Y Combinator to bring Startup School to Taipei in November 2026

Y Combinator will bring its Startup School program to Taiwan for the first time, with Startup School Taipei scheduled for Nov. 12, 2026 in Taipei’s Xinyi District. The event will be free to attend, though seats are limited and YC said every attendee will be hand-picked through a manual review process with rolling admissions decisions. YC said the program is not limited to founders who have already started a company. Computer science students, researchers, engineers, and other technical builders interested in startups can also apply. The application process now ties into YC’s experimental tool Paxel, which lets applicants submit a token so the YC team reviewing Taipei applications can view AI builder scores based on how they work with coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, and Gemini CLI. Speakers will include YC CEO Garry Tan, DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, Xendit co-founder and CEO Moses Lo, Vest co-founder and president Jeff Chang, and Ollama co-founder Michael Chiang, who will serve as host. Several YC partners, including Diana Hu, Jon Xu, Ankit Gupta, and Boris Jabes, are also set to attend.