Today, we're launching shift. We're starting by cleaning your apartment in New York City, for free.
Here's how it works. Book a shift cleaning. A vetted shift operator comes to your home wearing one of our devices. They clean. They leave. You pay nothing.
In exchange, we record the cleaning. Robotics is being built on data about how people do daily tasks, and the value of that recording is what funds the service. Anything personal in it is anonymized before the recording is processed.
By now, you have heard about the shift to AI more times than you can count. About the shift toward you, the part where you actually feel it, you have heard almost nothing. Shift is what starts to make it concrete, in specific cities, with specific services.
Today, cleaning in New York. Soon, handymen, repairs, and errands across the globe. And this is just one side of shift, with more on the way.
Comment โshiftโ and weโll send you an early access link.
72 hours after YC demo day, I moved to Shenzhen for 8 weeks ๐ค
I'm headed back to SF with new hardware in hand (sharing more soon), but some takeaways documented below:
> If you have even the slightest ambition to found a hardware company, visit SZ. Pre-raise, pre-team, pre-idea, pre-job departure, it doesn't matter. Just go.
> Plan your visit according to a major conference that interests you. Use that conference as a supplier meeting springboard - that's your ticket to any factory under the sun.
> At the factories, ask about lead times, don't ask about cost (wait on this). Your iteration rate is driven by the lead time on the longest lead time item in your assembly. It pays to identify these parts early to build project timelines.
> Visit Huaqiangbei (read: this is a mini-city, not a building). Robotic subassemblies, batteries, chassis's, electronic parts. They all have buildings where vendors are tightly clustered. Plan to spend 4-6 hours walking around before you find exactly what you're interested in.
> Business relationships are valuable commodities. Treat them as such. Pay attention to people, learn about them. Bring thoughtful gifts. Wait for them to sit first. With Baiju, fill the glass but with tea leave some room. Cultural customs are fun to learn, but also convey a seriousness towards the working relationship.
> Suppliers fit cleanly into discrete buckets. Level of complexity and execution on past projects indicates what is in scope for them. Trivial, but important to level your build expectations. It is easy to design a part with 12 subsequent manufacturing processes, exceptionally hard to find a supplier to fill this order.
If you need coffeeshop recs, food recs, or hotel recs I have a few.
Move to Shenzhen! Get to building!
YC is approaching Demo Day, and the top performers are already reaching $1m+ ARR.
Almost all of them are navigating $50k-$250k ACV deals with a nearly identical post-demo motion:
1. Create a clean buyer workspace right after the first serious call using Peony or DocSend
2. Organize everything around how the buyer evaluates: ROI, security, legal, implementation, pricing
3. Write short summaries so champions can forward internally without rewriting the pitch
4. Index docs, enable AI for faster due diligence.
5. Track which stakeholders are engaging and what they care about
6. Follow up based on actual buyer intent, not guesswork
Outbound gets you into the conversation, but the best teams make it incredibly easy for the buyer to build consensus internally.
Spend 5 hours/ week doing these properly, and you will be a Top YC batch company quickly.
YC's latest batch closed today, but here's more than you can apply to in SF:
1/3
@AlchemistAcc B2B/enterprise, SF, 2 batches/year
@Techstars rolling, 6+ cities + remote (next deadlines ~June)
@pearvc 2 batches/year, SF (S26 kicks off July)
3/3
@500GlobalVC global, multiple tracks, rolling
@PlugandPlayTC rolling, vertical tracks, multiple locations
P.S. Every raise is a narrative, tell yours @tryPeony without bugs or being overpriced. :)
YC's latest batch closed today, but here's more than you can apply to in SF:
1/3
@AlchemistAcc B2B/enterprise, SF, 2 batches/year
@Techstars rolling, 6+ cities + remote (next deadlines ~June)
@pearvc 2 batches/year, SF (S26 kicks off July)
2/3
@gener8tor rolling programs, 45 cities across 20+ states
@speedrun 2 batches/year, SF (SR007 apps close May 17)
@southpkcommons pre-idea/frontier tech, rolling
@MassChallenge zero equity, Boston/NYC/Austin
@AntlerGlobal rolling admissions, NYC/Austin/SF