The Exchanges

Q So, I thought it was interesting out of the seven examples, something that was on the AI side. Is that, any ideas of examples there?

A Yeah, sure. So the, the question was, um, of the examples, I didn't mention any AI companies, and that's a great point. I probably should have included one. There's a really famous YC company that's an AI company called Cruise. You guys heard of Cruise? Cruise built self-driving cars, and they got acquired by GM for a billion dollars. Um, and yeah, Cruise is a great example of a hard tech company. Um, the original Cruise car, um, Was built in less than three months during YC. Kyle basically just, like, was in a garage building this car and writing code for, like, three months solid, and by the end of YC he had an MVP that he could use to drive on the highway to show that, like, basically he could build a self-driving car.

AI assessment note: “There's a really famous YC company that's an AI company called Cruise.”

Q And so Jared, you have experience with this directly. Having hired quite a bit at Scribd before, and you were also part of the Work at a Startup, before it was known as Work at a Startup, conference in 2010, right?

A Yeah, so it's actually not a new idea, per se, for YC to try to help its companies hire. Hacker News, from the very beginning, when we first created it back in, I think, 2009, um, Part of the goal was to help companies hire, and so it's had a job section from day one, and when I was at my startup, I used the Hacker News job section a lot, and it was incredibly helpful for hiring. I think probably half the engineering team that we hired came through Hacker News, and that's not atypical for YC companies. So we have sort of a long history of this. Um, we've also long had an internal forum for YC founders, where they share Candidates that aren't right for them, but could be great for somebody else. And, um, that's also worked extremely well. And so it was the, the origins of this project were kind of like, we saw that this was working and that there was tremendous demand for it and everybody wanted us to do more. And so the work of the startup product is trying to build just a better, more efficient, More sophisticated version of the Hacker News jobs board and the internal form that we've had for a long time.

AI assessment note: “when I was at my startup, I used the Hacker News job section a lot”

Q And yeah, what's the experience going to be like for an attendee? What can they expect?

A So I think the most, the most compelling reason to go as an attendee is if you think you might be interested in working at a startup, but you're not really sure which one or how to think about it. If you come to the work at a startup event, you'll get in a short period of time, like a really compressed view of what's out there on the market, what your options are as an engineer right now in, in, in, in, in, and you'll get to talk to the founders because after After the talks, we're going to have just like a mingling session where you can just walk up to the founders of any company and head to know them.

AI assessment note: “after the talks, we're going to have just like a mingling session”

Q deliver, then, like, we'll give you X or whatever, but it seems like a lot of companies would want to, like, plan specifically around, like, okay, if I need these organisms or whatever, like, do I have a plan that's definitely going to get me the organisms, or am I, like, Maybe if I haven't, that's great. That seems like a weird situation. So how do you get around that?

A Yeah, so I'm, I'll try to paraphrase the question. Um, it was like, it seems like getting an LOI would be hard, because the company doesn't know if you're actually going to be able to deliver it, and they have to, like, plan around that. Um, and the answer is yes. It is hard to get LOIs. Like, even though LOIs are not binding, they're actually pretty hard to get. Um, and, The weird thing is that the very fact that they're hard is it makes them valuable. If they were easy, they wouldn't be worth anything. So the, the reason that they're kind of valuable is that it is hard to get a company to do that. They'll typically only do it if you're solving a really critical pain point for them. If it's just like a nice to have, it's gonna be hard to get an LOI, um, which is actually really good signal for you to know that you're working on something that's a really big problem for them.

AI assessment note: “They'll typically only do it if you're solving a really critical pain point”

Q In particular, what are the, the additions that differentiate it from, you know, HN job posting, for example?

A Yeah, absolutely. So the way I think about hiring is like, it's fundamentally a matching problem, right? There's a great company for everyone, and for every company, there's a set of people who would be perfect for them. But it's really hard To make that match happen. And it's especially hard for startups. For large companies like a Microsoft, they hire people of all kinds. And so the, the matching just becomes easier because they're hiring for so many roles. If you apply to Microsoft, there's a good chance there's a role there that like could be a good fit for you. But with startups who are only hiring for a couple of roles that don't have brand names, you don't know who they are, what they do, if you'd be interested, what roles they're hiring for. And so the matching problem is particularly hard for startups. And that's why we've been working really hard on it. Um, Matt would be a great person to talk about some of the, the ways that we're trying to solve a mashing problem. It's still, it's still early days. It's a really hard problem, but I think we have some interesting ideas.

AI assessment note: “Matt would be a great person to talk about some of the, the ways”