Y Combinator Names Shen and Schaad as General Partners

Y Combinator has expanded its leadership team by naming Vivian Midha Shen and Raphael Schaad as its newest general partners. The duo transition into these permanent roles after spending the last two batches working directly with startup cohorts as visiting partners. In their new positions, Shen and Schaad will mentor founders from their initial weeks in the accelerator program through their subsequent years of scaling.

Shen brings a strong background in educational technology and artificial intelligence. She co-founded the youth coding platform Juni Learning during the YC Winter 2018 batch and later launched Acely, an AI-powered college preparation tutor. Together, these ventures generated more than $50 million in revenue and attracted millions of users. Notably, Acely scaled from zero to a $10 million run rate with a highly streamlined team. Shen's professional history also includes roles as a software engineer at Google, a consultant at McKinsey, and director of product at Operator, alongside computer science and creative writing degrees from Stanford.

Schaad offers deep expertise in product design and engineering. He founded the calendar application Cron during the YC Winter 2020 batch, which was acquired by Notion in 2022. Following the acquisition, Schaad expanded Notion Calendar to millions of users and served as Notion's head of design for growth and new products. His earlier portfolio includes design and engineering work on the news reader Flipboard and the writing application iA Writer. He holds a computer science degree from Bern University of Applied Sciences and a master's degree from the MIT Media Lab.

For incoming Y Combinator founders, particularly those building AI-native applications or design-centric software, these appointments signal a resource boost. Shen's experience scaling an AI startup to an eight-figure run rate with minimal headcount provides a blueprint for modern, lean AI enterprises. Meanwhile, Schaad's background in high-craft user interfaces offers practical guidance for technical founders aiming to simplify complex software for mass adoption.