Nadia: Walking Into the Room After the $200M Number

Nadia walked into YC's F26 kickoff carrying the shadow of a number nobody in the room would say out loud: the $200 million valuation her company, Nine Mothers, hit as an eight-month-old startup in the S26 batch. Every founder in the new class had done the math, and Year One hosts Grant and Miles are back to find out what happens when an entire incoming cohort gets recalibrated by one outlier deal before they've even shipped a product. This episode follows the three-day, in-person F26 kickoff in San Francisco, from the roughly 400 founders and 200 companies sorted into nine-person house groups to the moment a YC partner names the Nine Mothers print directly and coaches founders to price on fundamentals, not headlines. Grant and Miles trace how the S26 story spread through alumni nights and Bookface, why the July 27 application deadline mattered, and what December 2, 2026 now means as F26's own Demo Day countdown begins. Anyone building through their first YC batch, or just trying to ignore a number that won't stop haunting the room, will want this one.