Y Combinator, every mention
158 scenes, the whole family · ← back to Y Combinator
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Anu Hariharan 66David Rosenthal 45Ben Gilbert 36David Senra 5Jason Calacanis 3Travis Hedge 1Katherine Boyle 1Christina Cacioppo 1
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Y Combinator comes up
Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity · Acquired
- ▶ 1:02:06 Anu Hariharan What's right and what makes sense for the broader YC, right?
- ▶ 1:02:10 Anu Hariharan And then I would say we've always been undercapitalized relative to the success of YC companies.
- ▶ 1:02:22 Ben Gilbert I mean, YC's just had a ridiculous track record.
- ▶ 1:02:29 Ben Gilbert Is it like total combined market cap of all YC companies?
- ▶ 1:02:56 Anu Hariharan In fact, the top three breakout companies in India in the last two years are all YC.
- ▶ 1:03:14 Anu Hariharan And continuity needs to support that mission.
- ▶ 1:03:17 David Rosenthal So you said, you know, continuity is this startup within the, it's just crazy to me that YC is 17 years old.
- ▶ 1:03:17 David Rosenthal So you said, you know, continuity is this startup within the, it's just crazy to me that YC is 17 years old.
- ▶ 1:03:35 Anu Hariharan Well, that's why we have a new tagline, the YC mob.
- ▶ 1:03:46 Anu Hariharan Oh, we're on the YC Bob.
- ▶ 1:03:47 David Rosenthal Well, it's like, um, I used to be on the other side of this because I quasi used to compete with YC in leading seed rounds, and, uh, the number of VC firms throughout the whole life of YC that talk about YC, often in, you know, negative…
- ▶ 1:04:19 Anu Hariharan I mean, I also think it's really hard to understand and appreciate an organization like YC from the outside.
- ▶ 1:04:26 Anu Hariharan You really deeply understand YC in only two ways.
- ▶ 1:04:29 Anu Hariharan If you're a YC founder and if you work within YC.
- ▶ 1:04:32 Anu Hariharan And I mean, outside, when I was at Andreessen Horowitz, I actually did not understand the depth and the cultural nuance with which YC was built.
- ▶ 1:04:45 David Rosenthal So my, I put this in the, in the notes, um, my current mental model of YC is like a university, a top, call it an Ivy League university.
- ▶ 1:04:58 David Rosenthal You take classes, you know, every year or every six months, um, there's an endowment attached to it, which is continuity now, and, uh.
- ▶ 1:05:14 Ben Gilbert All of the proceeds from YC exits go into a big pool of capital that then funds continuity.
- ▶ 1:05:14 Ben Gilbert All of the proceeds from YC exits go into a big pool of capital that then funds continuity.
- ▶ 1:05:46 David Rosenthal Is that a good mental model of YC?
- ▶ 1:05:49 Anu Hariharan We say YC is university for startups.
- ▶ 1:05:51 Anu Hariharan So think of the accelerator as the undergraduate program and continuity as the graduate school.
- ▶ 1:06:00 Anu Hariharan We are modeled after a university in the sense of we have applications, you don't need to know anyone to apply to YC.
- ▶ 1:06:22 Anu Hariharan And YC from day one was a batch.
- ▶ 1:06:46 Anu Hariharan And continuity is graduate school.
- ▶ 1:07:12 Anu Hariharan And remember, the median age of a YC founder is 27, which means they have probably managed a sum total of three people in their life before they founded the company.
- ▶ 1:08:37 Ben Gilbert When a company exits or has a liquidity event, such as Airbnb, what does YC do with that liquidity?
- ▶ 1:08:50 Ben Gilbert And is YC an LP in itself for future continuity funds?
- ▶ 1:08:50 Ben Gilbert And is YC an LP in itself for future continuity funds?
- ▶ 1:09:10 Anu Hariharan And I think that's a new change for YC since 2015, because when YC was started, this model wasn't proven, so it was actually self-funded by the founders.
- ▶ 1:09:43 Anu Hariharan Remember the first check in YC, the first batch was 20,000 dollars.
