Y Combinator will bring its Startup School program to Taiwan, with Startup School Taipei set for Nov. 12, 2026 in Taipei’s Xinyi District. YC CEO Garry Tan will speak at the event, which will gather founders, engineers, and builders from across Asia, alongside YC alumni founders and YC partners sharing company-building experience.
The event will be 100% free to attend, but capacity is limited. YC said that 「every attendee is hand-picked」, and all participants will go through manual screening. Admission decisions are being sent on a rolling basis.
YC is also looking at how founders build with AI
For this Taipei event, YC is not only asking applicants what product they have built. It is also looking at how founders use AI to build products. YC’s experimental tool Paxel has been integrated directly into the Startup School Taipei application process. Applicants can submit their Paxel token, allowing the YC team reviewing Taipei applications to directly view their AI builder scores.
Startup School Taipei is not positioned only for founders who have already incorporated or launched a company. YC said computer science students, researchers, engineers, and technical builders who are interested in startups can all apply, even if they are not currently running a startup.
YC said it wants to meet strong builders who may start a company in the future or join one. That extends YC’s recent push toward earlier-stage talent. Startup School itself has long been a free startup education program from YC, giving founders at the idea stage, side-project stage, or early company stage access to YC’s methods for product development, user interviews, fundraising, and growth. The current online Startup School is also free and takes about seven weeks to complete.
Paxel is now part of the Taipei application flow
Applicants to Startup School Taipei can choose to attach a token from YC’s experimental tool Paxel. Paxel analyzes developers’ work records with AI coding agents including Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, and Gemini CLI, then builds a profile covering areas such as engineering, execution, planning, product instinct, and steering.
In the Paxel FAQ, YC said that once a token is attached, the YC team reviewing Startup School Taipei applications can view the applicant’s builder scores. Alongside resumes, portfolios, and written application responses, YC has started testing whether a person’s actual workflow with AI agents can serve as a talent signal.
Garry Tan, DoorDash and Xendit founders are on the speaker list
Another focal point for Startup School Taipei is the speaker lineup. Founder speakers include DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang. DoorDash was part of YC S13 and has become one of the best-known success stories in the YC network. It is now one of the largest food delivery platforms in the United States.
Xendit co-founder and CEO Moses Lo will also speak. Xendit joined YC in S15 and started in Indonesia, where it built payments infrastructure for Southeast Asia. Its business covers online payments, transfers, and business financial services, and it has become one of the region’s most closely watched fintech companies.
The lineup also includes Vest co-founder and president Jeff Chang, while Ollama co-founder Michael Chiang will host the event. Ollama has become an important tool in the AI developer ecosystem by letting users quickly deploy and run open-source models such as Llama, Gemma, and Qwen on local machines.
Several core YC partners will also travel to Taipei
YC is also sending several core partners to Taiwan. They include Garry Tan, who serves as YC’s president and CEO. Tan is also a co-founder of Posterous and Initialized Capital, and earlier in his career worked as an engineer at Palantir.
Joining him will be YC Managing Partner Diana Hu. She previously co-founded AR startup Escher Reality, which was later acquired by Niantic, and its technology was used in Pokémon GO. Three other YC partners are also listed for the trip: Jon Xu, Ankit Gupta, and Boris Jabes.