Vivian Midha Shen and Raphael Schaad Join YC as General Partners
- ID
- 30921
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 02 Oct 2026, 12:52 AM
- Fetched
- 02 Oct 2026, 3:40 AM
- Provider
- Y Combinator Blog
- Category
- startup
- Original URL
- https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-vivian-and-raphael/
- Source URL
- https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/rss
Summary
- Score
- 3.0
- Created
- 02 Oct 2026, 3:40 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- foundersvibe_coders
What happened
Y Combinator announced on October 1, 2026 that Vivian Midha Shen and Raphael Schaad are joining as General Partners, after both spent the last two batches as Visiting Partners. Vivian co-founded Juni Learning (YC W18) and Acely, an AI college-readiness tutor that the post says went from zero to $10 million run rate with a lean team, with over $50 million in combined revenue across both companies. Raphael founded Cron (YC W20), which Notion acquired in 2022, then grew Notion Calendar to millions of users and served as Head of Design for Growth and new products; he previously worked on Flipboard and iA Writer.
Why it matters
This is a personnel announcement from YC's own blog with no product, pricing, policy, or program change attached, so there is nothing concrete to act on this week. The only usable signal for founders weighing a YC application is who reads it: both new GPs come from small, craft-heavy, AI-native consumer products (Acely's cited 0-to-$10M run rate with a lean team; Cron's design-led acquisition by Notion), not from growth or sales backgrounds. Treat that as context, not a change to any stated selection criteria.
Discussion angle
The post leans hard on 'lean team, AI-native, $10M run rate' and 'craft' as the qualities worth promoting to partner — is that a real shift in what accelerators reward, or just the biography framing of two hires?