The College Combinator
Postscript No. 2 | Danylo Borodchuk on Y Combinator and dropping out of college
THE NEW CRITIC — POSTSCRIPT
*What follows is a conversation between Danylo Borodchuk and Elan Kluger, founding editor of The New Critic. Danylo is a 20-year-old start-up founder from Ukraine. Elan is a 21-year-old writer from Michigan studying intellectual history at Dartmouth College.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.*
*Danylo Borodchuk and friend Aamish Beg, both students at Dartmouth College, recently founded Lopus AI: “an AI‑powered data unification layer for sales leadership that transforms fragmented sales signals into actionable insights for better Pipeline Visibility, GTM Attribution and High-Fidelity Forecasting.” They were accepted into the highly competitive (read: 1% acceptance rate) start-up accelerator program Y Combinator, affectionately known as YC, in the winter of 2025. Borodchuk and Beg’s side of the world is filled with spritely, energetic young people far more interested in forward motion than all else. Silicon Valley is the present and the future, though their land of high-risk, youth-forward values remains foreign to an older establishment. I spoke with Borodchuk about start-ups, dropping out, college culture, and the mystical world of innovation.*
ELAN KLUGER Was Dartmouth helpful in getting you into entrepreneurship?
DANYLO BORODCHUK That’s a great question. I actually recently attended a gathering with several Dartmouth alumni who are also YC founders, along with Jeff Crowe, a prominent investor. We reflected on our shared experiences, particularly exploring the factors that contributed to our entrepreneurial journeys. Interestingly, there was a near-unanimous consensus: Dartmouth, as valuable as it is academically, provided very limited preparation specifically for the realities of entrepreneurship and the unique demands of Silicon Valley. Almost every YC founder I spoke with agreed — “Dartmouth did not equip us for Silicon Valley.”