David Lieb</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/koomen/">Pete Koomen</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/RichAberman/">Rich Aberman</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/umurc/">Umur Cubukcu</a>.</p><p><strong>Emmett Shear</strong></p><p>Emmett was co-founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.twitch.tv//">Twitch, where millions of people come together live every day to chat, interact, and make their own entertainment together. For 16 years, he worked on live video for the internet starting with <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/twitch/">Justin.tv (W07), which later became Twitch Inc. </p><p>In 2014, Twitch Inc. became a fully owned subsidiary of Amazon and the platform has grown to more than 8 million streamers a month. Emmett resigned as CEO in February 2023 and now works with Twitch in an advisory role. </p><p>He graduated from Yale University in 2005 with a degree in computer science. Emmett lives with hisfamily in San Francisco and is happiest when he’s learning something new.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">YC has been part of my life since summer of ‘05 when I went through the program for my first startup, Kiko Calendar (“Google is so stupid, can you believe they haven’t made a calendar to go w Gmail?”).</p>— Emmett Shear (@eshear) <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1656812142476288001?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\%22>May 12, 2023</a></blockquote>\n<script async src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js/" charset=\"utf-8\"></script>\n</figure><p><strong>Wayne Crosby</strong></p><p>Wayne is passionate about helping people and teams reach their full potential. He was a co-founder of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zenter/">Zenter (W07), a collaborative presentation product that was acquired by Google and turned into Google Slides. Wayne spent ten years at Google scaling and leading teams including GSuite, Machine Intelligence, and both successful and ill-fated parts of Google+. GSuite became Google’s fourth product to have more than 1B users and generate more than $1B in revenue. </p><p>Wayne’s professional experience and his desire to help others led him to become an angel investor, and he’s invested in dozens of Y Combinator companies over the years. In 2017, Wayne co-founded his second company, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://humu.com/">Humu, a product that uses behavioral science and machine learning to help teams at large enterprises achieve greater happiness and better performance. Humu raised over $100M to deliver on its mission to make work better for everyone, everywhere. </p><p>Always the consummate builder, Wayne is also the founder of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://orgorg.us/">OrgOrg, a company that is building a suite of small business tools to help organizations run more efficiently. Above all, Wayne knows that none of his success would have been possible without the <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=288914\%22>support of his family</a>, and he loves spending time with them, their dog, and their hairless cat in the Bay Area. </p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Y Combinator changed the trajectory of my life, and I’m so excited to be back! This time as a visiting partner.<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://t.co/Fa3XsoUtNp/">https://t.co/Fa3XsoUtNp— Wayne (@wcrosby) <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/wcrosby/status/1656812373066530817?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\%22>May 12, 2023</a></blockquote>\n<script async src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js/" charset=\"utf-8\"></script>\n</figure>","comment_id":"645bf0808d5a140001e31726","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/05/Emmett-Shear-Wayne-Crosby.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-05-10T12:29:04.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-10-06T08:35:15.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-05-11T16:59:59.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, we’re excited to welcome Emmett Shear and Wayne Crosby as our newest Visiting Group Partners.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71160","name":"Partners","slug":"partners","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/partners/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/welcome-back-to-yc-emmett-shear-and-wayne-crosby/","excerpt":"Today, we’re excited to welcome Emmett Shear and Wayne Crosby as our newest Visiting Group Partners.