Charlie Warren

There's a startup in the current YC batch that built an MRI machine in 101 days.

@aish_caliperce fear is the mind killer. variance is the company killer!

The moat of an AI native services company isn't the model, It's process evals. AI turned SaaS into services companies. But services have one demand SaaS never did: customers want trusted outcomes. These companies mix AI with human reviewers who handle the tricky cases and decide when work looks done. That judgement is now the product, and it's wildly inconsistent. More than the models the culprit behind variance is the humans because their judgement is unpredictable and this is what causes churn. The only way to fix it is evaluating the process end to end: The humans, the handoffs, the reviews, the customer feedback. Not just the model. Tracking rework rates, escalations, reviewer disagreements, and customer-reported errors gets you closer to closing the gaps where failures repeat. This internal quality control is what no competitor can copy. It's the reason companies like Compass, WeWork, Katerra, and ScaleFactor never scaled. They couldn't make the quality consistent. The winners will measure the humans, not just the models. Good one from @charliewarren , YC Visiting Partner.

@eve_bouff Gattaca!

im considering renting out the iconic marina theater and every week we screen visionary dystopia: snow crash, 1984, brave new world, pantheon, black mirror, blade runner, the matrix, ex machina. who would come?

@gusta99_eth Yep that’s precisely what I mean

@charliewarren Interesting, I always imagined that in more high-touch settings like executive search, it tends to be less replaceable than in mid-management opportunities, where the bottleneck is generating candidate supply

@gusta99_eth It's a mix, depending on the type of recruiting (exec vs eng etc). Marketplace models still work, too.

@charliewarren Charlie, excellent video. What are your thoughts on a sector like recruiting? I've seen a lot of YC startups in this space — do you think it falls into the same category as the native services you mentioned?

@shcallaway SHERWOOD! thank you 🫶

I've been working pretty closely with @charliewarren during YC P26 and it's been a real pleasure. He has all the hallmarks of a great YC partner: authenticity, charisma, founder-friendliness, and common-sense advice that is based in real experience. Highly recommend learning from this guy!

Drafted, led by Nicholas Donahue, secures $16M to revolutionize home design with AI. Backed by investors like Y Combinator and Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann, Drafted aims to simplify custom home creation. bit.ly/49YMyGq

@DraftedAI is the most beautiful yet technical vertical AI product I've ever used. Aesthetics meets software. Congrats, @PrimalNick!

@SawyerMerritt Oppenheimer

TIL pre AI SaaS in the physical world can still command a premium multiple

Founders must stop trying to building 2010-era businesses with 2026-era technology. Don't try to rebuild Foursquare or Yelp. Don't try to recreate Basecamp by 37 Signals with $10/mo SaaS pricing. Don't underprice! If it works it's worth a lot more. Don't be tempted to become "Tech enabled PE" with revenue tricks. The rules of tech changed with AI. Play the new game.

The biggest hack I’ve seen for founders to close deals faster: just show up. Get on a plane, fly to their office, meet in person, bond with the whole team. Instantly replaces weeks of zoom calls.

I understand why we don’t want people to come to the US to be criminals, mooch on welfare, open learing centers and otherwise undermine the country. But I don’t understand why we make it harder for motivated, ambitious, hardworking people to come to the land of opportunity.

I am building a team. If you're really really really good at building stuff, design, filmmaking, writing, pushing the models to their limits, or just making people care about a product at mass, certainly reach out. Let's collab + make stuff. Details: docs.google.com/document/d/1sf…

Founders overestimate how hard it is to become a top 100 expert on most subjects. For most things you need to solve, there’s usually a very clear path: just go do the work, obsessively, and become friends with everyone else doing it.

A mic drop moment @ycombinator tonight @sama just offered $2M in OpenAI tokens to EVERY YC startup in the current batch in exchange for equity Just like Yuri Milner offering to invest in every startup back when Sam was a YC partner I can't wait to see what's unlocked when you let the most driven, creative and formidable founders tokenmaxx

5 things @farzatv does differently > never checks email (his agent does it) > takes analog notes at the gym, turns them into apps > uses screenshots and songs as inspiration > built a personal wikipedia of his own life > never scrolls X, uses @grok instead