A day in the life of a Y-Combinator Startup Intern: Flo Recruit (YC S19)

Written by: Lucious McDaniel IV

Twice a year, Y-Combinator — the world’s best startup accelerator — gives about 200 new startups $150k to move their operations to the San Francisco Bay Area. Why? To try and build the next billion-dollar company. Every so often, the stars align and household (or “officehold”) names are born like AirBnB (Winter ‘09), Dropbox (Summer ‘07), and Stripe (Summer ‘10).

Between the finite number of companies accepted into the program each batch and the potential of one of them to be the world’s next unicorn, interning at a Y-Combinator startup can be equal parts challenging, rewarding, and life-changing. I’m an “Everything” Intern at Flo Recruit (Summer ’19), and we build recruiting event management software that helps companies keep track of their in-person interactions with candidates.

Here is an overview of what an average day looks like for an “Everything” Intern at a fast-growing, Y-Combinator startup.

7:30am: My alarm goes off, and I check my email to see if any of our east coast clients have messaged me with questions about our product and services. If things seem light enough to handle at nine, I get ready for my morning jog to clear my mind before a full workday.