sprints · pre-demo-day sprint · $15,000 · 3 weeks
Pre-Demo-Day Sprint: ready before investors click
Three weeks: the landing page, the one product path an investor will actually click, and deck-ready visuals. Dated for YC Fall 2026 (Demo Day 2 December 2026); fits Techstars, Antler and Startmate demo days too.
Who it's for
- You're in a current batch and the site is the placeholder you put up when you applied.
- The product works, but the path from your homepage to a first result is one only your team can follow.
- Your deck has screenshots of a dashboard nobody designed.
Dates for YC Fall 2026
| What | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Book the sprint by | 20 Oct 2026 | Three weeks of work plus a one-week buffer before the site has to be live. |
| Site live by | 25 Nov 2026 | A week to fix what you only notice once it's live, and for the share image to be cached everywhere it will be posted. |
| Demo Day | 2 Dec 2026 | Source: ycombinator.com/blog/2026-demo-days. |
| The 72 hours after | 2–5 Dec 2026 | Investors check the site within about 72 hours of the pitch. The page they see in that window is the one that gets the meeting or doesn't. |
Not YC? The same plan works backwards from a Techstars, Antler or Startmate demo day; those dates are confirmed per cohort, so send us yours.
What the batch actually ships
We fetched the public homepage of every YC 2026 company — 705 reachable sites, 2026-09-28. 61% lead with "AI" in the title, H1 or description. 18% link to a pricing page. The median hero headline is 6 words (from 610 sites with a detectable H1). Full report: State of YC startup design 2026.
Grade your current homepage first → It checks the same signals, free, in your browser.
Week by week
| When | Focus | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Landing page | Kickoff on day 1: the one sentence, the audience (investors first, customers second), the CTA. Structure and copy direction by day 3; hero in two directions by day 5, reviewed live. |
| Week 2 | The critical product path | The single flow an investor or a first customer will try after the pitch — usually sign-up to first result — designed end to end with real content, states and edge cases. Prototype for the deck and for your engineers. |
| Week 3 | Deck-ready visuals, build, launch | Product shots and hero visuals for six to eight slides (your slides, our visuals), the page built in Framer or Webflow or handed off to Next.js, QA, metadata, social image, live a week before Demo Day. |
What you get
- One landing page at desktop and phone width, built or handed off
- One core product flow designed end to end in Figma, with a clickable prototype
- Six to eight deck-ready visuals sized for your slide template
- Social share image, metadata, structured data, analytics
- Figma source for everything
- Two weeks of post-launch fixes through Demo Day
Price
Fixed scope, paid in milestones, IP assigns to you on final payment. We invoice from India in USD (AUD, GBP or EUR on request). Design services exported from India are zero-rated, so no Indian GST is added. UK, EU and Australian business clients typically account for VAT/GST themselves under the reverse-charge rules; confirm with your accountant.
Not included
- Writing or structuring the deck itself (we do the visuals; the story is yours)
- A full product redesign or a design system — see the Product Design Sprint
- Brand identity or naming
- Copywriting from a blank page
- Video, 3D or illustration production
How it runs
- Weekly cycles. You see real screens in week one and every week after; nothing is held back for a reveal.
- Daily async update. A short written update every working day: what moved, what's blocked, what we need from you.
- One live review a week, in your time zone. Australian afternoons, the European day, or a US-morning slot in our evening.
- The people on the call do the work. No handoff to a junior team after signing.
- Fixed scope, fixed price, milestones. Invoiced in USD (AUD, GBP or EUR on request) from India. IP assigns to you on final payment.
Questions
When do we need to book for YC Fall 2026?
By 20 October 2026. The sprint runs three weeks; we want the site live by 25 November, a week before Demo Day on 2 December 2026 (date from ycombinator.com/blog/2026-demo-days), so there's a buffer for the fixes you'll want after seeing it live.
Why a week before, and why does 72 hours matter?
Investors check the site within about 72 hours of the pitch — during the Demo Day scroll and in the follow-up window. If the site goes live the night before, the first thing they see is the version with the bugs. A week's buffer means the version they see is the one you tested.
Does this work for Techstars, Antler or Startmate?
Yes. The shape is the same — landing page, one product path, deck visuals — and we plan it backwards from your demo day. Those dates vary by program and cohort, so tell us yours; we haven't published them here because they're confirmed per cohort.
What does it cost and how is it paid?
$15,000, fixed. 50% to book the slot, 50% at launch. It's a bundle: the Launch Sprint ($12,000) plus one product flow and the deck visuals.
What does the data say about batch homepages?
From our dataset of 705 YC 2026 homepages (fetched 2026-09-28): 61% lead with 'AI', 18% show pricing, and the median hero headline is 6 words. Leading with the outcome instead of the model, and showing what it costs, is still the easiest way to be the one an investor remembers.
Can we grade our current homepage first?
Yes — run it through the YC Homepage Grader at nonboring.gg/grader/. It checks the same signals we measured across the batch: hero length, AI-in-hero, pricing link, share image, favicon, description and builder.
What if our product isn't ready to show?
Then we design the path as it will work at launch and prototype it with real content; investors see a prototype that matches the deck, and your engineers get a spec. We'll say so on the page rather than fake a live product.
How do you bill, and is there tax on top?
We invoice from India in USD (AUD, GBP or EUR on request). Design services exported from India are zero-rated, so no Indian GST is added. UK, EU and Australian business clients typically account for VAT/GST themselves under the reverse-charge rules; confirm with your accountant. Payment is by wire or Stripe, in milestones.
Other sprints
Open-scope version of this work: websites. All prices →
Book the Pre-Demo-Day Sprint
Email atul@nonboring.gg with the subject pre-filled →
We reply within one working day and tell you on the first call whether this is the right shape for you, or which one is.
Building something people should remember?
non boring.gg is a product and brand design studio in Bangalore, India, working with startups and tech companies across the US, Europe and Australia. Average engagement around $20,000. atul@nonboring.gg