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"Y Combinator Visiting Group Partners Emmett Shear and Wayne Crosby","feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"6361a7d8b221a60001ccd254","uuid":"48b7fa37-aaa0-4fce-9af0-a39051d3ee18","title":"Welcome Diana, Dave, Edrizio, and Umur","slug":"welcome-diana-dave-edrizio-and-umur","html":"<p>Every batch, we invite founders and executives to advise YC companies as Visiting Group Partners. These advisors bring valuable insights and recent operational experience to YC’s early-stage companies. Throughout the batch, they take on a variety of responsibilities, including application reading, interviews, group and individual office hours, Demo Day prep, and more.</p><p>As YC grows, some of our Visiting Group Partners join us full time as Group Partners to continue supporting YC companies and build out new programs and initiatives to better support our community. </p><p>Today, we’re excited to welcome Diana Hu as our newest Group Partner and Dave Lieb, Edrizio Delacruz, and Umur Cubukcu, as our newest Visiting Group Partners. And <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-s22-visiting-group-partners/">welcome back</a> to Visiting Group Partners JJ Fliegelman, Liz Wessel, Pete Koomen, Puneet Kumar, Rich Aberman, and Tom Blomfield.</p><h3 id=\"group-partner\">Group Partner</h3><p>After three batches as a Visiting Group Partner, Diana Hu is joining YC as a Group Partner.</p><p><strong>Diana Hu</strong><br>Diana was co-founder and CTO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/escher-reality/">Escher Reality</a> (YC S17), an Augmented Reality Backend company that was acquired by Niantic (makers of Pokémon Go). At Niantic, she was the head of the AR platform. Previously, she led data science at OnCue TV that was sold to Verizon. Originally from Chile, Diana graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a focus in computer vision and machine learning.</p><h3 id=\"visiting-group-partners\">Visiting Group Partners<br></h3><p><strong>Dave Lieb</strong><br>Dave was co-founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/bump/">Bump (S09), the mobile app used by more than 150M people to share photos and contact info by bumping phones together. After pivoting to photo sharing, Bump was acquired by Google in 2013, and its unreleased Photoroll app formed the basis for Google Photos, which Dave co-founded and led from inception to more than 1B users. Before Bump, Dave was a researcher in the Stanford AI Lab and a software engineer at Texas Instruments. He holds EE/CS degrees from Princeton and Stanford and finished ½ an MBA at Chicago Booth before dropping out to start Bump. Dave lives with his family in San Francisco and enjoys skiing, cycling, and reading tweets.</p><p><strong>Edrizio Delacruz</strong><br>Edrizio was the co-founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/arcus/">Arcus (S13), a Latin America payments platform. The company grew to serve over 200 clients and process billions of dollars annually. In 2021, the company was sold to Mastercard. Edrizio holds an MBA from The Wharton School. He was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in Harlem, and now resides in Miami. He loves comedy, hiking, writing, and his one-year-old baby girl.</p><p><strong>Umur Cubukcu</strong><br>Umur was the co-founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/citus-data/">Citus Data</a> (S11), the creators of Citus, the distributed PostgreSQL database, and the first company in the world to donate equity to open source foundations. With millions of downloads and powering database infrastructure across Fortune 500 and SaaS companies, Citus Data was acquired by Microsoft in 2019; and Umur has since led the PostgreSQL product team at Azure. Umur received his MS from Stanford University, and lives with his wife and son in San Francisco, visiting Turkey every summer.</p>","comment_id":"6361a7d8b221a60001ccd254","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/11/BlogTwitter-Image-Template.jpeg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-11-01T16:12:24.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-11-02T08:57:19.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-11-02T08:55:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Today, we’re excited to welcome Diana Hu as our newest Group Partner and Dave Lieb, Edrizio Delacruz, and Umur Cubukcu, as our newest Visiting Group Partners.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/welcome-diana-dave-edrizio-and-umur/","excerpt":"Today, we’re excited to welcome Diana Hu as our newest Group Partner and Dave Lieb, Edrizio Delacruz, and Umur Cubukcu, as our newest Visiting Group Partners.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"626b07a754a948000183a4e2","uuid":"ebf26b06-b133-419d-9373-175a5f20af27","title":"Welcome S22 Visiting Group Partners","slug":"welcome-s22-visiting-group-partners","html":"<p>Every batch, we invite founders and executives to advise YC companies as Visiting Group Partners. These advisors bring valuable insights and recent operational experience to YC’s early-stage companies. Throughout the batch, they take on a variety of responsibilities, including application reading, interviews, group office hours, individual office hours, demo day prep, and more.