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Kevin Hale

Former Partner, Y Combinator · 4 appearances on the record.

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founderinvestoroperator@ilikevests ↗LinkedIn ↗particletree.com ↗

Kevin Hale co-founded the online form builder Wufoo, which was acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011. He subsequently joined Y Combinator as a partner and Startup School instructor, where he became known for lectures on product design and evaluating startup ideas.

54statements → 14claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.84/5average debate potential → 19said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 12 not checkable as stated how the 14 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

14 assertions · 3 opinions · 29 insights · 8 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 14 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 12 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 Kevin 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

Assertion Supported
Parker Conrad pitched Zenefits to YC as a solo non-technical founder
“Zenefits is a really good classic one. Parker was a single, non-technical founder who pitched an idea to YC, and he got in that way.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 1:50 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator

Everything Kevin Hale said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Hale: Investors should figure out how non-obvious startups can win
“His job and the way he sees our work at YC is that it's not to figure out what's wrong with the company, but to figure out how it could possibly when. Cause our bets, the ones that when, are the ones that are non-obvious.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 4:18 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Great investors imagine billion-dollar paths and pitch them back
“And so we have to, like, work on our imagination, we have to work on our optimism to figure out, Oh, what is the way that whatever story that they're telling me could become a billion dollar company? And then a great investor pitches that back to the founder.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 4:42 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Kevin Hale: If you must ask if you have PMF, you don't
“If you have to ask the question, you definitely don't have it.”
Kevin Hale Jul 3, 2019 ▶ 40:46 Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Companies over-optimize for serendipitous chance encounters instead of focused execution
“I actually think a lot of companies or organizations, the group over optimize for serendipity. Like they're like, what about that chance moment? But to me, like serendipity, like we were like some random thing happened, all of a sudden we have a great idea. Li…”
Kevin Hale Mar 6, 2019 ▶ 56:31 Mike Knoop on Product and Design Processes for Remote Teams with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Big Tech Experience Does Not Give Founders an Unfair Advantage
“And so if you think it's like, well, I'm a product manager at Google. There's a lot of product managers at Google. If you say you're an engineer at Microsoft, there's a lot of engineers at Microsoft. It's like, great, but it's not one that will make me think, …”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 14:24 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Founders should only give co-founder equity to actual co-founders
“And for us, we actually feel like the only people you should be giving equity, equity to for co-founder is two other co-founders.”
Kevin Hale Jul 3, 2019 ▶ 2:50 Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Opinion
Hale: Video lectures are the least important part of Startup School
“Like, I actually think the lectures are the least important part. Of startup school. Like, it's a one thing that, like, it brings a lot of tension, it helps build up the brand. But those lectures are a way for people to understand and like get help. You know, …”
Kevin Hale Jul 3, 2019 ▶ 6:09 Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: UX features and customer support improve retention, not conversion
“Customer support is actually a good one for improving retention. And it's something I also tell People about in terms of, like, that's a great, like, user experience, and most user experience features, like, a lot of people like to be forward on them, especial…”
Kevin Hale Jul 3, 2019 ▶ 14:03 Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Investors Cannot Accurately Predict Which Startups Reach $10B
“Part of the shotgun model is based on the fact that it's like, we actually can't accurately predict who's going to be a ten billion dollar company.”
Kevin Hale Jul 3, 2019 ▶ 28:33 Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Needing over 10% market share for $100M revenue is implausible
“If they need to capture more than 10% of the market just to get to that hundred million dollar revenue, that's probably not plausible.”
Kevin Hale Jul 3, 2019 ▶ 44:48 Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Freemium Business Models Require Very Large Addressable Markets
“Freemium won't work for every company. Mostly because, like, what it requires is a very, very large market.”
Kevin Hale May 8, 2019 ▶ 32:02 HubSpot CEO and Cofounder Brian Halligan with Wufoo Cofounder Kevin Hale · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Founders work part-time due to lack of conviction, not resources
“It was the main reason why a lot of people are only able to work on their startup sometimes part-time. Yes, they might be stuck without resources, but they didn't have conviction.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 0:34 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Startups are defined strictly by rapid growth
“For us at YC, the definition of a startup is a company that is designed or created to try to grow very quickly. So if you're not trying to build a company that grows very, very fast, ah, then you're just building a normal company. It's a small business.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 2:59 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Disclosure
Kevin Hale never tells founders he dislikes their ideas at recruiting events
“If you ever meet me or talk to me about your startup and kind of recruiting or at one of these events, ah, I will never tell you that I do not like your idea.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 3:39 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Kevin Hale: A startup idea is a hypothesis about rapid growth
“A startup idea is basically a hypothesis, and this is the way you should think about it. It's a hypothesis about why a company could grow quickly, and your job is to figure out how to construct your hypothesis, basically the pitch to the investor, so they unde…”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 5:15 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Frequent problems are vital because they provide more conversion opportunities
“The last one about frequency is super important because I like problems, and you'll find a lot of other YC partners like problems a lot that gives people a lot of opportunities to convert.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 8:09 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Most Startups Struggle with Retention by Not Sending Enough Triggers
“And oftentimes most companies don't send enough, for example, email notifications, or triggers, or reminders, or figure out ways to come back into the app, or figure out ways to be back in front of the user at the right time.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 9:13 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Kevin Hale: Startup Unfair Advantages Must Directly Explain Rapid Growth
“You have to have an unfair advantage that explains why you're gonna grow quickly. If it's not related to that, then it's not gonna be something that an investor is gonna find valuable.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 13:05 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hale: 99% of YC-Funded Founders Lack a True Founder Unfair Advantage
“And, 99% of the people we fund at YC do not fall into that category.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 14:19 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Market growth is the weakest unfair advantage on its own
“If this is your only company advantage, then it's one of the weakest ones that you could have.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 15:11 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Hale: Sole reliance on paid acquisition fails as scale attracts competitors
“If paid acquisition is the only way that you are able to grow your company, then I'm gonna discount that channel of growth greatly. That is because if you actually get really popular, you can actually start being someone significant, Let's say becoming a hundr…”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 16:47 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Opinion
Hale: Blue Apron stalled after exhausting paid customer acquisition channels
“Blue Apron is a really good example of this. Almost all their acquisitions isn't paid, and then once they ate through that, there's almost nowhere else for them to sort of go.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 17:13 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Insight
Kevin Hale: Enterprise startup success is determined by sales ability, not engineering
“So if you are heavy engineering team or doing a BDB or enterprise startup, again, the default is you have to build it. So if you can't even build it, then it's not even gonna work. So I don't spend actually a lot of time looking at that. For me, I'm trying to …”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 19:24 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator
Disclosure
Hale: Wufoo raised only $118k and returned over 30,000%
“For Wufoo, we only raised a 118,000 dollars for the whole life of the company, and our returns were over 30,000 percent.”
Kevin Hale Jul 25, 2019 ▶ 25:25 Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator

Show 24statements(30 left)

The other half of the tape: Kevin Hale's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 18 times in 13 episodes on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Ryan Hoover 4Courtland Allen 3Paul Buchheit 2Kalam Dennis 2Alexandria Lafci 2Mathilde Collin 1Kat Manalac 1David Hua 1

Statements about Kevin Hale, by other people (1)

Insight
Hoover: Pumping your chest before pitching boosts confidence and calms nerves
“Someone gave me this advice actually during YC is before you do anything like that, before you do a pitch, pump your chest physically. It might've been Kevin Hale that said this. Yeah, I could be wrong. So sorry, Kevin, if I'm putting words in your mouth, but …”
Ryan Hoover Feb 15, 2019 ▶ 1:33 Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Launches with Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0043862016201720182019episodesmentions
0362016201720182019episodes it came up in
0013262016201720182019episodesmentions per episode
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2018 7 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
2017 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (4)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator Jul 3, 2019 42m
Analyzing Billions of Transactions to Understand Consumer Behavior - Michael Babineau and May 29, 2019 7m
HubSpot CEO and Cofounder Brian Halligan with Wufoo Cofounder Kevin Hale · Y Combinator May 8, 2019 10m
Mike Knoop on Product and Design Processes for Remote Teams with Kevin Hale · Y Combinator Mar 6, 2019 11m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Kevin Hale was played rather than Kevin taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
Kevin Hale - How to Evaluate Startup Ideas · Y Combinator Jul 25, 2019 23m aired address
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