How to Make a YC Demo Video: The Founder Video and the Product Demo

A YC demo video is really two videos. The first is the founder video: one minute, only the founders talking, every founder on camera, no script. The second is the product demo, which goes in its own place in the application and can be rough. Mixing them up is the most common mistake: YC says plainly that the founder video “is not the place to submit a demo.”

This guide covers YC’s current rules for each, checked on ycombinator.com on 27 October 2026, and how to record both on a Mac in an evening. When we checked, YC was taking applications for the Winter 2027 batch, with an on-time deadline of 2 November at 8pm PT (YC’s apply page).

The two YC videos at a glance

Record them as two separate files. They answer different questions, and YC asks for them in different fields.

YC’s rules for the founder video

YC’s application video page lists five instructions (checked 27 October 2026). In short:

1. Say who you are, what you’re doing and why. Add anything else you want YC to know about the founders or the project.
2. One minute, founders only. The video should be 1 minute long and contain nothing except the founders talking. No slides, no product footage, no music, no logo animation.
3. No demo. YC says this is not the place for a demo or promotional video. “For this video, we want to hear how the founders communicate.”
4. All founders. If there is more than one founder, all of them should be in it. If you can’t be in the same room, screen record a video call.
5. No written script. Use bullet points and talk the way you would to a friend. YC says reading a script doesn’t help your application.

The same page links to successful application videos from Kernel, Gumloop, Medplum, Whatnot and Teespring. Watch two or three before you record. They are short, plain and conversational, and none of them is a production.

How to record the founder video on a Mac

The founder video needs nothing more than a camera and a microphone. Apple’s own apps are enough: Photo Booth or QuickTime Player’s File > New Movie Recording both record a MacBook’s built-in camera or a webcam. Our guide to recording a one-minute founder video on a Mac or MacBook walks through both, step by step.

What makes the difference is everything around the camera:

• Write three or four bullet points, not sentences. Who you are, what you’re building, why you, and one thing that shows momentum (users, revenue, a waitlist, a hard technical problem solved). Agree who says which point.
• Sit together and frame both faces. Put the camera at eye level, a window or lamp in front of you rather than behind, and leave a little room above your heads.
• Fix the sound before the picture. A quiet room matters more than a better camera. If you have a USB microphone, use it; otherwise, sit close to the laptop and turn off fans and notifications.
• Time a dry run. Most first takes run long. Cut a bullet rather than talking faster.
• Do three takes and pick one. Don’t edit the takes together into something that sounds rehearsed. Trimming the silence at the start and end is enough.

If your co-founders are in different cities, YC’s answer is a video call. Start the call, make sure everyone’s camera is on, and record the call window with its sound. Our guide to recording a Zoom, Meet or Teams call on a Mac with system audio covers the permissions and a ten-second test. Tell your co-founders you are recording before you start.

Doing it in CursorClip. You can also record the founder video in CursorClip: turn on your camera, record, then choose the Camera only layout (Full camera) so the finished video shows only your faces. Put your bullet points in CursorClip’s teleprompter, Teleprompter and Speaker Notes in the menu bar menu. It floats beside the camera, and it is designed to stay out of the recording. Leave auto-scroll off, since you are glancing at bullet points, not reading.

What YC says about the product demo

YC’s video page says: “If you have a demo for your product, there is a separate place in the application for that.” YC’s public pages don’t say how long the demo should be or what format it should take, so check the field in the application form itself before you export.

What YC has said is that the demo doesn’t need to be polished. In a YC Startup Library video, YC’s Stephanie Simon says she wishes more founders included a demo, that YC doesn’t care if it is unpolished, still running locally, or just a CSV, and that “the difference between nothing and something is actually huge to us.”

So the bar is not production value. It is: does this show the product working, clearly, in the time a partner will give it?

How to record the product demo in one take

A YC demo is a short product walkthrough for one very busy viewer. These five steps get you there without a video editor. For the longer version (structure by the second, demo accounts, narration, formats for every destination), read how to make a SaaS demo video that converts. Everything there applies here.

1. Pick one flow. The single path that shows why your product should exist: the input, the thing your product does, the result. Not a tour of every screen. If you can’t show the whole flow in about a minute, you are showing too much.
2. Use real-looking data. A blank workspace or “Test Project 1” makes a working product look like a mockup. Load the state a happy user would see.
3. Record the app window, not your whole screen. No dock, no other tabs, no notifications. Turn on Do Not Disturb first.
4. Move slower than feels natural, and pause before each click. You know where every button is. A partner seeing it for the first time does not.
5. Talk over it, or don’t. A short line of context per step helps (“this is a real customer invoice; watch it get matched”). Saying “now I click Export” doesn’t.

The usual problem with a screen recording of a web app is that the text is too small to read once it is shrunk into a video player. CursorClip handles that for you: it notes every click while you record and, when you stop, places zooms where you clicked (clicks close together share one zoom), so the button you pressed and the result it produced fill the frame. Then you can move, trim, delete or add zooms, split off the fumbled start, and export an MP4 at 1080p or 4K. The Mac demo recorder page shows what that looks like.

Want your face in the demo too? You can, as long as it is the demo and not the founder video. A small camera bubble or side by side layout works well for a narrated walkthrough. Keep the founder video camera-only.

Before you submit: a checklist

• Founder video is about one minute, with all founders on camera and nothing but the founders talking.
• No slides, screen recording or product footage in the founder video.
• Nobody is reading. Bullet points only.
• Sound is clear at normal volume on laptop speakers.
• The demo shows one real flow, from input to result, with real-looking data.
• Text in the demo is readable on a laptop screen at normal size.
• The demo goes in the demo field, the founder video in the video field.
• You have watched both videos once more, start to finish, before you hit submit.

After the application

The demo you record for YC is rarely wasted. The same recording, re-cut, becomes the video on your landing page, the clip in your launch post and the walkthrough in your investor updates. Keep the project file, and when the product changes, record the new flow instead of patching the old one.