COHORT 2.0 REPORT
TWO YEARS OF PROD June 26th, 2023
Just two years ago, Prod was a list of 50 different ideas on how to redefine student entrepreneurship splattered on a google doc. All shared the same vision to break the endless cycle of funneling brilliant students who want to change the world into low-impact, traditional careers.
We built Prod to make startups a viable career option. We’re delighted to share that Prod has flipped the switch of over seventy students to founders.
PROD AT A GLANCE
37 $150M 19
Full-Time Teams
Funding Raised
(most bootstrapping)
YC Acceptances
(#1 YC S23 Referrer)
We’ve been thrilled about what Prod founders have accomplished: from launching hydrogen powered rockets to reducing compute costs a hundredfold to building entire financial exchanges, Prod founders are changing the world.
Prod founders become co-founders, lifelong friends, and roommates. We even had two of our Cohort 1.0 teams merge recently. We are proud that the engine that powers all of our teams’ success continues to be the Prod community itself.
As we reflected on our founders’ journeys over the past nine months, we’re inspired by how far they’ve come. The craziest part: almost everyone joined Prod with no idea, no product, and sometimes, no team. Now, they’re going full-time on their companies.
Prod founders have built companies exciting and impactful enough to turn down jobs from:
While we’re thrilled that our founders are off to the races, there’s a long road ahead. We’re increasingly excited about the post-cohort, lifelong experience in Prod. In a few years, we’ll have hundreds of fulltime Prod founders in SF, NYC, and Boston. We wouldn’t be shocked if a Cohort 3.0 founder and a Cohort 7.0 founder team up to build the next generational company.
Optimistically,
Arul Kapoor
Robert Wachen
Benjamin Spector
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Richard Dahan
Anne Brandes
Caine Ardayfio
Co-Founder
Cohort 2.0 Team
Cohort 2.0 Team
Boyd Christiansen
Tinah Hong
Cohort 2.0 Team
Cohort 2.0 Team
WITH SUPPORT FROM
McClure
Family
Foundation Capital
for
Access
Without Prod I wouldn’t be working full time in my startup. There is no other startup program like Prod in the whole world and I am extremely grateful to be part of this.
Prod is easily the most driven group of people I have ever been around. There's people with expertise in anything you could imagine. The admin leave no stone unturned in helping you out. Everything is truly no strings attached. The people you meet through Prod are friendships for a lifetime. It's truly an elite cohort that I was privileged to be a part of.
You'll meet the most talented people at Harvard and MIT and be pushed to achieve what you thought was impossible. There's nothing like Prod anywhere else.
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS ETCHED
Chris Zhu
Gavin Uberti
Etched is designing specialized chips for language model inference by supporting one type of model — their chips outperform GPUs by 100x. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No product
Production-ready product
No funding
$5M+ seed round led by Primary
No hires
Hired several industry veterans
NEPTUNE
Premila Rowles
Marco Fleming
Neptune develops, manufactures, and commercializes high-volume, high clinical utility medical devices initially commercialized for Gastroenterology. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No team
Met co-founder
No idea
Built 8 prototypes; Secured 3 trials
No users
$1M+ seed round led by Link
MACH
Ethan Thornton
Mach Industries is pioneering a suite of defense systems to support unparalleled capability using new inventions in the hydrogen space. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different idea
$5M+ seed round led by Sequoia
No product
Hired several industry veterans
No users/revenue
Extensive interest from military
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS KINO YC S23
Luke Igel
Richter Brzeski
Wesley Block
Kino lets video editors sift through thousands of hours of footage in seconds. They have interest from in-house editing departments, film and television studios, and Oscar and Emmy winners. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No product
Live product
Key hires needed
Found key hire
No partnerships
Secured major partnerships
BUYXR
Sam Suchin
Will Schrepferman
BuyXR is creating a shopping experience without limitations by using virtual reality. With BuyXR, users can travel between stores, earn rewards, and access exclusive items. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No team
Met co-founder
No product
Live product
No commercial interest
Secured major partnerships
EGRESS YC S23
Alex Pedersen
Matt Kiflu
Egress is using AI to fix production bugs by monitoring incident logs and automatically generating and suggesting fixes. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No idea
Navigated multiple pivots
No product
Launched several products
No funding
Secured funding
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS LAYER N
David Cao
Dima Romanov
Sheheryar Parvaz
Layer N is a hyperperformant rollup network designed to scale financial applications on Ethereum. The team prev. built a Solana decentralized exchange with $500M+ in trading volume. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different product
Added team member
No major partnerships
Live product
No funding
$4M+ seed round
XPLAIN NEO S23
Raul Alcantara
Gyalpo Dongo
Xplain’s AI-powered Spanish WhatsApp tutor makes personalized tutoring over 5x cheaper. They are academic celebrities in Peru. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different idea
Navigated multiple pivots
No product
Launched several products
No funding
Secured funding
LEAFPRESS YC S23
Devishi Jha
Jianna Liu
Leafpress is a carbon accounting platform and disclosure software for SMEs. In just a few clicks, companies can assess their carbon footprint and launch reduction planning. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No team
Met co-founder
No idea
Live product
No revenue
$50K+ in contracts