<br></p><p>Welcome to JJ, Liz, Pete, and Puneet. And <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/welcome-surbhi-nicolas-divya-ashu-and-tom/">welcome back</a> to Divya, Ashu, Tom, and Rich who joined us after the W22 Visiting Group Partners were announced.<br></p><p><strong>JJ Fliegelman</strong></p><p>JJ was co-founder and CTO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wayup/">WayUp (W15), the leading DEI recruiting platform used by millions. WayUp raised $40 million and was named by CNN as one of the 30 most innovative companies changing the world. JJ has been featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30, Silicon Valley 100, and as a speaker and advisor on technology and hiring topics. Prior to WayUp, JJ spent a year as a freelancing backpacker in 16 countries, then joined McKinsey as a consultant in New York. JJ received his BA in International Studies and BS in Economics from Penn and enjoys languages and linguistics, cooking with his flamethrower, fancy coffee, and decidedly unfancy $1 pizza.<br></p><p><strong>Liz Wessel</strong></p><p>Liz was co-founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wayup/">WayUp (W15), the leading Diversity & Inclusion recruitment platform used by 6+ million candidates (71% of whom self-identify as underrepresented) and thousands of employers. WayUp raised $40M, and after 7 years, merged with Yello, another recruitment software platform. Liz has been featured in various publications from Forbes 30 Under 30 to Business Insider’s “18 Coolest Women in Silicon Valley.” Prior to WayUp, Liz was in the APMM program at Google (in San Francisco and India), and before that, Liz attended the University of Pennsylvania where she studied political science, mathematics, and Japanese. With her free time, Liz enjoys hiking with her husband and their cavapoo, volunteering on a weekly basis, traveling, and working with / investing in great founders.<br></p><p><strong>Pete Koomen</strong></p><p>Pete co-founded <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optimizely/">Optimizely (W10) which helps companies run experiments on their websites and apps. For more than a decade, he helped Optimizely grow from inception to $100M+ in ARR and, ultimately, an acquisition in 2020. Pete holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. An avid rock climber, he lives in Reno with his wife.<br></p><p><strong>Puneet Kumar</strong></p><p>Puneet was the founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/supr-daily/">Supr Daily</a> (W17), a consumer grocery startup based out of India that was acquired by Swiggy. Supr created the daily delivery model by reducing the last mile costs by 10x. Before exiting Supr, he scaled the company to $100M in annual revenue run rate. He is a 2x founder, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, and a maker by background. He currently lives in Bangalore with his wife.<br></p><p><strong>Rich Aberman</strong></p><p>Rich co-founded <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wepay/">WePay (S09), a multi-party payments API for B2B SaaS platforms, POS systems, and online marketplaces. As Chief Product and Strategy Officer, he helped raise $75M in venture capital, grow the company to 300 employees, and achieve profitability before being acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2018. Following the acquisition, Rich was a Managing Director at Chase Payment Solutions until 2021. He holds a degree in economics, political science, and philosophy from Boston College, and lives with his wife and young son in Santa Cruz, California, where he is an avid surfer and golfer.</p>","comment_id":"626b07a754a948000183a4e2","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/05/BlogTwitter-Image-Template.jpg","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-04-28T14:31:19.000-07:00","updated_at":"2022-05-11T09:14:00.000-07:00","published_at":"2022-05-11T09:14:00.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Welcome to our newest YC S22 Visiting Group Partners: JJ, Liz, Pete, Puneet, and Rich! We’re excited for them to bring their insights and operational experiences to our next batch of companies.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71160","name":"Partners","slug":"partners","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/partners/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/welcome-s22-visiting-group-partners/","excerpt":"Welcome to our newest YC S22 Visiting Group Partners: JJ, Liz, Pete, Puneet, and Rich! We’re excited for them to bring their insights and operational experiences to our next batch of companies.","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/05/BlogTwitter-Image-Template-1.jpg","twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":"First row: JJ Fliegelman and Liz Wessel. Second row: Pete Koomen, Puneet Kumar, and Rich Aberman."