Listen to the TechCrunch staff’s YC Demo Day wrap-up call here

It’s been a bonkers week in the world, with markets gyrating, companies fretting, investors tweeting and founders re-cutting their 2020 forecasts. But for one collection of startups, the past few days weren’t about work crises or the latest Slack share price. Instead, for Y Combinator’s Winter batch, it was Demo Day week.

TechCrunch has covered Y Combinator companies since time immemorial. And we’ve been present throughout a number of format changes over the years. We’ve been around for things like the old single-day events in the South Bay computer history museum, and we’ve been around for the SF era. Hell, we were there for the two-stage concept.

But this year’s Demo Day brought with it something altogether new: No in-person pitches and demos. Yep, in response to COVID-19, Y Combinator made its demo day virtual, even scooting up its presentations by a full week. Obviously we tuned in en masse, writing a host of posts about the presenting companies (read them here, here, here and here). We also caught up with CEO of Y Combinator, Michael Seibel, to here his take on what’s ahead for the accelerator.

Given the scale of change, however, we weren’t content with just those entries. So, we gathered the TechCrunch crew, hopped on a Zoom, invited in our friends until our Zoom account maxed out (we didn’t know that that was a thing; more capacity coming) to chat over observations and the most interesting startups. We didn’t even miss the usual slew of Y Combinator live tweets — for the most part.

Hit the jump and we’ve got the recording for you. And see which companies the TechCrunch staff liked the most.

The Chat

Some things we discussed: themes from this batch, both the evolution of the incubator’s international startup pool over time, and, of course, thoughts on remote investing and virtual conferences at large. We also gave shout-outs to our favorite startups — stay on the lookout for our hand-picked list coming out later today.

We’re still working out some kinks in our Zoom live chat setup, obviously, but thanks a million to everyone who came by and took part; a double-thanks to the friends who asked questions. 

More soon from the TechCrunch crew!