- ▶ 1:10:07 Anu Hariharan So that's when we brought in, you know, LPs based on a batch, so that if they could pretty much fill the rest of the gap that YC was not able to find.
- ▶ 1:10:16 Ben Gilbert And so, is that still how it works, is each batch and each continuity fund has its own set of LPs that you go on an individual sort of fundraising mission for that specific vehicle?
- ▶ 1:11:30 Ben Gilbert So we could see batch sizes of 1002 thousand YC companies in the future.
- ▶ 1:12:05 Anu Hariharan But, I mean, I think this is why I think it's very hard to compare YC to a venture fund, because if you look at the types of opportunities we have given people in different parts of the world, they would not have stood a chance anywhere…
- ▶ 1:12:24 Anu Hariharan That was true for Airbnb, that was true for Coinbase, that was true for DoorDash, one of the partners at YC kept funding DoorDash,
- ▶ 1:13:05 David Rosenthal Um, we can speculate a lot, and I think we probably have on the show about YC's power at various points in time, but, you know, you're in it.
- ▶ 1:13:14 David Rosenthal What do you, what do you think YC's power is, you know, in the Hamilton Helmer sense of like, enables YC to enable, to earn, uh, differentiated, better differentiated returns versus
- ▶ 1:13:30 David Rosenthal Is it the traditional VC power is brand, but it feels like it's something else with YC.
- ▶ 1:13:53 Anu Hariharan At YC, I would say, if I had to pick one thing YC is really good at, across both early and continuity, is we go based on founders.
- ▶ 1:13:53 Anu Hariharan At YC, I would say, if I had to pick one thing YC is really good at, across both early and continuity, is we go based on founders.
- ▶ 1:14:21 Anu Hariharan You know, you all have heard of the famous 10 minute YC interview, and everyone asks, how do you know in 10 minutes?
- ▶ 1:14:43 Anu Hariharan One is, um, at the continuity stage, right?
- ▶ 1:14:58 Anu Hariharan By the time continuity invests, I probably know them for,
- ▶ 1:17:06 Anu Hariharan Now, there'll be rough edges, but I think because of YC, we've had the benefit of watching everyone from day one.
- ▶ 1:18:50 Anu Hariharan And so that, that colour is very hard to get outside of YC.
- ▶ 1:19:16 Ben Gilbert So, Anu, I'm curious in your mind, paint us the A+, the C, and the F for YC a decade from now, and let's start with the F, because I think it's interesting.
- ▶ 1:19:26 Ben Gilbert Like, YC is so dominant.
- ▶ 1:19:30 Anu Hariharan Well, I think YC is the only platform that has strong network effects, and as all network effects have shown, if you, if we mess up
- ▶ 1:19:38 Anu Hariharan The YC community, that, that is, that is, that is the, because it's, we are, we have this platform only because of the YC founders.
- ▶ 1:20:54 Ben Gilbert Like, give me the BHAG for YC from here.
- ▶ 1:21:36 Anu Hariharan And so, I mean, as I said, we are highly undercapitalized for the success of YC companies.
- ▶ 1:21:45 Ben Gilbert 10 years from now, is there a YC post IPO component?
- ▶ 1:22:33 Anu Hariharan So I think our ambition is how do we scale YC to support more amazing companies and to especially also do it globally.
- ▶ 1:23:00 Anu Hariharan So YC has to learn to scale globally because talent is everywhere.
- ▶ 1:23:55 Ben Gilbert So, to tie it all together, of course, Anu is an investor in Vouch, uh, I believe a board member with the YC Continuity Fund,
- ▶ 1:25:10 Travis Hedge So, this is particularly special to follow Anu, because we launched our first market on demo day August, when we got done with our YC batch, two and a half years ago, and so after two and a half years, 32 states can now say we cover 97% of…
Michael Mauboussin Master Class — Moats, Skill, Luck, Decision Making and a Whole Lot More · Acquired
- ▶ 50:42 David Rosenthal They have raised, uh, fifty million dollars from top firms like Y Combinator, Benchmark, and Altimeter, and they are really just, like, killing it, I think is the correct term.
← previous page 2 of 2 · 100 scenes per page · newest episode first