YC Student / Dropout Founding Teams Report

Scope: Winter 2024 ~ Winter 2025 (W24, S24, W25) Total companies included: 93 (12.7% of 731 total) Date: 2026-07-22

Overall Summary

Category Companies Share
Dropout founding teams 38 40.9%
Recent graduates / current students 39 41.9%
High school founding teams 16 17.2%

Dropout Founding Teams (38)

W25 Dropouts

Company Founder School Description
Contrario Aditya Sood Stanford Stanford AI student → dropout, former NASA NLP lead
Amby Health Yos Wagenmans, Timmy Dang Both dropped out of MIT AI ambulance (EMS) copilot
Operand Akhil Iyengar Cornell dropout AI consulting replacement (CS+Econ)
ThirdLayer Regina Lin Harvard Double major in Math+CS → AI browser companion
Lucid Rami Seid High school dropout Interactive video models
Mentra Cayden Pierce MIT Open-source OS for smart glasses
Woz Brad Eckert MIT Former YC S17 founder, AI software platform
Reditus Space Will Sherman Georgia Tech PhD dropout Reusable satellites, zero-gravity manufacturing
Harper Dakotah Rice Brown Goldman/Carlyle → AI insurance brokerage
Mercura Lukas Bock Cambridge Former Google X AI engineer
Bild AI Puneet Sukhija Columbia Built his first house at 16, hundreds of houses over 7 years
Admyral Daniel Grittner ETH Former Hey Telo CTO, Amazon SDE
Vetnio Max Henry Xie NTU Veterinary AI copilot, second startup
ZeroEntropy Nicholas Pipitone CMU Unstructured data search API
Olive Shrey Gupta - Former Capital One, internal tool processing 400K cards/year
Vantel Ulme Wennberg - Former Microsoft, 900+ research papers

W24 Dropouts

Company Founder School Description
Basalt Maximillian Bhatti MIT+Caltech High school grad → Caltech fusion researcher
BetterBasket Leon Zhang Wharton MBA dropout Former Uber Eats, PIMCO
dawn/Raindrop Alexis Gauba Berkeley Former Opyn founder (acquired by Coinbase)
Keywords AI Andy Li UIUC World Champion coder, AI observability
Infinity AI Sidney Primas MIT Former founder of Edge Analytics
Shiboleth Esty Scheiner ETH+NYU AI regulatory compliance automation
Terrakotta Vincent Wilson, Kusiima Boswell UW, Penn/Wharton AI knowledge management
Fileforge Pierre Dorge, Titouan Launay, Auguste Lefevre ETH, NTU Intelligent document processing
crmCopilot/Quantic Garrett Graves College dropout Former Mux/Twitch real-time video
Datacurve Serena Ge Waterloo Built a Team Canada climbing app in high school

S24 Dropouts

Company Founder School Description
RigManic Richard Gong Oxford medical school dropout Humanoid home robots
Sensei Anubhav Guha MIT Robotics PhD dropout Robot learning data marketplace
Freestyle Jacob Zwang College dropout Former Apple senior full-stack engineer
Silurian Cristian Bodnar, Nikhil Shankar Cambridge Former Microsoft Research, Amazon
VideoGen Anton Koenig Amherst dropout AI video generation
XTraffic Everett Ivy CS dropout Former Amazon Robotics, professional racer
Quetzal Brendan Agliardo UMD CS dropout Former Mercatalist SWE
Anthrogen Connor Lee Columbia sophomore dropout Biotech CTO

High School / Young Power Founding Teams (16)

Company Batch Founder Story
Edexia W25 Daniel Gibbon, Nathan Wang Reached $200K ARR in EdTech at ages 18 and 17
Lucid W25 Rami Seid High school dropout → robotics MLE → AI video
Basalt W24 Maximillian Bhatti High school grad → Caltech fusion researcher
Datacurve W24 Serena Ge Built a Team Canada climbing app in high school
Freestyle S24 Benjamin Swerdlow Coding since elementary school, GitHub code owner in high school
Parahelp S24 Anker Ryhl, Mads Liechti First startup at 13, shipped 4 apps in high school
Anthrogen S24 Connor Lee Columbia sophomore dropout
MathDash W24 Daniel Sun High school math olympiad champion
Reducto W24 Raunak Chowdhuri MIT CS → computational chemistry consulting
Firebender W24 Kevin Tang Former Two Sigma senior SWE
Glimmer W24 Arman Rafati Former Mercury card team
Vista Power W24 Maxim Kraft Space + sustainability + economics
Zenbase AI S24 Amir Mehr Stanford contributor, master’s in CS from Calgary

Recent Graduate / Current Student Founding Teams (Notable Teams)

Company Batch Founder School Notes
Bastion W25 Adarsh Ambati Stanford c/o ’25 AI insider threat detection
a0.dev W25 Seth Setse CMU ’23 Serial app developer
AfterQuery W25 Carlos Georgescu, Spencer Mateega UBC Former Citadel, Meta intern
Alice.tech W25 Kim Rants Imperial College Former McKinsey AI
Cuckoo Labs W25 Yong Hee Lee, Gunwoo Kim - Korean co-founders, AI interpretation
Amby Health W25 Yos Wagenmans MIT CS dropout AI EMS copilot
Bastion W25 Adarsh Ambati Stanford c/o ’25 Fresh Stanford graduate
Bild AI W25 Puneet Sukhija Columbia Built his first house at 16
Contrario W25 Aditya Sood Stanford dropout NASA NLP lead
Mentra W25 Cayden Pierce MIT Collaborating with smart glasses inventors

Key Patterns & Insights

1. MIT dropout is the most common “signal”

  • YC views MIT dropouts favorably
  • MIT CS/Robotics dropouts are especially common
  • “Dropped out of MIT to build” is practically a pattern

2. “Already founded a company / hit ARR in high school” is an emerging signal

  • Edexia: $200K ARR at ages 17-18
  • Parahelp: First startup at 13
  • Datacurve: Collaborated with Team Canada in high school

3. PhD dropouts are also on the rise

  • MIT Robotics PhD, Georgia Tech PhD, etc.
  • Choosing execution/founding over research
  • However, the overall PhD share is actually declining (6% → 4%)

4. Sharp rise in Stanford undergrads founding companies directly

  • W24: 4.2% Stanford → W25: 9.7%
  • “Stanford + ex-Google” is the most common profile

5. Med school/law school dropouts → AI/robotics

  • RigManic: Oxford medical school → humanoid robots
  • Unconventional, but entering the AI/hardware field

6. Serial founders with undergraduate origins

  • Woz (Brad Eckert): MIT → YC S17 → reapplied for W25
  • dawn (Alexis Gauba): Berkeley → founded Opyn (acquired by Coinbase) → W24
  • yc_founders_w25.json — Full W25 founder data
  • yc_founders_s24_w24.json — Full S24+W24 founder data
  • yc_founders_w25.csv — W25 founder CSV
  • yc_companies_all.csv — Full YC company data (5,653 companies)

Data source: ycombinator.com crawl (2026-07-22)