Design Review: Aaron Epstein and Garry Tan critique AI startup websites

by Greg Kumparak6/15/2023

"Design Review" in white, written on an orange background

What are you aiming to say with your startup’s website, and what’s actually coming through?

In this episode of Design Review, YC Group Partner Aaron Epstein is joined by YC President and CEO Garry Tan to take a closer look at what’s working (and what’s not) on the websites of five different AI startups.

While their feedback is tailored for each company’s page, there’s a ton of advice in there that’d be useful to anyone building a site for their startup — like why being too clever with your copy can backfire, how to use call-to-actions and animation more effectively, and why you should be quick to get people to a live demo and “show off a feat of strength.”

This episode features four different Y Combinator companies — Rosebud AI, Magicflow, Reality Defender, and Pump  — plus a guest appearance from Voiceflow, a company that volunteered after seeing a previous episode.

As for what these companies do: figuring that out is part of the fun! Watch along as Aaron and Garry click around these websites — how quickly does the intended product pitch come through for you?


Author

  • Greg Kumparak

    Greg oversees editorial content at Y Combinator. He was previously an editor at TechCrunch for nearly 15 years.