YC's Requests for Startups
Y Combinator publishes a list called Requests for Startups. It's a curated set of problem areas where YC actively wants to fund founders. Read carefully, it's a 30-minute exercise that can save a year. Read carelessly, it sets you up to join a crowded race you can't win.
Why this list is signal
Categories on RFS are written by partners with access to thousands of founders and billions in deployable capital. If they've written a category down, it means they believe the category is investable right now. That filters out a huge amount of speculation in one stroke.
The 2025 to 2026 list leans heavily on AI agents, vertical AI for legacy industries (law, healthcare ops, blue-collar trades), small modular fission, robotics, on-device inference, defense tech, and replacements for tools that became unreliable in the LLM era. The exact list shifts every batch - check YC's site for the current list.
Key RFS sectors
These major high-priority categories form the focus of current venture validation:
AI Agents
Autonomous workflow engines replacing legacy software suites and point tools.
Vertical SaaS
Custom AI solutions for heavily manual legacy industries like law, construction, and medical billing.
Robotics
Physical automation and machine learning control loops running on the edge.
On-Device Inference
Local, high-speed, privacy-first model execution without cloud API latencies.
Defense Tech
Modern hardware-software systems for national security and sovereign operations.
LLM-Era Upgrades
Replacements for enterprise systems that broke under the assumptions of LLM scale.
Where it traps founders
The downside is competition. Tens of thousands of founders read the same document. If you simply pick a topic from the list and start, you join a crowded race against other YC-aware founders, most of whom are technically capable, well-networked, and starting today. The framework only works if you bring an angle the median RFS reader doesn't have.
The other trap is excitement bias. RFS categories sound thrilling - frontier AI, robotics, fusion. Excitement is not edge. The category that makes you feel like a billionaire-in-training is usually the one with the highest competition density.
The why-me-why-now filter
For each category that catches your attention, write a one-paragraph ‘why me, why now’. If you can't, you don't have an edge. Drop it.
Review the list top to bottom
Mark every category where you can name three real people you can reach this week who are facing the problem.
Formulate your "Why Me"
Identify your unfair edge. Do you have a specific past job, a unique customer connection, or a technical specialization in this area?
Establish the "Why Now"
What has changed in the last 12 months? Look for regulatory updates, major model capability milestones, or significant hardware price drops.
Run defensibility and distribution checks
Apply the IdeaTwister validation parameters. Make sure your competitive wedge is scalable without relying on standard SEO/ads.
When this framework fails
If your goal is a one-person profitable business rather than a venture-backed swing, most RFS entries are wrong for you. Bootstrappers should weight the indie hacker and solopreneur framings far more heavily than YC's, and read the Pieter Levels framework instead.
Run all five frameworks at once
YC RFS gives you the category. It does not give you the wedge. That's where IdeaTwister comes in. Hand it your seed (which can be an RFS category plus your why-me) and 15 specialized agents will run pricing, distribution, defensibility, and competitive-wedge analysis in parallel, scoring every opportunity across five commercial dimensions.
Find My Best Startup OpportunityFAQ
What is YC's Requests for Startups?
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Y Combinator publishes a curated list of problem categories where partners actively want to fund founders. It's signal from people with access to thousands of founders and billions in deployable capital. Reading the current RFS is one of the highest-leverage 30 minutes a venture-track founder can spend.
What's on the 2025–2026 RFS?
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The current RFS leans heavily on AI agents, vertical AI for legacy industries (law, healthcare ops, blue-collar trades), small modular fission, robotics, on-device inference, defense tech, and replacements for tools that became unreliable in the LLM era. Categories shift quarterly, so check YC's site directly for the live list.
Why does just picking a topic from RFS not work?
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Tens of thousands of founders read the same document. If you simply pick a topic and start, you join a crowded race against other YC-aware founders. The framework only works when you bring an angle the median RFS reader doesn't have - a domain edge, a wedge, a distribution advantage you accumulated before reading the list.
Is YC RFS a fit for bootstrappers?
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Usually no. RFS topics are selected because they could plausibly become billion-dollar outcomes worth a partner's seven years of attention. That filter rules out most lifestyle-scale ideas. Bootstrappers should weight Pieter Levels' tribe-and-ship approach far more heavily.
How do I tell if I have a real edge on an RFS category?
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Write a single paragraph titled "why me, why now." If you can't name three real people who should be your customer, you don't have why-me. If you can't explain what changed in the last 12 months that makes this category open now in a way it wasn't, you don't have why-now. Without both, drop the category and move on.