How We Redesigned Our Website

By Y Combinator

Categories: VC, Startup, Design

Summary

Y Combinator redesigned their website to better showcase their founder-centric approach, with a 'formidable' brand identity and before-and-after founder stories that inspire others to dream big. The new site puts a strong emphasis on the founders behind YC's successful companies, a key differentiation point.

Key Takeaways

1. Showcase the founder stories behind successful startups, not just the company logos, to inspire others.
2. Adopt a storytelling approach that taps into the founder's journey, rather than a generic B2B SaaS template.
3. Highlight the program's founder-centric values and differentiation, like 'we put founders first', with positive messaging.
4. Leverage the program's 'formidable' brand identity and founder roots to create an inspiring, dream-inducing experience.
5. Use before-and-after founder profiles to show the potential transformation, helping readers see themselves in the success stories.
6. Embrace design cues like meaningful footnotes to create a distinct, thoughtful brand experience.

Topics

• Founder-Centric Design
• Startup Program Branding
• Storytelling in Web Design
• Inspiring Founder Transformation
• Design with Intentionality

Transcript Excerpt

Welcome to a very special episode of Design Review. Today I am joined by Evard who is the designer here at YC and we're going to be talking about the brand new YC website that we just launched. >> Ev, thank you for joining. >> Thank you for having me. >> Yeah, this was an incredibly fun project to work on together. It's been, I know, a labor of love for both of us >> and super excited to have it out there. So, I thought it'd be good in this episode for us to kind of go through >> where did we st...