Max Hodak: What Really Kills Deep Tech Startups?

Science is building a retinal implant that restores vision to people who have gone blind. One patient has already used it to read a 300-page novel. Building a company like that requires a lot more than getting the technology right. At Startup School 2026, Science CEO Max Hodak explains how the company buys things and hires people, and why those systems determine how fast it can move. He also gets into why founders can’t delegate their judgment, and why there’s no set of five bullet points that makes a startup work. Transcript: https://open.substack.com/pub/ycrootaccess/p/max-hodak-there-are-no-blanket-rules Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs Chapters: 00:00 - Infrastructure at Startups 01:02 - Science’s Retinal Implant 02:41 - The Hidden Infrastructure of a Startup 03:25 - How Your 17th Employee Buys Things 06:15 - How Infrastructure Creates Speed 07:03 - What Does an Experiment Actually Cost? 09:27 - How the Best Startups Hire 10:18 - Building a Rigorous Hiring Process 13:26 - Judgment, Horsepower, and Agency 16:17 - Rethinking Performance Reviews 18:53 - Rate of Iteration Separates Success From Failure 20:43 - You Can’t Delegate Your Judgment 22:47 - Action Produces Information 24:31 - The Operating System of a Company 25:10 - QA

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