Explore every episode of Y Combinator Startup Podcast
Dive into the complete episode list for Y Combinator Startup Podcast. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
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Pub. Date
Title
Duration
27 Jul 2018
#87 - Elad Gil
00:43:19
Elad Gil is an entrepreneur, operator, and investor. He cofounded Color Genomics and Mixer Labs. Worked at Google and Twitter. And has invested in companies including Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe.
It contains tactical advice on key issues for post product-market fit companies such as the role of the CEO, hiring executives, late stage fundraising, M&A, and other topics. It also includes interviews with people in tech, including Sam Altman, President of YC Group.
We're accepting applications from startups for the Winter 2019 funding cycle. Apply here.
***
Topics
01:04 - Why should an entrepreneur read the High Growth Handbook?
5:35 - On Marc Andreessen's comment, "The companies that charge more tend to grow faster."
6:50 - Myths about startups
7:50 - Leon Coe asks - What types of businesses do you avoid investing in?
9:20 - Things to just say 'no' to
12:40 - Companies that may be too early
14:52 - On Naval Ravikant's comment, "The most successful class of people in silicon valley on a consistent basis are either the venture capitalists, or people who are very good at identifying companies that have just hit product/market fit. They have the background, expertise, and references that those companies really want to help them scale."
17:41 - On Claire Hughes Johnson's "Guide to Working with Claire"
19:40 - Masud Hossain asks - How did most of the companies you interviewed get their first 10 customers?
20:55 - Masud Hossain asks - Is content really king?
22:50 - Narayan Mallapur asks - Where do founders make the most mistakes? Is it on hiring? What steps should they take to avoid these pitfalls
24:55 - Brianne Kimmel asks - What are some lessons learned in highly regulated sectors? When should you hire a General Counsel? How do you prioritize public policy and lobbying efforts?
29:05 - Media cycles
30:55 - Marius Chawa asks - What are the top three things a startup "must" achieve before VC firms would line up to fund them?
34:45 - Taylor Caforio asks - My company is at our early MVP stage. What is he best way to find a balance between giving our earliest customers the 6 star treatment while also having swift and exponential growth in the back of our minds.
36:54 - Tanmay Khandelwal asks - When you are sprinting in growth stage, how do you predict engineers required and hire accordingly?
38:41 - TD Bryant II asks - When your organization is experiencing exponential growth, how do you choose which functions to outsource vs build/hire?
41:50 - Andrew Pikul asks - Who is your favorite Dragon Ball (Z/GT/Super) villain?
42:34 - Jareau Wadé asks - What types of product integrations could Pinterest have done with Instapaper?
50:04 - Ryan Hoover asks - I’m curious how he and the team balance simplicity with new feature development/product expansion.
54:19 - Raymond Durk asks - I love the rapid reading mode but would also love a voice enabled mode where the Google Assistant or Siri reads it. Speaking of I'd use it on my Google Home to listen to news if that was a skill.
57:39 - Brian Kim asks - Any growth hacks that worked well?
1:00:04 - Gustaf Alströmer asks - How does it make time for focused time to catch up on everything he saves? What are his best productivity hacks related to this?
1:03:44 - Backpacking
01 Nov 2017
#43 - Casey Neistat and Matt Hackett on Live Video's Struggle for Interestingness
You might already know Casey from his YouTube channel which now has over 8M subscribers.
And before Beme, Matt was a Hacker-in-Residence betaworks and the VP of Engineering at Tumblr.
02 Oct 2019
#146 - Startup School Week 5 Recap - Kirsty Nathoo and Kevin Hale
00:50:48
We've cut down the fifth week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.
First a lecture from Kirsty Nathoo. Kirsty is a partner and CFO of YC. Her lecture focuses on the most common mistakes startups make with their finances and how they can avoid making them.
Then a lecture from Kevin Hale. Kevin is also a partner at YC and he’ll talk about the importance of building a successful working relationship with your cofounders and processes you can use to do so.
Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.
#71 - Claire McDonnell and Jennifer Kim on Building an Inclusive Company Culture
00:45:13
Claire McDonnell is cofounder and COO of True Link Financial (YC S13). True Link is a financial services firm that offers money management, investment, and insurance products, primarily for retirees.
Jennifer Kim is currently advising startups. Prior to that she was the Head of Employee Experience and Development at Lever. Lever makes recruiting software and they were part of the Summer 2012 batch.
Michael Seibel is a partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the winter 2012 batch.
2:00 - Three types of people: people highly motivated when working for themselves, people that could succeed starting a startup or within a big company, and people that could succeed within a big company.
6:00 - How do you decide what type of person you are?
7:30 - Identify bias in advice givers
10:30 - Peer advice becomes less valuable during college
50:31 - A team, a product, and an office are all just a means to an end
51:31 - If you don’t really deserve money, what is an alternate path to create leverage?
53:16 - Breaking even at Justin.tv was a moment of infinite clarity
55:31 - Series A program and leverage
18 Apr 2025
How Zepto Became India’s Fastest Growing Startup
00:38:23
Imagine ordering groceries and having them show up at your doorstep in just 10 minutes. That’s the promise of Zepto, the fastest-growing e-commerce company in India.
In this episode of How To Build The Future, Garry sits down with Aadit Palicha, the co-founder and CEO of Zepto, to discuss how they got started in a Whatsapp group, what it’s like going up against incumbents like Amazon and Zomato and how the future of e-commerce is changing in the age of intelligence.