},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a7190c","uuid":"16c90591-abca-4fca-9c2d-90843ef076a1","title":"Advice for New Managers","slug":"advice-for-new-managers","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p><strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/aaron_epstein/">Aaron Epstein</a> is the cofounder of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://creativemarket.com//">Creative Market</a>.</strong></p>\n<p>One of the most difficult things about starting a company is that you have to create both a product that people love and a company where people want to work <em>at the same time</em>. It’s usually not enough to <em>just</em> have a great product, or <em>just</em> be a great place to work, because great people build great products, and great people won’t tolerate a bad environment for very long.</p>\n<p>People leave managers, not companies, yet while most founders are obsessive about trying to build a product that people love, many first-time founders raise a bunch of money and start building a team without any management experience at all.</p>\n<p>I was one of those first-time founders who had to quickly learn on the job, so here’s some advice I wish someone had given me when I was just beginning to grow and manage a team at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://creativemarket.com//">Creative Market</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>Delegate!</strong><br />\nAs a founder you’re used to doing it all, and it can be scary to shed responsibilities you’ve always owned, but you can’t scale yourself and focus on the highest leverage opportunities until you get things off your plate. If you think you’re going to have to work especially late or can’t get to the things you need to in a given day, take that as a signal to delegate to your team.</p>\n<p><strong>Create growth opportunities.</strong><br />\nGreat people often care about personal growth way more than money or any other tangible benefit you could offer them, so the flip-side of delegating your responsibilities is that you create opportunities for people on your team to do new things, learn, and grow. Don’t hoard them all for yourself.</p>\n<p><strong>Invest in your stars.</strong><br />\nSimilar to how it’s much easier to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one, it’s much easier to keep an existing star employee happy than find a new star. Go above and beyond to make sure your stars feel valued, appreciated, and rewarded.</p>\n<p>Set a high bar. Great people want to do big, meaningful things. Push your team with aggressive goals, and you might be surprised what they will accomplish.</p>\n<p><strong>Lead by example.</strong><br />\nTeams embody the characteristics of their leaders, and the things you care about will be the things your team cares about. If you sweat the details, your team will learn to sweat the details too.</p>\n<p><strong>Your team’s success is your success.</strong><br />\nGet satisfaction and the feeling of accomplishment from the success of your team. As an individual contributor, it’s easy to look back at the end of a week and feel good about all that you’ve directly produced. As a manager, you’re responsible for the accomplishments of your team, which can be a difficult transition for a lot of people. The advantage is that you can scale yourself and your vision.</p>\n<p><strong>Deflect all credit and absorb all blame.</strong><br />\nUse “I” when talking about a screw-up, and use “we” (or better yet, specific contributors’ names) when talking about successes. A little recognition goes a long way to make people feel valued.</p>\n<p><strong>Share the big picture.</strong><br />\nIt’s important for people on your team to understand how their work and role fits into the big picture of the business, and why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’ll give them a sense of purpose and motivation to understand how they’re contributing to the success of the business. It’s easy to take it for granted that your team is clear on this, but this is one of those things where you want to constantly make that connection.</p>\n<p><strong>Repeat yourself often.</strong><br />\nYou should feel like you sound like a broken record about the things that are important to your company — your mission, your vision, your KPIs, etc. You think about it all the time, but the people on your team don’t, and most people need to hear something many times before it truly gets ingrained in their memory. You’ll know you’re repeating key messages enough when every single person on your team will be able to explain them to a complete stranger exactly how you would’ve said it.</p>\n<p><strong>You’re in charge.</strong><br />\nIt can be uncomfortable telling people what to do if you’ve never done it before. But you are the leader, and everyone on your team will be looking to you for direction and guidance, so own it. People want structure and direction, so don’t be afraid to use phrases like “I need…” and “I want…” to shape your team in your image.