On August 9th, those who previously ran the Startup Incubator Y Combinator events and PR are holding a small invitation-only event with former Andreessen Horowitz social media manager.
The To Do List Summit concludes with 80 early-stage founders, and teaches them how to work with the media to run their own social media, organizers promise. The event costs $600.
YC fired most of those who took the event between the small layoffs of about a year ago and 2023. These layoffs were surprising at the time, as Y Combinator events have always been a major force in making San Francisco a hub for the fast-growing AI startup community. (Of course, the heart of that universe is Openai, headquartered in San Francisco and affiliated with YC, run by former YC president Sam Altman.)
People attending the event are doing it because they are often keen to believe that early-stage startups have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to hire PR and social media agents.
Still, the startups have led to their daily virality.
It is also true that a single social media post can make early-stage startups viral recently. The founder of App Vibe Coding Startup Rork almost broke when the virus tweet raised $2.8 million and began earning spots on the A16Z's Speedrun program. Defense technology startup Theseus has landed the YC spot from the US Special Forces contract, $4.3 million in funding, and Virus X Post.
If the people behind the new event can help YC founders, they believe they can help founders who are not part of a well-known program.