14 Mar 2023
How To Earn Customers For Life
00:12:58
In this first in-person episode, Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell reveal how startups can gain a competitive advantage by doing something deceptively simple. They share compelling stories of companies that built loyal relationships and achieved success by making personal connections with users. In contrast, they discuss the traps early-stage founders make by trying to emulate big tech. If you want to build a business that customers love and that thrives in the long run, this advice on why caring deeply about your customers is key. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-applyWork at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
25 Apr 2023
The Student's Guide To Becoming A Successful Startup Founder
00:24:21
If you're a high school or college student with big dreams of starting your own company, this video is for you. Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel, two startup founders who started in the early 20s and are now top investors, sit down to share the hard-won advice they wish they had known back in high school. Whether you're already running your own startup or just have an idea you can't stop thinking about, Dalton and Michael cover the skills you need to learn now and how to set yourself up for success after graduating school.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
06 Dec 2017
#51 - There's an Art to Getting Brilliant People to Surprise Themselves - Kevin Slavin of The Shed
01:02:45
Kevin Slavin is the Chief Science and Technology Officer of The Shed, which is an art center in New York that’s opening in 2019.
Before The Shed, Kevin founded the Playful Systems group at MIT's Media Lab.
If you’re interested in doing Startup School this year, signups are open at StartupSchool.org. The course just started and the deadline to sign up is August 4th. Select companies who complete the course will also receive 15,000 dollars in equity-free funding.
24:52 - Agustin Feuerhake asks - What does it take to be a great board member?
27:22 - Dave Bailey asks - To what extent should the board culture reflect the company culture?
29:42 - Connor Abene asks - How do you think about adding board members who haven't worked in your industry but you think are good?
33:22 - Rhina asks - Could you address managing a board during product market fit time/ pivot times?
06 Feb 2019
#111 - Jake Klamka and Kevin Hale
00:48:44
Jake Klamka founded Insight. Insight provides intensive 7 week professional training fellowships in fields such as data science and data engineering. Insight was in the YC Winter 2011 batch.
Kevin Hale is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before YC Kevin was the cofounder of Wufoo, which was funded by YC in 2006 and acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011.
1:42 - Applying to YC with one product then changing it
4:07 - How Insight started
4:57 - Jake's first students and initial coursework
8:37 - Finding out what companies want from data scientists
10:37 - Picking the first class of students
12:07 - Common pitfalls for people transitioning into data science
15:07 - Types of data science roles
17:22 - What data scientists should look out for in companies
18:17 - Chuck Grimmett asks - When do you know you need to bring in seasoned data scientists?
20:37 - How Insight has scaled and changed
22:37 - What happens in the program
23:57 - Examples of a good project for a data science resume
26:27 - Will more data scientists be founders in the future?
28:37 - Teaching product
29:37 - Cleaning data
32:07 - Tools for tracking data
32:57 - Track what are you trying to optimize
35:57 - Churn and conversion
39:37 - Is there an ideal background for a data scientist?
41:37 - Which startups recruit well at Insight?
43:37 - Contracting
46:17 - Fields Jake is excited about
15 Aug 2022
YC Founder Firesides: Gusto on building for new verticals
01:58:07
Gusto (YC W12) provides growing businesses with everything to take care of their team. Today, more than 200,000 businesses use Gusto for payroll, employee benefits, talent management, and more. And with the recent addition of Gusto Embedded, developers now use Gusto’s APIs and pre-build UI flows to embed payroll, tax filing, and payments infrastructure into products.
YC’s Anu Hariharan sat down with Gusto co-founder and CPO Tomer London to talk about building for new customer segments and the future of embedded finance — sharing advice for startup founders and CEOs along the way.
Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
13 Mar 2019
#117 - Craig Cannon and Adora Cheung
01:07:35
Craig Cannon is the Director of Marketing at Y Combinator. He usually hosts the YC podcast but is the guest on this episode about podcasting.
He once won a bet with Steven Hawking, which as he writes made him “briefly almost famous.” John and Kip Thorne bet that singularities could exist outside of black holes and after six years Hawking conceded that they were possible in very special, “nongeneric” conditions.
In this episode we cover what John’s been focusing on for years: quantum information, quantum computing, and quantum error correction.
00:43 - Kevin Hale on How to Evaluate Startup Ideas
2:04 - How can I predict if an investor will like my idea?
2:50 - A startup idea is a hypothesis
5:44 - Problem
6:59 - Solution
8:16 - Insight
8:57 - Unfair advantages
13:45 - Two beliefs about startups
15:19 - Eric Migicovsky on How to Talk to Users
17:36 - Three common errors people make when talking to users
20:20 - Five questions to ask in a user interview
20:28 - What's the hardest part about doing the thing you're trying to solve?
21:02 - Tell me about the last time that you encountered this problem
21:22 - Why was this hard?
23:08 - What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?
24:10 - What don't you love about the solutions you've already tried?
25:21 - Three stages in which talking to users is extremely beneficial
26:07 - Idea stage
30:40 - Prototype stage
33:41 - Iterating towards product market fit
25 Sep 2019
#145 - Startup School Week 4 Recap - Kat Mañalac and Gustaf Alströmer
00:56:05
We've cut down the fourth week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.
First a lecture from Kat Manalac. Kat is a partner at YC. Her lecture focuses on how startups should think about launching and why you should do it repeatedly.
Then a lecture from Gustaf Alströmer. Gustaf is also a partner at YC and in his lecture he covers how to measure product market fit and growth channels.
Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.
00:35 - Kat Mañalac - How to Launch (Again and Again)
1:51 - Ways to launch
2:14 - Why launch continuously?
3:15 - Silent launch
4:25 - Friends & Family
5:40 - Strangers
7:03 - Online communities
12:08 - Request access
13:29 - Social media
15:13 - Pre-order
16:13 - New Product or Feature
17:42 - Build your own community
19:20 - Launching isn't one moment in time
19:48 - Gustaf Alströmer - Growth for Startups
21:06 - Most startups have nothing
22:13 - Do things that don't scale
27:13 - Startups take off because founders make them take off
28:23 - Measuring product market fit
31:20 - Retention
34:33 - Worse ways to measure product market fit
35:23 - Bad metrics to measure as product market fit
36:18 - Growth channels and tactics
38:17 - Conversion rate optimization
41:26 - Growth channels to explore
45:33 - Referrals and vitality
48:05 - Paid growth
50:09 - Search Engine Optimization
53:00 - Making decisions using A/B testing
55:02 - Summary
15 Mar 2024
Stop Innovating (On The Wrong Things) | Dalton & Michael Podcast
00:11:58
Startups need to innovate to succeed. But not all innovation is made equal and reinventing some common best practices could actually hinder your company. In this episode, Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the common innovation pitfalls founders should avoid so they can better focus on their product and their customers.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
22 May 2019
#127 - Vidit Aatrey and Adora Cheung
00:50:27
Vidit Aatrey is cofounder and CEO of Meesho. Meesho is a platform in India that allows people to resell products using their social networks. They were in the Summer 2016 batch of YC and you can check them out at Meesho.com.
Adora Cheung is a Partner at YC. Before working at YC she cofounded Homejoy.
Building A $2 Billion SaaS Company: Lessons From A Two Time Founder
00:24:31
Two-time founder Rujul Zaparde knows a thing or two about resilience and learning from failure.
After dropping out of college to build FlightCar, he worked as a PM at Airbnb, and later as a visiting partner at YC.
In 2020, he co-founded Zip, a procurement software company that has since raised $370 million and reached a $2.2 billion valuation.
In this conversation with YC's Dalton Caldwell, Rujul demystifies the world of enterprise sales, shares his hard-earned lessons about scaling a business from zero, and explains how founders can use first-principles thinking to better approach the challenges of building a startup.
05 Sep 2022
Successful Founders Are OK With Rejection
00:20:18
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel on the importance of talking to your users, why successful founders are ok with rejection from potential customers, and how protecting your ego by not talking to your users can kill your startup.
To create Rookies Mistakes we asked YC founders: Is there a simple fact you wish you knew when you started your company or a rookie mistake you wish you could take back?
Co-Founder Mistakes That Kill Companies & How To Avoid Them
00:08:44
In the first episode of Rookie Mistakes, Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss co-founder mistakes. To create Rookies Mistakes we asked YC founders: Is there a simple fact you wish you knew when you started your company or a rookie mistake you wish you could take back?
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel take a look at Paul Graham's essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" and share tips on how to be more effective and productive on the journey to creating a billion dollar business.
#66 - Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar
00:53:51
Vivek Ravisankar is the CEO and cofounder of HackerRank, which was in the Summer 2011 batch.
They surveyed 40,000 developers on things including their favorite frameworks, what they want in a job, and how they learned to code. You can read the report here.
Brian Halligan is the CEO and cofounder of HubSpot. HubSpot builds software for marketing, sales, and customer service. You can try it out at HubSpot.com.
Kevin Hale is a Partner at YC and cofounder of Wufoo.
Why Design Matters: Lessons from Stripe, Lyft and Airbnb | Design Review
00:33:37
Stripe, Airbnb and Lyft are a few of the most successful companies of the past decade. And there are at least two things they all have in common - great design, and Katie Dill. Katie was Head of Experience Design at Airbnb, led the design team at Lyft and is now Head of Design at Stripe. We spoke with Katie about her design philosophy, what sets companies like Stripe apart, and how important it is to instill a culture of design in your startup from day one.
13 Jul 2023
Silicon Valley's Cargo Culting Problem
00:16:35
When it comes to building a startup you’re never doing it entirely from scratch. Inspiration and ideas can come from a variety of places, including other successful startups. But there’s a thin line between borrowing smart ideas and copying them blindly - otherwise known as Cargo Culting.
In this episode Dalton and Michael break down the problem with Cargo Culting and offer advice on the right way to draw inspiration from other successful companies.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
26 Jan 2023
Don't Make These Hiring Mistakes
00:19:44
Step inside the Group Partner Lounge to hear Y Combinator Group Partners Harj Taggar, Michael Seibel and Brad Flora discuss the many different mistakes founders make when they approach hiring for their startup and how to grow your team the correct way. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-applyWork at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
04 Dec 2019
#154 - Matt Cutts
01:05:21
Matt Cutts is the Administrator of the US Digital Service and previously he was the head of the webspam team at Google.
14:38 - Matt's progression over 17 years at Google
17:18 - Deepfakes
18:43 - Joining the USDS
21:03 - What the USDS does
23:43 - Working at the USDS
26:43 - Educating people in government about tech
28:58 - Creating a rapid feedback loop within government
31:48 - Michael Wang asks - How does USDS decide whether to outsource something to a private company, or build the software in house?
32:58 - Spencer Clark asks - It would seem that the government is so far behind the private industry’s technology. To what extent is this true and what can be done about it? How should we gauge the progress of institutions like the USDS?
36:03 - Stephan Sturges asks - With GANs getting more and more powerful is the USDS thinking about the future of data authenticity?
38:23 - John Doherty asks - How difficult was it to communicate Google’s algorithm changes and evolving SEO best practices without leaking new spam tactics?
40:18 - Vanman0254 asks - How can smart tech folks better contribute to regulatory and policy discussions in government?
42:38 - Ronak Shah asks - What's your best pitch to high-performing startups in the Bay Area to adopt more of human centered design (something that the government has been moving towards surprisingly well, but that some fast moving startups have neglected resulting in controversy)
49:58 - Adam Hoffman asks - What are legislators, the government, and the general populace most “getting wrong” in how they conceptualize the internet?
51:33 - Raphael Ferreira asks - Is it possible to live without google? How do you think google affected people in searching for answers and content, now that’s we find everything in just one click?
55:23 - Tim Woods asks - Which job was more fun and why?
57:13 - Working in government vs private industry
1:00:48 - Snehan Kekre asks - What is Matt's view of the ongoing debate about backdooring encryption for so called lawful interception?
03 Jan 2023
How to Get Your First Customers with Gustaf Alströmer | Startup School
00:22:53
How do you get your first customers? YC Group Partner & former Head of Growth at Airbnb, Gustaf Alströmer, gives tactical advice to answer this question for all kinds of companies — whether you're B2B or B2C — and discusses why it's important for founders to do sales early on. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
1:33 - The basics: form a corporation, need money to grow?, sell a part of the company
2:58 - Fundraising terms
3:58 - What has changed: structure, access, focus
5:10 - What hasn't changed: preferred stock financing, valuation and dilution, communication
6:42 - Old way of raising early money: Series A preferred stock financing
8:33 - What was broken?
9:33 - The transition: bridge loan financings
10:46 - Realization: convertible promissory notes are a better way to fund early stage startups
12:01 - Modernization of the convertible - SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity)
14:03 - When do priced rounds happen?
15:12 - Is modern early stage financing perfected?
18:01 - Takeaways
19:30 - Jared Friedman - Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders
20:25 - What is a hard-tech company?
21:35 - Why start a hard-tech company?
25:06 - YC is the largest bio and hard-tech seed investor in the world
25:49 - How much of YC's advice applies to hard-tech founders?
26:33 - How do you make progress when you have a "heavy MVP"?
31:49 - How do you prove people will want your product, if you haven't built it yet?
32:57 - Letter of Intent
34:10 - Fundraising for hard-tech and biotech companies
36:15 - Final thought
16 Jan 2019
#108 - Cindy Mi and Qi Lu
00:59:09
Cindy Mi is the founder and CEO of VIPKID. VIPKID is a 1-on-1 teaching platform where children in China learn english from North American teachers.
Qi Lu is the CEO of YC China and Head of YC Research.
***
Topics
00:23 - Qi's intro
00:38 - Cindy's intro
1:38 - Moving to a new province as a teenager
4:38 - Being an educator and an entrepreneur
8:23 - Starting VIPKid in a hyper-competitive market
14:53 - Metrics for measuring product market fit
21:43 - How did she find the business model?
26:53 - What things did she try that didn't work?
30:38 - Strategy for product expansion
33:03 - Content expansion for Mandarin learning
34:53 - Building global companies
41:23 - Creating a global culture
44:13 - The future of education
48:08 - How should engineers and product managers think about edtech?
51:33 - Thoughts on AI
54:33 - Advice for entrepreneurs
18 Sep 2019
#144 - Startup School Week 3 Recap - Anu Hariharan and Adora Cheung
00:44:36
We've cut down the third week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.
First, a lecture from Anu Hariharan. Anu is a partner at YC. Her lecture covers nine common startup business models and the metrics investors want to see for each.
Then, a Q&A with Anu and Adora Cheung. Adora is also at partner at YC. During their Q&A they’ll answer questions from Startup School Founders on how investors evaluate startups.
Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel talk about where the ideas for Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe came from. Then they discuss what you can learn from these founders.
To create Rookies Mistakes we asked YC founders: Is there a simple fact you wish you knew when you started your company or a rookie mistake you wish you could take back?
00:25 - Tuomas Grannas asks - What's your favorite LEGO theme?
1:25 - What is Front?
3:50 - Google Inbox shutting down
5:25 - Prioritizing features
7:50 - Features that have increased Front usage
9:50 - What Front looked like at launch
12:45 - Early user acquisition
15:40 - Starting Front and meeting her cofounder
19:10 - The idea for Front
20:25 - When her cofounder was diagnosed with cancer
23:20 - Hardest moments running Front
25:25 - Employee retention
30:55 - Transparency
32:40 - Front's office in France
33:30 - KP asks - What is the one unique insight about the problem you didn’t have at the start but only discovered later after your launch?
36:15 - Did she consider other ideas Front?
37:40- Jordan Jackson asks - Email at least for me - has taken on a different meaning in a life of messaging apps and chat platforms. It is more serious in a way. How do you see email evolving and the ecosystem that encompasses in peoples lives?
39:55 - If she could remove any email feature
41:20 - When did they hit product market fit?
45:05 - Meditation
16 Nov 2024
How to Survive the Crypto Boom & Bust Cycle | Main Function
00:09:34
Over the past decade crypto has been declared dead hundreds of times. But with the price of Bitcoin surging over the past few months it’s clear that there are still enormous opportunities in this space. And few people know that better than Chandan Lodha, the co-founder of CoinTracker (W18), a crypto asset management and tax filing platform. He and his team have navigated several boom and bust cycles over the years and in this latest episode of The Main Function, you’ll hear about how they built their company, the time it nearly fell apart, and how they used a crypto winter to retool and emerge stronger than ever.
01 Jan 2024
Should You Be Optimistic About The Future of Technology? | Dalton & Michael Podcast
00:16:15
Social media often promotes a doom and gloom outlook about our future society. But is that worldview accurate? In this episode, Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the best ways for founders and aspiring founders to think about weighing optimism and pessimism in their day to day lives.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
25 Aug 2017
#29 - Jack Dorsey On The Books That Helped Him Succeed
00:29:12
Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Twitter and Square. This is his talk from Startup School 2013.
Startup Business Models and Pricing with Aaron Epstein | Startup School
00:32:44
One of the most common topics that founders ask us about is pricing and monetization. In this talk, YC Group Partner Aaron Epstein outlines 9 different business models, and highlights lessons from top YC companies on how to best monetize and price your product. Business Model Guide: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/Gh-business-model-guide Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
Consumer Startup Metrics with Tom Blomfield | Startup School
00:22:25
In this episode of Startup School, YC Partner Tom Blomfield dives deeper into the metrics that matter most for consumer startups. Tom discusses paid and organic user growth, unit economics, net promoter scores, and the "magic moment" in your product that is most important to track.
26 Jun 2019
#132 - Dan Hockenmaier and Gustaf Alströmer
01:01:32
Dan Hockenmaier is the founder of the growth strategy firm Basis One. Prior to Basis One he was the Director of Growth Marketing at Thumbtack. You can learn more at BasisOne.com.
Gustaf Alströmer is a Partner at YC. Prior to YC he was the Product Lead for Growth at Airbnb.
1:45 - What growth strategies do people jump on too soon?
2:20 - Questions Dan asks a company he's advising
3:50 - Traits Dan looks for in early growth hires
6:30 - How product and growth are tied together
11:30 - Good/bad learnings from Facebook's growth team
14:00 - A/B testing
17:00 - Retention and other metrics
20:45 - The importance of experimentation
23:45 - Getting ideas for A/B tests then choosing which to do
25:00 - Advice for employees who want to get a growth program going
29:00 - B2B vs consumer growth tactics
34:00 - Pricing experiments
35:30 - Paid marketing
39:30 - Launching in new markets
40:15 - Hiring for marketing
43:45 - Metrics for marketing hires
45:45 - Toni asks - Why did Airbnb grow so fast?
48:45 - Step function growth changes for companies that already had scale
49:55 - Michael Savage asks - It would be great to discuss growth into new regions for example Africa and UAE. What would their approach be, how does it differ from region to region, culture to culture?
52:30 - Justin LaRosa asks - What are some of the most common drivers of viral growth?
55:20 - Hiring a growth agency vs building your own team
58:20 - How do you think about growth in the context of improving humanity?
13 Dec 2022
Should You Start a Startup? with Harj Taggar | Startup School
00:17:13
In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner Harj Taggar shares his advice on the types of people best suited to be startup founders and how to prepare to start a company in the future. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
If you're looking to maximize your startup's potential, start by setting the right goals. Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell provide tips and strategies for setting goals that will help keep you and your new business focused on success—plus provide examples of bad goals to avoid. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-applyWork at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
13 Mar 2025
The Future Of Design With Figma's Dylan Field
00:37:41
Design isn’t just about making things work—it’s about how they work, says Dylan Field, the co-founder & CEO of Figma. As AI transforms tech, he believes a designer's judgment, taste, and agency will matter more than ever.
Dylan sat down with YC's Garry Tan to discuss the evolving world of design in the age of AI, the challenging early days at Figma, and how his team forever changed the way designers and engineers collaborate.
07 Feb 2018
#60 - Startup Investor School Preview with Geoff Ralston
This episode covers Startup Investor School. Startup Investor School is a free, 4-day course designed to educate early stage investors interested in investing in startups. You can sign up at investor.startupschool.org.
It’s fair to say that few people in tech are positioned to have a bigger impact on the future than Sam Altman. At OpenAI, Sam and his team have overseen monumental leaps forward in machine learning, generative AI, and most recently, LLMs that can reason at PhD levels. And this is just the beginning. In his latest essay Sam predicted that ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is just a few thousand days away. So how did we get to this point?
In this episode of our rebooted series "How To Build The Future," YC President and CEO Garry Tan sits down with Sam to talk about the origins of OpenAI, what’s next for the company, and what advice he has for founders navigating this massive platform shift.
05 Jun 2019
#129 - Simone Giertz
00:49:46
Simone Giertz describes herself as a maker/robotics enthusiast/non-engineer. She’s also known as the Queen of Shitty Robots. She runs a YouTube channel about those robots and is a cohost on Tested with Adam Savage from MythBusters.
7:16 - Building a sustainable business as a creator
9:01 - Shipping a real product - The Every Day Calendar - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/simonegiertz/the-every-day-calendar
18:01 - Being scared to step away
19:31 - Generating ideas
20:46 - Finding out she had a brain tumor, having surgery, and sharing it
26:01 - Returning to work after brain surgery
28:01 - Learnings from taking time off
29:01 - Asking for help
30:31 - Evaluating how she's spending her time
32:16 - Giving herself permission to try other things
34:21 - Challenges as a creator and entrepreneur
36:01 - Not feeling guilty about play and pursuing the things you enjoy
41:01 - Becoming less disciplined in certain areas over time
42:46 - Ali asks - How to get started when dealing with imposters syndrome?
43:06 - beep boop asks - What's your favorite robot?
43:46 - Beste asks - Are there any moments where she is bored and feels like giving up on creating new things?
44:56 - Khawar Shehzad asks - What thing do you wish you knew when you started your career?
46:06 - Olaf Doschke asks - What would have happened if Simone's toothbrush helmet wouldn't have gone viral?
48:36 - Johnathan Nader asks - What is the best version of yourself?
06 Mar 2023
The REAL Potential of Generative AI
00:20:02
What is a large language model? How can it be used to enhance your business? In this conversation, Ali Rowghani, Managing Director of YC Continuity, talks with Raza Habib, CEO of Humanloop, about the cutting-edge AI powering innovations today—and what the future may hold. They discuss how large language models like Open AI's GPT-3 work, why fine-tuning is important for customizing models to specific use cases, and the challenges involved with building apps using these models. If you're curious about the ethical implications of AI, Raza shares his predictions about the impact of this quickly developing technology on the industry and the world at large.
00:50 - How Dom started in events and her background
2:25 - Deciding to not go to law school
3:55 - Choosing to work on tech events
6:00 - Outreach to underrepresented founders
9:15 - Common misconceptions about getting into tech
10:35 - University outreach
11:55 - Identifying problems to fix and not being blocked
14:35 - Reflecting on accomplishments
15:40 - Dom’s career plans
17:10 - Will Dom do a startup?
17:35 - Avoiding burnout
20:55 - The importance of just getting started
15 Jan 2025
How To Use AI In Your Startup
00:14:02
AI continues to improve at an exponential pace. So what can you do as a founder to take advantage of it?
In this episode of Office Hours, YC Partners discuss what you should consider if you’re thinking about pivoting to or incorporating AI as part of your startup.
29 May 2019
#128 - Michael Babineau and Kevin Hale
00:56:10
Michael Babineau is cofounder and CEO of Second Measure. Second Measure analyzes billions of credit card transactions to answer real-time questions on consumer behavior. They were in the Summer 2015 batch of YC and you can check them out at SecondMeasure.com.
Kevin Hale is a Partner at YC. Before working at YC he cofounded Wufoo.
27:35 - Second Measure's product development process
29:35 - Finding good data scientists who work from first principles
37:05 - Why is credit card data so messy?
42:05 - Cleaning data
44:20 - Using their product for competitive analysis
47:35 - Their sales process
49:05 - Raising money from Goldman Sachs and Citi
52:05 - Focusing on a specific problem
54:05 - Keeping the product compelling when it's table stakes
21 Feb 2019
#113 - Caterina Fake and Kat Manalac
00:57:35
Caterina Fake hosts the podcast Should This Exist? which is about how technology is impacting our humanity. It launches today on iTunes. She also cofounded Flickr, Hunch, and Findery and is an investor at Yes VC.
00:32 - Caterina's new podcast, Should This Exist?
2:32 - Is there a process for considering if something should exist?
4:02 - Who should be part of these conversations?
5:17 - Wait But Why and the Human Colossus
7:22 - Episode 1 of Should This Exist?
10:17 - Having conversations before things exist
11:42 - How might employees think about their role in whether or not something should exist?
14:32 - Caterina reflecting on her creations and if they should exist
19:02 - Considering whether things should exist as investors
23:32 - Cofounder charter - What you will and won't do
26:03 - Questioning the VC model
27:22 - Working on Wall St, feeling herself change, and quitting
31:22 - Caterina as a student
34:02 - Peculiarity and entrepreneurship
35:22 - "Don't fight to win prizes that aren't worth winning"
38:32 - What was once fringe is now mainstream
40:52 - Kat looking up to Lea Salonga
42:42 - Evgeny asks - How did she get her first 100 paying users?
49:27 - How does she advise founders to find investors?
54:47 - What questions should founders ask themselves while making something?
17 Nov 2024
How Do Billion Dollar Startups Start? | Office Hours
00:18:33
The biggest companies in the world all had to start somewhere. In this episode of Office Hours, the Group Partners explore the humble origins of several top YC companies to try and identify common traits of the most successful founders. They’ll explore what it takes to keep your company alive in the early days, where to focus your energy and how to find product market fit that leads you to mega success.
23 Aug 2017
#28 - Prerequisites for Starting a Company - Phil Libin
00:28:34
Phil Libin is the cofounder and CEO of All Turtles. Prior to that he was the CEO of Evernote. This is his 2013 Startup School talk.
If you’re interested in doing Startup School this year, signups are open at StartupSchool.org. The course begins on July 22nd and goes for 10 weeks. Select companies who complete the course will also receive 15,000 dollars in equity-free funding.
00:47 - Why do many individual contributors (ICs) never experience a good manager?
3:27 - How did the ideology of management being bad become pervasive in startups?
5:27 - What should a new manager do in their first 90 days?
8:57 - Getting better at 1:1s
11:17 - More tips for the first 90 days
13:17 - Remote management
15:12 - Mistakes rookie managers make
19:27 - Letting people go
23:37 - Being a manager and still wanting to write code
27:57 - Feeling overwhelmed as a manager
31:27 - Getting a team to gel
38:42 - Giving people kudos
39:57 - Non-engineers running engineering teams
42:07 - Staying legit technically as a manager
43:27 - Management vs leadership
28 Dec 2023
AI and the Future of Law: The 10 Year "Overnight" Success Story | Main Function
00:17:29
Casetext started out in 2013 as a crowdsourced law library — a sort of “Wikipedia meets Reddit” for the law. Ten years later, Casetext is one of the biggest wins to date in AI, capable of turning weeks of arduous legal work into hours or minutes. Just months ago it was acquired for $650 million dollars.
What happened between those two points?
For this episode of Main Function, YC President Garry Tan sits down with Casetext co-founder Jake Heller to learn the real story of their 10-year “overnight” success: the 3 a.m. origin story, how the company evolved as fast as tech would allow, and the “magic demo” that helped turn Casetext into a rocket ship.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/MainFunction-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/MainFunction-jobs
29 Nov 2017
#49 - Microbes, Robots, and Ambition - Robin Sloan on His Novel Sourdough
00:57:28
Robin Sloan is a writer and media inventor based in Oakland. He just released his second novel, Sourdough.
The Right (And Wrong) Way To Spend Money At Your Startup
00:29:06
Many startups fail because they run out of money. So how should you think about how to spend the money you raise?