</p>\n<p><strong>Focus on the What, not the How.</strong><br />\nCommunicate your vision for what success looks like, to give your team a framework and goals to guide their decisions and work. It’s a way for you to “be in the room” when the work gets done without micromanaging the work.</p>\n<p><strong>Set deadlines and hold people accountable.</strong><br />\nWhen you give someone a task, ask “by when?”, then add a note to your calendar to follow up to make sure it’s complete. If standards or deadlines are not being met, give direct feedback to change future behavior.</p>\n<p><strong>Verbalize your thoughts.</strong><br />\nSimply saying things like “I’m disappointed in this work” is extremely powerful in helping people directly understand where you stand. People aren’t mind-readers, so rather than just jumping into solutions when giving feedback, state your feelings out loud to be clear and direct.</p>\n<p><strong>Manage for the employee.</strong><br />\nMy favorite interview question for manager candidates is “How would you describe your management style?”, where the best possible answer is “it depends on the employee”. Each person has a unique combination of experience, motivations, personality, etc, and it’s up to you to take the right management approach that helps them succeed and maximizes their contribution.</p>\n<p><strong>Understand that everyone’s different.</strong><br />\nJust because you may be an achiever that’s self-motivated to get things done doesn’t mean that everyone else on your team is. Get curious to figure out what drives and motivates each individual on your team, rather than assuming everyone’s like you.</p>\n<p><strong>Hire slow, fire fast.</strong><br />\nIt’s the thing everyone says and few have the discipline to do, but hiring well is the most important thing you can possibly do to positively impact your business and your team. Great people want to work with other great people, so resist the temptation to fill open positions with mediocre candidates, and don’t settle. You should be thrilled about each new hire.</p>\n<p>Hire for hunger. It’s great when a potential candidate walks in the door with all the skills needed to succeed in the role, but passion for your mission, business, and team will do more to drive an employee to make a big, long-term impact than any specific skills they may have. Passionate employees will be quicker to teach themselves new skills too, especially as your business changes and grows.</p>\n<p><strong>Set your team up for success.</strong><br />\nIt’s unfair to expect even the best people to hit the ground running on day one without being properly onboarded. As their manager, it’s your responsibility to invest the time early on to set expectations, show them the ropes, teach them about your business, train them, and provide clear direction and a well-defined role. Anything less will diminish their ability to succeed.</p>\n<p><strong>Your trust should be earned.</strong><br />\nDon’t just assume that new and more inexperienced team members will hit the ground running and understand your expectations from day one. Make them prove themselves first by working more closely with them and frequently reviewing their work until they’ve earned your full trust.</p>\n<p><strong>Shield your team from distractions.</strong><br />\nProvide structure, focus, and clear goals for your team to maximize their ability to execute on the strategy. They should come in to work each day knowing exactly what they’re working on and exactly what they need to do, and any other distractions should be deflected to keep from derailing productivity, wasting time, and knocking the team off course.</p>\n<p><strong>Include your team in decision-making.</strong><br />\nIf you’ve hired great people, you’d be crazy not to include them in important decisions. Define the decision-making process upfront to set expectations for your team — will it be a decision by committee, will someone else on your team own the decision, or will you gather feedback to make the final call yourself? Listen to their thoughts and opinions with an open mind, make sure everyone feels heard, then decide the best course of action. It may even go against the consensus of the team, and that’s ok so long as you’ve defined the process and expectations up front. Even if your team disagrees with the final call, by including them in the process they will better understand the decision, feel like their opinion was valued, and be able to get on board to help support the decision going forward.</p>\n<p><strong>A little professional tension is healthy.</strong><br />\nDiffering perspectives help make teams and products better, so a little professional tension can be really valuable to help push your team to think about things in new ways. It should be net-positive though, so if it’s forcing too many decisions to get stuck in the mud, or if the tension moves from professional to personal, then you need to take action to eliminate it quickly before it drags down the team or blows up.