Tikhon Bernstam
Managing Partner, Uncommon Capital · 1 appearance on the record.
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Bernstam is best known for co-founding the digital document platform Scribd and the mobile backend platform Parse, which was acquired by Facebook in 2013 for approximately $85 million. As an investor at Uncommon Capital and an angel, he has backed major startups including Reddit, Gusto, Optimizely, and Cruise.
23statements → 7claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.74/5average certainty → 1.91/5average debate potential →
3 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
7 assertions · 2 opinions · 11 insights · 2 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 3 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 Tikhon 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
Bernstam: Reddit originally applied to Y Combinator as a food delivery startup
“Much like Reddit was actually a pivot company where like it was actually applied for as something else. Like it was like food delivery stuff. Paul's like, I, yeah, Paul's like, I love you guys, Steve and Alexis, but I hate that idea.”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
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
Everything Tikhon Bernstam said on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Bernstam: Founders should never start companies with people they do not know
“I mean, I don't advise people work with people they don't know.”
Bernstam: International tech hubs should exploit regulatory niches, not copy Silicon Valley
“It feels like every, every city internationally or a lot of them think like, how do we build the Silicon Valley of like, you know, South America, or how do we build the Silicon Valley of like Peru? And it's like, that's not really the right approach. I don't t…”
Bernstam: Solo founders can succeed despite Silicon Valley conventions against them
“I actually like solo founders. I know that's an unconventional thing in the Valley, but Drew was initially a solo founder with Dropbox. And a lot of other great companies were as well, or had one founder who really drove the project through.”
Bernstam: Auditing daily software that annoys you reveals prime startup opportunities
“I really like looking at the software that you use every day, And seeing which ones annoy you, like which ones make you like really cringe. And I always write those down because if you're using that, it means it's probably one of the better products or it's wh…”
Bernstam: Startup studios struggle to find product-market fit due to split focus
“If you're building out, having teams that are working on like six, seven different projects, it's hard to figure out that, that really strong product market fit, which is what most startups fail.”
Bernstam: Anything other than product and PMF is a waste of time
“Everything that's not working on your product and finding product market fit is a waste of time. Like that's the only thing that you should be doing.”
Bernstam: Fundraising too early prevents startups from finding PMF
“The folks who do fundraise too early typically get into real trouble cause they never are able to get the product market fit.”
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…”
Bernstam: B2C long-term traction is much harder to gauge than B2B
“Cause I think in B to C it's much harder to gauge whether you have a long term traction or not, or if you're a chat roulette or something.”
Bernstam: Without a fanatic niche, a startup likely lacks product-market fit
“If you can't find some niche that is absolutely like fanatic about your product then you likely don't have strong product market fit.”
Bernstam: Facebook shutting down Parse was a remarkably graceful sunset
“The company did an amazing job with that. I think it was one of the best shutdowns of a company that I've seen. So often, users are really angry and, like, but this was a really graceful, long, like, over a year notice that we were gonna be shut down. Open sou…”
Bernstam: A great market drags the right product out of a strong team
“A really strong team in a really great market will eventually build the right product, and like, well, they'll figure it out, like, because the market will drag the right product out of them, whether they, whether it's kicking and screaming.”
Bernstam: Investors don't need to rush into deals on Demo Day
“Like say Dropbox and Airbnb, they took like over a year to go from Demo Day to their Series A. So you don't have to actually rush into things at Demo Day. There's a lot of room in the post seed world where you can kind of invest like maybe at a slightly higher…”
Bernstam: Major investors passed on Dropbox at a $2 million valuation
“A lot of famous investors, I won't name, passed on Dropbox at a two million dollar valuation, saying, the space is too crowded.”
Bernstam: Founders should not raise capital before finding product-market fit
“I'm not going to raise money until I have strong product market fit and I know what I'm doing.”
Bernstam: Reddit originally applied to Y Combinator as a food delivery startup
“Much like Reddit was actually a pivot company where like it was actually applied for as something else. Like it was like food delivery stuff. Paul's like, I, yeah, Paul's like, I love you guys, Steve and Alexis, but I hate that idea.”
Bernstam: Modern seed rounds exceed Dropbox and Airbnb's Series A rounds
“The seed rounds today, Are bigger than, like, the Series A that Dropbox and Airbnb did with Sequoia, which I think was roughly a mil each.”
Bernstam: Parse was formed by merging three independent entities
“Parse is actually the merger of three independent entities. So Ilya was a solo founder in Parse. Working on like a find your friends app sort of thing. Which like was very popular at the time. And Kevin wasn't even in YC. Kevin emailed, Kevin had been in YC pr…”
Bernstam: Sourcing the best former colleagues of new hires drives recruiting
“Once we kind of got, like, a couple amazing hires out of the Google search team, we just kept asking every, we asked every single hire, like, who's the best person you've worked with? Like, who would you co-found a company with? And then we would just go, go t…”
Bernstam: Firebase pivoted from web chat into backend services before Google acquisition
“Well, Firebase did, right? So they were actually in our batch. They were a different company at the time. They were doing like basically chat for every website. They were trying to do that for everyone. And they ended up pivoting later into doing basically lik…”
Bernstam: Scribd took at least 18 months to gain real traction
“Me, Tripp, and Jared probably worked on, like, Scribd for at least well, yeah, we worked on Scribd for at least, like, a year and a half before we got, like, real traction on it. So this is back in summer, 2006.”
Bernstam: Scribd founders survived on initial stipend for another year post-YC
“It was another year after YC, so we scratched by on that, and not, I mean, being a, you know, being a wealthy grad student, no so having zero savings, like, for really any of us, because Tripp had just left Harvard, Jared dropped out of Harvard to do this so w…”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces - Tikhon Bernstam · Y Combinator | Sep 8, 2017 | 37m |