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In some ways, Y Combinator’s biannual Demo Day is somewhat predictable: There will be Stanford dropouts, last-minute pivots, and, as always, promises of near-term profitability. We even made a bingo board about it. 

But one thing I can never guess ahead of time is the exact priorities of the season’s batch. Y Combinator stands by the fact that it backs people, not ideas, so its Demo Day technically unveils two things: who the accelerator bet on and what they decided to prioritize. This year was different for myriad reasons. First, YC Summer 2022 is the second batch to receive a $500,000 check instead of $125,000, as part of the accelerator’s expanded check size. Second, the batch was smaller than usual (see previous versions of this column here and here; it’s a different tone altogether) — a narrowing of focus the accelerator says was due to the downturn. And finally, it was the first batch where we saw a bifurcation; over 60% of batch founders were in the Bay Area during the three-month accelerator, while others remained scattered across the world.

All those tensions are great for story ideas. So, this week when covering YC’s latest batch, we set out to give readers a better understanding of the problems that startups are prioritizing during the downturn and how YC’s shake-up has impacted the firm’s focus in certain areas and geographies versus others.

I’m proud of how we executed despite all the iPhone news. We wrote about how YC’s fintech founders are returning to the neobank train and crypto continues to be an area of bullishness. We dug into artificial intelligence standouts and creator economy knockouts. And before I start sounding like an especially nerdy rendition of Dr. Seuss, we looked into a geography focus from a macro scale and a retreat on a micro scale.  

This in mind, as in tradition, I want to leave you with a few takeaways I had after listening to hundreds of pitches. Here’s what 277 Combinator pitches taught me, and now maybe you, about startups: