Aaron Harris

Partner, Y Combinator · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Aaron Harris is a Partner at Y Combinator and host of Startup School Radio. He previously co-founded Tutorspree and worked at Bridgewater Associates.

11statements → 4claims → 2claims resolved → 3.55/5average certainty → 1.91/5average debate potential → 4.4/5argument clarity · the sources → 12said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 2 assertions · 1 opinion · 4 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Aaron argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up

Y Combinator will expand funding into biotech, aerospace, and nuclear power

“Over the last year or two, we've expanded the kinds of companies we fund, you know, we're doing, we funded aerospace companies and nuclear power companies and biotech, and I think we'll continue to expand that universe as sort of the cycles of software continu…”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 18:43 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

100% certainty 3

100% certainty 4

none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.4 / 5 directness 4.6 · coherence 4.9 · precision 4 · compression 3.9

answered every one of 14 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

256 words/min while actually speaking · 19.3 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,055 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10

setup questions received 55%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 16:10“And how does YC try to maintain the valuations at a reasonable level to stop kind of YC price inflation?” ▶ 14:11“I heard, uh, I don't know if it's a rumor, or a mention that 10% is the recommended weekly growth target. Is that correct?” ▶ 18:09“Where, where are we going to see another funding round for YC?”

when Aaron pushed back ▶ 10:51“You don't know me well enough.” ▶ 21:37“Ooh. I can't pick one of my children. That's a crazy question.”

What they said11 What others said12 Episodes1

Everything Aaron Harris said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

One percent weekly growth is not venture startup scale

“If you think you have fit in your market, and it's just growing one percent a week, you might have a great business on your hands, but it's probably not startup scale.”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 15:01 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Prediction Held up

Y Combinator will expand funding into biotech, aerospace, and nuclear power

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 18:43 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Disclosure

Tutorspree failed after a Google algorithm change destroyed its SEO

“We raised money from Sequoia, among others, and built the business for, I think, two and a half years. Until we ran smack into a, an algorithm change at Google and we were reliant on search engine optimization, and it sort of killed our vision of what the busi…”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 4:22 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Insight

Consumer social product success cannot be predicted before viral growth

“And I've watched our attempts to invest in social products, and I've watched my friends try to build Social things and stuff that works, you never realize it's going to work until it really does.”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 13:31 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Insight

Growth is a byproduct of product-market fit, not the primary goal

“Growth isn't the goal. And I think this is something that people sometimes get a little backwards. Growth is the result of having the right product and the right market, right? It's because you did the other things right that you get growth. You can't invent g…”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 14:23 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Assertion Not checkable as stated

YC does not try to control portfolio company valuations post-Demo Day

“I don't think we expressly think about, hey, we want to keep this valuation level or that valuation level. I think we just want to make sure that companies are setting the groundwork to build long-term businesses.”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 16:26 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Disclosure

Y Combinator does not plan to raise outside funding to grow

“You know, I don't think about steps for YC in terms of us raising funding again. It's just not really how we think about what YC becomes.”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 18:17 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Prediction Not checkable as stated

A massive fintech company will be built in underlying infrastructure

“I work a lot with fintech companies and I'll tell you the thing that I want to fund right now. I think it's one of these things where there's just not nearly enough innovation happening except on the customer acquisition side. And I think that someone is going…”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 21:53 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Assertion Supported

YC Tuesday dinners are the only mandatory event for founders

“And so the way YC is structured is that during the course of the three month program, every Tuesday night we have a dinner where we have a guest speaker and people like Mark Zuckerberg or Brian Chesky Really inspirational founders who have done really cool thi…”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 5:36 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Insight

YC acts as a forcing function for founders to focus entirely

“And then the three months of YC itself is such a great time for founders to be able to push off everything else, right? It's this great excuse to focus. Anyone who wants to talk to you that isn't a customer who you need to talk to or a user you need to talk to…”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 8:55 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

Opinion

Photo sharing may be overhyped, but market interest is cooling

“Maybe, maybe photo sharing might be a little overhyped, but I think that's started to die down a little bit in the winter, so are already emerged or are emerging.”

Aaron Harris Sep 30, 2015 ▶ 22:35 20 VC 076: Y COMBINATOR WEEK: Aaron Harris, Partner @ YC

The other half of the tape: Aaron Harris's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 5 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Paul Erlang 7 Harry Stebbings 5