In this episode of Office Hours, YC General Partners Brad Flora, Pete Koomen, Nicolas Dessaigne, and Gustaf Alströmer discuss how to spend responsibly at each stage of a startup— including advice on when to hire, whether to invest in marketing and what spending mistakes to avoid.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply
16 Nov 2024
How Nothing Founder Carl Pei Built A Multi-Million Dollar Smartphone Brand In Just 2 Years | Main Function
00:21:10
After co-founding the successful Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus, Carl Pei felt the tech industry was missing the fun and wonder he remembered as a dedicated gadget fan growing up in Sweden. Pei decided to launch a new smartphone brand, this time with an increased focus on thoughtful user interface and stylish yet practical designs. In only two years, the brand known as "Nothing" has gained a cult following and gone to $600 million in annualized revenue. On this episode of The Main Function, Pei reflects on the highs and lows that have come with the journey of pursuing excellence in hard tech.
18 Oct 2017
#41 - Experiments in Art and Technology with Artforum Editor Michelle Kuo
How To Get The Most Out Of Vibe Coding | Startup School
00:16:39
AI can't yet one-shot an entire product—but with the rise of vibe coding, it's getting close. YC's Tom Blomfield has spent the last month building side projects with tools like Claude Code, Windsurf, and Aqua, seeing just how far you can push modern LLMs. From writing full-stack apps to debugging with a single paste of an error message, AI is becoming a legit collaborator in the dev process. This is a playbook for anyone who wants to get the most out of vibe coding and build faster.
30 Jun 2017
#15 - IPFS, CoinList, and the Filecoin ICO - Juan Benet and Dalton Caldwell
02:14:16
Juan Benet is the founder of Protocol Labs (YC S14). They're working on IPFS, Filecoin, and Coinlist.
Twitter vs. X: Product Lessons For Startup Founders | The Breakdown
00:22:42
Since Twitter rebranded to X, the platform has added new features and implemented a few major updates to both its UX and algo.
So what can founders interested in product design learn from all this?
In the first episode of our new series, The Breakdown, YC’s Tom Blomfield (co-founder of Monzo) and David Lieb (creator of Google Photos) take a closer look at X to find what lessons there are for founders building consumer products.
16 Nov 2024
Startup Experts Discuss Doing Things That Don't Scale | Office Hours
00:25:41
A little over ten years ago Paul Graham published the essay "Do Things That Don't Scale." At the time, it was highly controversial advice that spoke to the drastically different needs of an early startup versus the needs of a much larger, more established company.
YC Partners discuss PG's essay, its influence on Silicon Valley, and some prime examples of YC founders that embraced the mantra "Do Things That Don't Scale."
Should You Quit Your Job At A Unicorn? | Dalton & Michael Podcast
00:13:31
If you’re an employee of a late stage company right now, how would you know when it’s time to move on vs. time to double down?
The fact is there isn't an easy answer — it can really vary from person to person and situation to situation. In this video, YC Group Partners, Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell share some suggestions on what sort of things an employee of a late stage startup should be looking for — the good signs and the bad — to best make this decision.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
The Psychedelic Research Group focuses on two main areas: first, the action of psychedelic drugs in the brain and second, their clinical utility, e.g. as aides to psychotherapy, with a particular focus on depression.
The Hard Conversations Founders Don't Want to Have
00:21:23
Y Combinator group partners Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell discuss the importance of having honest and difficult conversations with startup founders. While having hard conversations can be uncomfortable, Michael and Dalton argue that this transparency is essential for founders to grow and ultimately, these experiences help founders have their own hard conversations that they've been avoiding with the people around them. Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-applyWork at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
21 Mar 2019
#118 - Marques Brownlee
00:52:26
Marques Brownlee is a YouTuber. He has over 8 million subscribers to his channel MKBHD where he reviews electronics, drives electric vehicles, and interviews people such as Kobe Bryant and Bill Gates.
You can find Marques on YouTube and on Twitter at @MKBHD.
00:26 - What does Marques attribute his channel's success to?
2:41 - The early days
5:11 - How does he go about evaluating a product?
7:31 - Features that Marques thought were great that didn't catch on
8:41 - Peak smartphone?
10:31 - Folding phones and new trends
11:26 - Tesla and the EV market
15:46 - Getting older and staying relevant
17:06 - New kinds of videos and podcasting
22:26 - Does Marques feel limited by gear?
26:11 - Storytelling techniques
28:16 - Tech vs Marques as the star of the show
29:56 - Marco Castro asks - What advice do you have for new creators on YouTube?
30:56 - When did Marques find his voice as a creator?
33:56 - Overcoming perfectionism
34:56 - Gut instinct vs data
37:26 - YouTube comments
39:31 - Austin Ryder asks - In the early years of his channel, Marques took a several month hiatus from YouTube, but then came back with a new video format and seemingly renewed drive. What happened during those months off that led to the channel becoming what it is today?
40:41 - Winston asks - What’s your daily schedule?
43:06 - Ultimate frisbee injuries
43:26 - Amad Khan asks - Are there any problems that you see or face that you really wish engineers/developers would solve?
44:51 - Christian Giordano asks - Any tips on how to engage/work with influencers when you are a very early stage startup with little or no money?
46:41 - The future of creators supporting themselves financially
49:31 - His biggest challenge as a creator
50:31 - Long-term goals
21 Dec 2023
How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer | Dalton & Michael Podcast
00:17:38
The stories are true: technical founders (and early technical employees!) often end up with the short end of the stick when starting a company.
In this episode of Dalton & Michael, we’ll discuss the questions and best practices that an aspiring technical founder should think about — whom to start a company with, and how to think about things like equity split and division of responsibilities. Know what you are worth and act accordingly!
