Y Combinator “Early Resolution” calls students who want to graduate first, and build later

For decades, the Silicon Valley evaluated the leakage of the kidney. A founder like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg left the school early to build companies and became billionaires.

The institutional nature was later added through initiatives such as Thiel, which pays the famous students worth $ 100,000 to leave the college and start companies.

For many years, the famous Y Combinator, which is calmly reinforced by this culture. Although it was not explicitly asked the students to leak, many of its most successful graduates, including Dropbox, Steve Hoffman, John and Patrick Koleson, joined the Young program and left the school behind them to build their companies.

Now, YC changes this narration.

Accessor has introduced a new application path called Early Decision, designed for students who want to start companies but do not want to leak. The program allows them to apply at school, obtain admission and financing immediately, and postpone their participation in YC even after graduation. For example, a student who advances in the fall of 2025 can graduate in the spring of 2026, then participate in the Summer 2026 summer batch.

“He was designed for graduating elderly who want to make a startup but they also want to finish the school first,” Jared Friedman said, YC’s administrative partner in the launch video. YC did not respond to the Techcrunch request for an additional comment.

In the culture of Silicon Valley, the leakage was almost rituals of passing for the ambitious founders’ programs such as Thiel, which turned it into a movement (although it should be noted that Peter Thil himself did not leak, but he obtained university degrees and a law from Stanford).

That is why the YC Declaration is a useful break from those myths that leaving the school early is the perfect path, or only, for the success of the startup. The timing is also important, as it comes at a time when more young people are wondering about the cost of the college and the bodies of staying in the school.

The new program also reflects an increasing maturity of how YC thinks about the results of the founder in the long run.

The accelerator has always been a magnet for builders of college age. The founders of Loom, InstaCart, Rappi and Brex were teenagers or in the early twenties when they joined the program. But the leakage decision was often implicit: now the program or miss the opportunity.

The early decision removes this pressure, providing a middle ground between academic completion and chasing entrepreneurship. This step can expand the group of applicants in YC to include the founders of the most cautious and deliberate students who adhere to emerging life but are unwilling to sacrifice education to get there.