Grow the Puzzle Around You (opens in new tab)

If you've spent any time working with stage managers, this isn't counterintuitive at all. Complex human endeavor runs more smoothly with a skilled and dedicated operator systematically clearing the logistical and interpersonal hurdles, creating a conducive space for the "real" work. We've known this for a while in performing arts. I hope call-outs like this will bring tech around to the role’s importance.

Thanks Jessica for that wonderful and candid post. I've applied for YC once a while back but didn't get in. I think many founders who don't have access to YC get bitter and start thinking it's a clan and only certain type of people (Elite schools, etc.) get in.

I think the problem, as you rightly pointed out, is that a lot of entrepreneurs are not that at all. They want to start a company and do a me-too venture just to ride the 'Sold to XYZ' train.

No one likes the test or to be judged by others and resent being rejected. When we talk of emotional intelligence, I think it's about knowing what you want to and can do, and allowing your peers or mentors to help you get there. I've met many YC alums and do see a certain set of qualities that unite them - I suspect those are the ones you picked up on :)

Thanks to you and the YC team for creating a wonderful new pathways to fulfillment for budding entrepreneurs.

> The first was the quality that caused my YC cofounders to nickname me "The Social Radar." I was one of those kids that you just couldn’t get anything past. If something seemed off or out of character, I noticed and made inquiries. I was always trying to figure things out based on subtle social cues.

> When it came to investing, I had something that my cofounders didn’t have: I was the Social Radar. I couldn’t judge our applicants’ technical ability, or even most of the ideas. My cofounders were experts at those things. I looked at qualities of the applicants my cofounders couldn't see. Did they seem earnest? Were they determined? Were they flexible-minded? And most importantly, what was the relationship between the cofounders like? While my partners discussed the idea with the applicants, I usually sat observing silently. Afterward, they would turn to me and ask, "Should we fund them?"

Perhaps the unreplicable advantage of YC in its early years.

I've always been fascinated by this and would like to learn more about how to do this. However, I think it is really a function of how much experience you have talking to real people. For example, it is easier for me to retroactively analyze a social situation after it happens (like a date) than to proactively act and do the "right things" in the moment of the situation. I think it really comes down to how much true experience and pattern recognition you have. You can't analyze a situation correctly until you have been through it way too many times and can "step back" from yourself.

I think perhaps a small handful of my more socially adept friends are good at it but probably not at the level of JL.

First of, thanks for being part of YC and making it such a great place. I've never been there, but the whole spirit is healthy and that I very much appreciate.

>I looked at qualities of the applicants my cofounders couldn't see. Did they seem earnest? Were they determined? Were they flexible-minded? And most importantly, what was the relationship between the cofounders like?

I second this. People who say soft skills are dead or unnecessary are wrong in my opinion. Of course, software is software and hardware is hardware. But how does it get there? And where does it go from there? People help people and being nice to each other is not only more beautiful, but also leads to higher productivity in my experience. Having more empathy for your co-founders, employees and investors goes a long way.

What a great piece. There is a distinctive quality that YC's alum have in common has shaped the rest of the software world. Would Microsoft be reshaping its culture as it is without Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit and others demonstrating a new way to operate, a new set of values? The world is better off IMHO with the ethic that Jessica helped create. Go English Majors!

> I read the book Startup by Jerry Kaplan, about his pen computing company called GO, and I was immediately hooked.

Incidentally, I read Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston back in my college senior year in 2012 and, as she put it, was immediately hooked.

Thanks for writing that book, and for everything else you've done for the startup world.

Jessica's 2001 (wow!) book "Founder's at Work"[1] is something everyone should read.

The stories behind lots of theses names everyone has heard are amazing. I still remember reading it in about 2006 and being so immediately impressed with everything Paul Buchheit said. It was shocking to me, because I'd started that chapter thinking he shouldn't be in the book ("Gmail? He's not a founder!").

The other thing was the superficial "insights" that one particular (well known) founder had in the book. They were clearly wrong, and they have colored my thinking about luck and being in the right place ever since. It's only recently I've started rethinking that after they made some good (lucky?) investments over the last few years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founders_at_Work

Great, much needed article.

I wouldn’t use Mark Zuckerberg as an example of someone you “got right” though. Whether his creation has been a net gain for society as a whole is highly debatable, which I think should disqualify him as an entrepreneurial success story.

I enjoyed the article, but I worked for a startup in 1999 that was funded by a technology accelerator. So it would appear Ycombinator wasn't the first, unless this is meant in some more specific way.

Reading this gave me goosebumps. Bravo Jessica, you should be increbily proud of your work and what you’ve helped others achieve.

Photo of Alexis Ohanian at dinner in first batch is classic!

That first class all looked like misfits, social outcasts, and the typical d&d crowd. Entrepreneurship wasn't cool back then. I think those are who I will invest in if I'm ever in that position: people who are entrepreneurs because they have no other choice, not people who are entrepreneurs because they could do anything.

Jeez, how painful to think that she has to explain her role regularly just because she is a woman. My wife and I are both software developers, and recently moved from Helsinki to Berlin, with two kids. If you could see the faces when we tell people how we moved here, "with _her_ job" :D First they look at her, like "does she look the part", and then looking at me, like "what does he really do?" It's actually fun, and more of "our thing" to watch those reactions than a pain, but in the bigger scheme of things what a waste that we are scared of all those wonderful women who could work with us, but don't.

It is interesting that someone who works at the forefront of startups which thrive on adoption and change makes an argument that if you read between the lines, it's essentially an argument for Nature in the good ol' Nature vs Nurture debate.

This is an amazing story. Truly inspiring, thank you.

I absolutely grant that Livingston was crucial to YC's success but it would be wrong to ignore the reality of what holds most people back: lack of opportunity.

The opportunity that Paul Graham gave Jessica Livingston is being massively underplayed here. He would not have chosen to start YC without her but he could have. It very well might've failed without her. That's entirely possible. But she absolutely could not have started YC without him and his money. She would have had no opportunity to become the great success story she has become.

YC partners fund ~3% of the founders that ask them for opportunity. That leaves ~97% of people out in the cold, desperate for the same kind of opportunity that made them successful.

The reason YC funds so few founders used to be their limited resources. Now they have all the resources they could possibly want and they've consciously chosen not to scale. YC has become a VC firm that is perpetuating exactly the problem they were founded to fix. It's an exclusive club for the chosen few and a mark against anyone that is not granted membership. Just like the old elitist VCs they were supposed to replace.

I don't begrudge YC or any of its partners their personal success. I do think YC has gone from being a potentially great force for good to probably a net negative for society.

Nice read, but it could have done without the patronizing 'what you should learn from my story'.