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
26 Mar 2025
How to Build the Future: Tony Xu
00:31:32
12 years after starting DoorDash, co-founder & CEO Tony Xu and his employees still do deliveries every year, staying true to their core value: customer obsession.
Today, DoorDash is the largest food delivery platform in the US.
In this episode of How to Build the Future, Tony explains how their unwavering long-term vision won — helping create a new market while surviving near death and a global pandemic along the way.
30 Jan 2019
#110 - Avni Patel Thompson and Kat Manalac
00:52:52
Avni Patel Thompson founded Poppy, which helped parents book the best caregivers. They went through the YC Winter 2016 batch and recently shut down. Avni asked to come on the podcast to talk about what the process of shutting down was like.
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - @CraigCannon.
***
Topics
00:35 - Kat’s intro
01:15 - Avni’s intro
2:15 - When did it become clear that scaling Poppy wasn’t working?
5:50 - Experiments Avni tried with Poppy
9:55 - The last six months of runway
13:25 - Choosing to shut Poppy down
17:25 - Pivot or shut down?
20:10 - Who did Avni have these hard conversations with?
24:35 - Communicating with investors during the process of shutting down
31:20 - How does Avni feel since shutting down Poppy?
38:30 - Tying self-worth to your accomplishments and how it feels after shutting down
39:30 - “This is what trying looks like.”
44:00 - The effects of having raised money
46:00 - Starting to think about what’s next
49:00 - Struggling with unstructured nothing
49:45 - Kindness
22 Jun 2018
#81 - Announcing Work at a Startup
00:26:22
Jared Friedman is a partner at YC and before that cofounded Scribd (YC S06).
Matt Long a software engineer at YC and before that cofounded Crocodoc (YC W10).
Today we’re talking about a project Jared, Matt, and several other people at YC have been working on. It’s called Work at a Startup and it’s like a common application for engineers to apply to many YC companies simultaneously.
We’re also hosting a Work at a Startup Expo on July 28th in Mountain View where you’ll be able to meet 35 rapidly growing YC companies. You can learn more and apply to attend at workatastartup.com/expo.
Successful startups don’t just build technology – they solve human problems. The key is listening to the people who really matter: your customers.
In this episode, Michael and Dalton discuss how spending real time with your users can unlock insights and growth. Hear the stories of how Airbnb and Brex built billion-dollar companies by forging genuine connections with their customers and learn why having too much money and too many people can actually slow down learning.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
28 Mar 2025
What Founders Can Do To Improve Their Design Game
00:20:43
In this special episode of Design Review, Aaron sits down with Raphael Schaad, the Head of Calendar at Notion to discuss his leap from designer to founder, why illustration is an important first step when building a new product, and what ultimately makes designers uniquely qualified to start a company today.
02 Mar 2018
#63 - The Number One Goal is Getting Started - Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy
00:47:56
Avni Patel Thompson is the founder and CEO of Poppy (YC W16). Poppy lets parents book the best caregivers with just a text.
We recorded this episode at our Female Founders Conference in Seattle. We’re also hosting female founder events in New York and SF this year. You can sign up to our newsletter to get updates about those events.
Sam Altman is the president of YC Group and he interviewed Mark for a series called How To Build The Future, which you can watch on YC’s YouTube channel.
25 Aug 2022
Understanding Investor Terms & Incentives
00:09:37
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel talk about investor terms and incentives.
To create Rookies Mistakes we asked YC founders: Is there a simple fact you wish you knew when you started your company or a rookie mistake you wish you could take back? Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
16 Nov 2024
Why Startup Founders Should Launch Companies Sooner Than They Think | Office Hours
00:18:17
Launching a company is often pictured as a big splashy event with lots of media attention and hype. This can be scary! It also often results in founders delaying their launches, which then stalls the crucial lessons they could be learning.
In this episode, YC Partners discuss this common hesitation and why it can be harmful to the journey and growth of a startup.
08 Jan 2024
B2B Startup Metrics with Tom Blomfield | Startup School
00:23:46
In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner Tom Blomfield discusses one of the most important elements of running any startup: metrics! Tom shares what key metrics to track and how to use them to make the best decisions for your company.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/SUS-apply
Work at a startup: https://yc.link/SUS-jobs
04 Aug 2017
#23 - VMware Cofounder Diane Greene with Jessica Livingston at the Female Founders Conference
00:24:30
Diane Greene is SVP of Google Cloud and she was also the CEO and cofounder of VMware.
How To Improve Cohort Retention with David Lieb | Startup School
00:29:22
At YC our motto is make something people want. But how do you actually know if you’ve accomplished that in the early days? One of the best ways to measure successful growth is a concept called cohort retention, which tracks the fraction of new users that come back time and time again to use your product. In this episode of Startup School, YC Group Partner David Lieb explains how to define cohorts, track active users and determine the appropriate time frame for measuring successful retention rates.
29 Aug 2022
Should You Follow Your Passion?
00:18:54
Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel talk about solutions in search of a problem, whether or not to follow your passion, how to figure out what to work on, and how to motivate yourself.
To create Rookies Mistakes we asked YC founders: Is there a simple fact you wish you knew when you started your company or a rookie mistake you wish you could take back?
In this episode of How to Build the Future, Garry sits down with Parker Conrad, Co-founder & CEO of Rippling, the all-in-one HR, Finance, and IT software company that’s valued at $13.5 billion.
Parker is the co-founder of two unicorns and has one of the more dramatic startup journeys in recent years. In this interview, he shares his origin story, the lessons learned from his first two companies, how AI is changing the game, and why he thinks the future will be defined by "compound" software startups.
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