privacy particularly on the internet and tend to get very like agitated when like, you know, companies like Meta do things that like impact user privacy, but the average consumer mostly just doesn't care. They just like want their damn software to work and like they don't really care about their data and all these like abstract privacy things. And so that's typically been the privacy-specific failure mode I've seen most often is like young programmers who are immersed in a circle of friends and like an internet social media bubble where people like seem to care a lot about this stuff think that that generalizes to the broader world and often it doesn't. Is that helpful?
Uh, it is. Actually, I did a survey for an email service like what consumers like in an email. I got like a 75% interested in privacy. And the other didn't care about privacy that much. Uh, second that like 72% people didn't care, like they won't pay for the service specifically for privacy.
So yeah. That is true. Here you go. Yeah. All right, Arnav, who's next? Aria, I think you are next.
Uh yeah, it's great to meet you. So um I had two questions. I'll go ahead with my first one. My first question is that I'm currently 18 years old and I really only became interested in coding about 7 to 8 months ago and sometimes it feels like recently with the way things are developing, I feel really late. I feel a lot of people are starting coding when they're like 10, 11 years old. So like how would you go about it? Like what advice do you have?
You're not late. I mean it's true that there are people who now start learning programming when they're like 10 or 11 but like 18 is not too late at all. There's no one on this call who's like too old to learn how to program. You're all like precocious relative to the average person and so basically I just wouldn't worry about it. Like if you're 18 and you're interested in like learning how to program now, you could be an exceptional programmer in a couple of years. Just like go work on it. I mean.
Cool. And then the second thing I want to talk about is so I currently live in North Carolina and I feel like a lot of things I hear about like startup culture, it's all in these big cities. I hear about it in SF, I hear about it in NYC. So like in one of these cities where it's not really that big of a culture, how would you advise to kind of put yourself out there and get into those rooms with important people?
Yeah, that's a good question. So you said you're 18. So are you still in high school or are you in college?
I'm a first year college student.
Where are you in college?
I go to NC State University.