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS OPTIGEN
Deepak Singh
Optigen is a generative disease modeling platform for rapid drug discovery, starting with treating glaucoma. They’ve assembled the largest dataset of retinal ganglion cell death ever. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No advisors
Secured top research advisors
No product
Secured dataset
No data
Discovered initial results
TAPP
Georgi Ivanov
TAPP offers a new enterprise password-less “user login” method that eliminates phishing, which is responsible for 90% of all cybersecurity breaches. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No advisors
Secured advisors
No product
Live product
No revenue
$50k+ in contracts
EVERGE
Thomas de Hertog
Heleen de Hertog
Everge is a subscription-based parenting platform designed to help foster parent-child relationships by connecting parents with exports on sleep, food, and development. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different idea
Successful pivot
Different business model
Live product
Different product
Five-figure enterprise contracts
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS REFOND YC S23
Maggie Zhang
Pearl Li
Savannah Liu
Refond, at the nexus of clothing marketplaces and social media, allows friends to see each others daily outfits, give ratings, and showcase items in their closet they plan to sell. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No product
Live product
No users
$20K+ in revenue
No revenue
Accepted to YC S23
DELILAH PEARX S23
Raunak Daga
Khoi Nguyen
Delilah is a personal, AI-powered academic assistant with writing, chatting, and detection features loved by thousands of students. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different idea
Successful pivot
No product
Live product
No users
10K + users
PYTHIA
Derek Vastola
Mukesh Loganathan
Pythia Diagnostics is building a wearable device that can predict epileptic seizures 3 hours in advance from scent alone. Their device replaces the three-year wait for a $30K service dog. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
No clinical trials
Started human clinical trials at MGH
No product
Built multiple prototypes
No advisors
Secured top research advisors
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS NOWADAYS YC S23
Anna Sun
Amy Sun
Nowadays is your last executive assistant. Nowadays allows users to seamlessly order catering, book an appointment, or schedule delivery — no clicks necessary. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Pre-team
New co-founder (sisters!)
No idea
Live product
No partnerships
Secured major partnerships
FOS
Callum Taylor
Samuel Aubin
FOS is building a unified data layer for agriculture. Farms and AgTech companies use FOS to integrate data across their systems and increase agricultural efficiency multifold. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different product
Successful pivot
No users
Live product
No revenue
Secured major contracts
MERCOR
Adarsh Hiremath
Brendan Foody
Surya Midha
Mercor streamlines the global engineer recruiting process with AI. They assess millions of candidates in seconds with an AI interviewer, customized project-based assessment, and more. BEFORE PROD
AFTER PROD
Different idea
Six figures in annual revenue
No product
25 000+
No users/revenue
Found several industry-vet advisors
,
users
COHORT 2.0 TEAMS + 7 teams in stealth
I can confidently stand behind the statement that Prod has been the single most impactful experience I’ve had since coming to the US. I met the most incredible people at Harvard and MIT, period. Peers my age had already been developing products for companies I had only seen through the screen – Apple, SpaceX, Oracle. But they didn’t make me feel like I was less. On the contrary – I have never felt more appreciated than at Prod. Seeing people around me build MVPs in days, close huge contracts, or raise millions of dollars lit such a fire in me that I genuinely don’t see myself doing anything but startups. To anyone thinking of applying to Prod, I wholeheartedly say that there isn’t a better group of people to be a part of if you are serious about entrepreneurship.
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FAMILY I wouldn’t have started a company without Prod! The mentorship of Admin and everyone in the Prod universe was like a North Star. From flying us all to Brazil for a month, to going out of their way to make weekly events people actually wanted to come to, to giving resources that cut through the BS of VC/startup world, I couldn’t be more grateful to Prod.
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In a cohort that shipped at dollars in contracts, and lightning speed, closed tens of thousands of ra expectations, both for o ised millions, Prod gave us the gift of high urselves and each other. Without Prod, we would not have been a ble to get into YC.
Prod has, without exag geration in any form at all, changed m y li Prod was just one of tho fe. I thought se accelerators. [...] Our firs generic startup t in Prod absolutely blew my teraction with mind, and at that moment, I knew that we we something by joining Pro re truly onto d. *massively* when it cam Prod helped us e to preparing for and executing our seed round fundraise. Prod team was able to g ive incredible amount of wa us an rm support that, honestly, I intros and fee couldn't have received l like I els if I paid. [...] The Prod te ewhere even am would often stay up at unreasonable ho [...], they were always at urs to help us the to debrief and give us ad ready on Slack vic team has committed a e. [...] The Prod n unreasonable amount of time and eff ort our startup journey, an to help us on d for that we are eternally grateful. I me an I don't think we could be it when I say it, where we are now without the guidan ce a from Prod. [...] I hate ho nd mentorship ww sounds a bit cheesy, but hat I wrote it g expresses how I feel. I a enuinely m immensely grateful for having bee n a part of Cohort 2.0.
Thank you for one of the greatest experiences
of my life.