</p>\n<p><strong>Show your work.</strong><br />\nExplain your decision-making process. Whenever you take a controversial action or make a difficult decision, it’s especially powerful to fully explain how you arrived at that decision so your team can understand your thought process and rationale, and ultimate help support the decision.</p>\n<p><strong>It’s ok to not always know the answer.</strong><br />\nAsk questions, probe, and admit when you don’t know the answer to something. There’s nothing wrong with saying you’ll need some time to think or learn more before making an important decision.</p>\n<p><strong>Have consistent 1-on-1s every week.</strong><br />\nThese are for the benefit of your employees, so you should let them drive the agenda each week. From your side, it’s an opportunity to set aside some focused time each week to talk privately, get on the same page, and ask open-ended questions like “how are things going?”, “how are you feeling?”, “what are your thoughts on the big news that was announced earlier this week?”, “what’s your opinion on X?”, etc. Prioritize these meetings in your schedule, go out of your way to keep from canceling or rescheduling them whenever possible, and your consistent time and attention will send a signal to your team that you care about their happiness.</p>\n<p><strong>Ease the maker to manager transition.</strong><br />\nAs you scale from a team of individual contributors to a more structured org, the maker to manager transition will challenge your best people. Just because someone is an outstanding individual contributor doesn’t mean they’ll be an outstanding manager right off the bat, because it requires a completely different set of skills and experience. And during the transition, their instinct will be to take on both their prior maker and their new manager duties – spending 75% effort on making and 75% effort on managing – a 150% workload resulting in less than 100% output in each area. Put structure in place to allow them to focus on being a manager first and foremost, and take maker duties off of their plate.</p>\n<p><strong>Create a career path.</strong><br />\nEvery 6 months, ask your employees where they want to be in their career in the next 2–3 years. Work with them to put together a plan, help them get the skills and experience they need, and guide them on a course to get there.</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1096641","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2016-10-10T02:38:05.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:19:22.000-07:00","published_at":"2016-10-10T02:38:05.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71070","name":"Aaron Epstein","slug":"aaron-epstein","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Aaron-E-2.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Aaron is a Group Partner at YC. He was the co-founder and CEO of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/aaron-epstein/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71174","name":"Advice","slug":"advice","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/advice/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/advice-for-new-managers/","excerpt":"Aaron Epstein is the cofounder of CreativeMarket .One of the most difficult things about starting a company is that you have tocreate both a product that people love and a company where people want to work at the same time. It’s usually not enough to just have a great product, or just be a great place to work, because great people build great products, and greatpeople won’t tolerate a bad environment for very long.","reading_time":7,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null}],"filter":"By Aaron Epstein","featured":null,"pagination":{"page":1,"limit":10,"pages":1,"total":4,"next":null,"prev":null}},"url":"/blog/author/aaron-epstein","version":null,"rails_context":{"railsEnv":"production","inMailer":false,"i18nLocale":"en","i18nDefaultLocale":"en","href":"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/aaron-epstein","location":"/blog/author/aaron-epstein","scheme":"https","host":"www.ycombinator.com","port":null,"pathname":"/blog/author/aaron-epstein","search":null,"httpAcceptLanguage":"en, *","applyBatchLong":"Winter 2024","applyBatchShort":"W2024","applyDeadlineShort":"October 13","ycdcRetroMode":true,"currentUser":null,"serverSide":true},"id":"ycdc_new/pages/BlogList-react-component-d674ccb7-9115-4234-8558-d1faedf385d9","server_side":true}" data-reactroot="">
Aaron Epstein is the cofounder of CreativeMarket .One of the most difficult things about starting a company is that you have tocreate both a product that people love and a company where people want to work at the same time. It’s usually not enough to just have a great product, or just be a great place to work, because great people build great products, and greatpeople won’t tolerate a bad environment for very long.
