Jessica Livingston
41 statements across 8 episodes · 23 bullish · 7 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement Mar 12, 2014 by Jessica Livingston · said 14 times in 12 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Jessica Livingston's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Domonique Fines (3), Geoff Ralston (2), Vivek Ravisankar (1), Tikhon Bernstam (1), Spencer Skates (1), Paul Graham (1), Ooshma Garg (1), Eric Migicovsky (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2018 7 mentions in 7 episodes 1 per episode
- The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
- A Conversation on Hard Tech with Eric Migicovsky · Y Combinator
- PR + Content for Growth by Kat Mañalac and Craig Cannon · Y Combinator
- A Conversation with Ooshma Garg - Moderated by Adora Cheung · Y Combinator
- A Conversation with Paul Graham - Moderated by Geoff Ralston · Y Combinator
- Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung Discuss Startup School · Y Combinator
- Breaking Down HackerRank's Survey of 40,000 Developers with Vivek Ravisankar · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
Everything said about Jessica Livingston, oldest first
Mar 12, 2014 positive
Livingston: Quietly determined founders beat loud 'scenesters' who cannot build
“Quietly determined people, by the way, often beat out the people who talk loudly but do nothing but talk. Like, I call these people scenesters, and there are a lot of them in the startup world, but quietly determined people tend to win Because the scenesters, …”
Mar 12, 2014 bullish
Mar 12, 2014 positive
Mar 12, 2014 negative
Livingston: Press credited Paul Graham for a conference announcement she wrote
“I spent all morning working on announcing this conference, and here's my blog post right here, announcing the female founders conference, and so what turned up later that day in the press? Paul Graham announced his conference for women founders.”
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014
Livingston: Female founders are less likely to have programmer friends
“Since a smaller percentage of women are programmers, and most people are likely to be close friends with people of their same gender, that means a woman who wants to start a startup is less likely than a man to have a close friend who's a programmer.”
Mar 12, 2014 positive
Livingston: Quiet founders can succeed but risk being ignored by loud observers
“So you can remain true to your nature, but be prepared, because although your startup will be fine if you're quiet, there's a side effect that might surprise you, which is that you will be ignored by people who can only hear loud voices.”
Mar 12, 2014 negative
Mar 12, 2014 positive
Feb 23, 2015 negative
Feb 23, 2015 positive
Feb 23, 2015 positive
Livingston: Separate functional domains help married co-founders avoid competition
“We didn't do the same things, so we weren't competitive, and I think that that was useful. We were always sort of trying to make YC better, but because we did different things, we, you know, had our own domains, and that was probably good for our marriage.”
Feb 23, 2015 neutral
May 31, 2016 positive
May 31, 2016 positive
Livingston was impressed by Airbnb founders hand-gluing custom cereal boxes
“In fact, sometimes I wonder if we funded them because I was so impressed by the fact that they, like, hand glue gunned their cereals, the Obama O's and the Captain, you know, campaign. Skills. I was like, whoa, these guys are scrappy. They're selling cereal on…”
May 31, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 neutral
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Livingston: Batch funding works by teaching founders together and ending isolation
“We learned very, very quickly into the three months that funding startups in a batch was incredibly powerful, and it was powerful in that you could teach them all sort of the same things at once and they became colleagues, because starting a startup as one or …”
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 negative
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Aug 30, 2016 neutral
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Livingston: Female founders should tune out noise and focus solely on product
“You can't worry too much about what everyone's saying, and all the noise, and like, oh, it's so much harder as a woman. Yes, it's harder as a woman. I've been discriminated against, you know, it's, but I have always kept focused on my product, and You know, wh…”
Aug 30, 2016 negative
Livingston: Blind dates and last-minute co-founder pairings rarely work out
“Rarely. I'm trying to think of an example, and off the top of my head, I can't think of an example. Wow. Of two people who were introduced, or sort of bolted on to each other at the last minute, ever working. I'm sure there are examples of it has, having work,…”
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Aug 30, 2016 neutral
Livingston: YC bought and delivered 10 air conditioners during first batch
“We had eight startups in that batch, and they were all living scattered around the Harvard Square area, and there was a heat wave, and we were like, we can't have our founders not being able to work, so I went to Home Depot and I bought, like, 10 air condition…”
Aug 30, 2016
Livingston: Top founders have grand plans but start much smaller
“I think that all of the most successful founders have ambitious plans and they certainly start a lot smaller. Like, they seem much less important when they're first getting started, but I think the founders do have a grand plan. I have to believe, though, that…”
Aug 30, 2016 negative
Livingston: PR and networking distract early-stage founders from building product
“Talking to big companies to try to form partnerships in an attempt to get better distribution or somehow You know, get more users. To do a lot of PR before you've nailed down the product to talk to corp dev people when you're not thinking about being acquired …”
Aug 30, 2016 bullish
Livingston: Close-friend, technical 22-year-olds make the best early-stage bet
“They were college roommates and, like, best friends, or growing up, and so they had known each other for a long time and had this, like, great trust, and so when they wanted to build something, they were both excellent programmers, you know, and that's as good…”
Aug 30, 2016 positive
Livingston: Determination matters more than intelligence or school success for founders
“If I had to say the most important traits of the most successful founders, I've already mentioned determination. That is by far the most important quality. More than intelligence. More than previous success, you know, in school.”
Sep 8, 2017 positive
Bernstam: Scribd and most early batch startups would have failed without YC
“Honestly, we would never have made it without that program. And I think that's true of actually most Of those companies and I, I'd argue probably most of the companies because without that community of, like, like-minded people who are highly motivated and wor…”
Jul 11, 2018 positive
Jul 11, 2018 negative
Jul 11, 2018 positive
Jul 11, 2018 positive
Aug 7, 2018 positive
Ralston: Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, and Michael Seibel to speak at Startup School
“Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston will be taking part in the course and giving some of their wisdom, which is also broad need to founders everywhere in the world, but we're also going to have other YC partners. Sam Altman, who's the president of Y Combinator,…”