Latest Interviews
Showing 1–2 of 2 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Y Combinator7 min
Kat Manalac's Whale AMA
The Winter '17 YC batch features early-stage companies like Simple Habit while continuing a trend of female-led ventures such as Flex and Vote.org from previous cohorts. YC prioritizes direct user validation and evaluates teams based on historical co-founder dynamics to mitigate relationship-driven failures, leveraging an internal alumni network that actively supports current founders. Regional diversity is highlighted by Australian success stories like Proxy.co and Go1, alongside strategic guidance that encourages founders to visualize massive market scale during the application review process.
- Y Combinator18 min
Q&A with YC at the Female Founders Conference 2016
Jessica Livingston, Kat Manalac, Carolynn Levy, Kirsty Nathoo
Y Combinator partners Jessica Levy and others outline a philosophy that prioritizes founder determination, execution capability, and deep problem ownership over specific stages or demographic profiles, welcoming teams from initial ideas to established companies. Through case studies of Gobble and Airbnb, the discussion illustrates how the accelerator invests in scrappy founders who can clearly articulate their value, while warning against hastening co-founder additions without organic validation. As the program scales to funding approximately 1,000 startups annually, the focus remains on acquiring users and overcoming the "trough of sorrow" to build resilient, domain-expert-led ventures.