Y Combinator

Michael Seibel</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/KatManalac/">Kat Manalac</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/ilikevests/">Kevin Hale</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/svkpham/">Steven Pham</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/typesfast/">Ryan Petersen</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/sdianahu/">Diana Hu</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/christinacaci/">Christina Cacioppo</a>, and <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejas-viswanath-672964114/">Tejas Viswanath</a>.\nTwo teams won YC interviews and office hours: \nEvergreen – Mint for startups – Anuj Verma and Mohammad El Mahallway \nSquadUp – Shared subscription services – Vahid Eyorokon, Ben Obringer, Sravya Kondrakunta, and Sampath Gogineni\nThree teams won office hours: \nAll_ebt – Spend food stamps online – Eli Calderón Morin, Luis Diaz Jimenez, Amir Yousserffi, Solomon Wu, and Ruby Gilliuen \nDorhami – Airbnb for game nights – Moe Basij and Mehrad Khalesi \nKalshi – Opinion gathering platform – Tarek Mansour, Luana Lopes Lara, and Duncan Cock Foster\nThanks to everyone that participated. Below are some photos from the finals. We hope to see you at another hackathon!\n<hr />\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/wordpress/2018/10/7B0A9134.jpg/"> $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ $\"\"$ iTunes
Google Play</a> \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/y-combinator/">Stitcher
SoundCloud
RSS
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Spotify

And you can watch them on: \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://youtube.com/ycombinator/">YouTube

Episodes
1 – Hiring Engineers with Ammon Bartram</a> \nAmmon Bartram is the cofounder of Triplebyte (YC S15) and Socialcam (YC W12). Triplebyte connects software engineers with companies that are hiring.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/anu-hariharan-on-network-effects//">2 – Network Effects with Anu Hariharan</a> \nAnu Hariharan is a Partner at YC Continuity which is an investment fund dedicated to supporting founders as they scale their companies.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/the-technical-advisor-for-silicon-valley-on-hbo-ed-mcmanus/">3 – The Technical Advisor for Silicon Valley on HBO – Ed McManus</a> \nEd McManus was the technical advisor for season three of Silicon Valley on HBO. He came in to talk about what his experience working on the show.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/elon-musk-on-how-to-build-the-future//">4 – Elon Musk on How to Build the Future</a> \nSam Altman interviews Elon Musk for a series called How To Build The Future, which you can watch on YC’s YouTube channel.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/an-ai-primer-with-wojciech-zaremba/">5 – An AI Primer with Wojciech Zaremba</a> \nWojciech Zaremba is a cofounder of OpenAI. OpenAI is a non-profit AI research company, focused on discovering and enacting the path to safe artificial general intelligence.\n","comment_id":"1099405","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-05-17T01:55:31.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:08:59.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-05-17T01:55:31.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71176","name":"Podcast","slug":"podcast","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/podcast/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71176","name":"Podcast","slug":"podcast","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/podcast/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/announcing-the-y-combinator-podcast/","excerpt":"Our new podcast is live.You can subscribe via:iTunes Google PlayStitcher SoundCloud RSS Breaker Spotify[https://open.spotify.","reading_time":1,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71972","uuid":"81491768-f64a-4821-a4d4-7dd45114e9d3","title":"Founder Stories: Kate Heddleston of Opsolutely","slug":"founder-stories-kate-heddleston","html":"<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/founder-stories//">Founder Stories</a> are conversations with people that have been through YC.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/heddle317/">Kate Heddleston</a> is founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.opsolutely.com/">Opsolutely (YC S16).\nDiscussed: Developer Productivity; Human-Computer Interaction; Kate’s CS Degree; Academic vs. Practical Knowledge; Deciding to Do YC; Learnings from YC; Being a Female Founder; Advice to College Students; Dune.\n<hr />\nCraig: What is <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.opsolutely.com/">Opsolutely?

my blog</a>.\nCraig: Cool, we can link to that. If you were to do YC again, what advice would you have for yourself?\nKate: I think I would be a little more prepared. I would have an idea of where I wanted my company to be at before I did YC. I would have a better idea of how I would utilize Demo Day. I would have a plan for what investors I wanted to talk to to and how to move them through the intro and diligence process.\nSo as for before YC. I think I would want to have a measurable amount of traction going into YC. I think I would want to apply YC with a goal of how much traction I wanna get while there, and these were all things that YC normally has you set up doing. But not going and trying to create that mindset.\nGet a certain amount of leg work done before YC and then just focus on growth with customers or whatever growth means to you. Otherwise, for first-time founders going through the program, I think it’s a lot more exploration and figuring out what you’re doing in the first place. I’d never started a company before and even though I had worked at them, kind of just figuring out what is the core value of your product, what’s the differentiating value, and how are you gonna go to market.\nThese are things we thought about and it just took us a lot longer to figure some of them. We were one of the earlier companies, so we didn’t utilize the resources the same as other companies, which was great. Like, it was still really useful to me. But if I were to do it again, because I would kind of know a lot of those things, then I would prep those ahead of time and I would use YC to help me with other things: accelerating and fundraising.\nSomeone described YC as throwing fuel on a fire, and so if you can make that fire as big as you can before you go in, then you can get more out of it in some ways. I think it’s valuable even if you don’t approach it with that mentality. Even if you aren’t like, “Oh we’re gonna have massive growth and we’re gonna raise a lot of money at the end,” I think there’s a lot to get out of it. Just trying to understand your company and the process and how are you gonna market and why are even a company, and things like that.\nCraig: Oh yeah. “We need to exist” is a foregone conclusion for most people but I agree. What about practical tips for interacting with batchmates or partners?\nKate: For batchmates I would say the batches are big enough that you should get to know some people that you find exciting more than trying to get to know everyone. Then keep in touch with them. Start to form a small community within the community and go from there. You don’t need to know everyone. And it’s cool because you can reach out to anyone if you need to, so you don’t have to be a super networker, just find some good people. Just find some good people you’re excited to talk to and who you like, because the cool thing is everyone’s going through a lot of the same stuff. Help people out and they’ll help you out back.\nTips for interacting with partners? The partners are great. I mean, they really know what they’re doing and that’s really helpful. I think any time you’re asking for help or advice, the more specific you can be, the better. But also just ask for help and advice even if it doesn’t seem that specific. I found that I would go in with questions. I didn’t really even know what I was asking and there were times when they were like, “We know what you’re asking and this is actually your question.” And I was like, “Yeah, that is.” I got some really great advice that really helped me, like, stay grounded and anchor myself so I don’t float away. Some of the best advice I got from Tim Brady, A.K.A “The nicest man in the world.”\nCraig: [Laughter] Agreed.\nKate: [Laughter] Yeah, we were talking about equity and how to think about structuring it and he goes, “You know, startups pretty much never fail because someone was too generous.” And I was like, “You are so right, Tim. They don’t fail because people were too generous,” and so I just recalibrated anything I had to think about equity where I was like, “Equity, especially in the early stages, isn’t about being some sort of smart business person. Obviously, you wanna protect yourself, but I was just, like, be generous and don’t worry about it.” Within the bounds of reason, too, like YC will tell you what reasonable ranges are. But I err on the generous side, and I love it, hands down. That was great advice.\nCraig: Right. So, did you feel there was any difference in a being a female founder at YC?\nKate: Well, to answer your question in a general sense, I mean, there’s always a difference between being a female founder and a non-female founder. I thought that YC was significantly better than a lot of other places. I didn’t feel as though I was treated differently, on average.\nIn group office hours or in any of the questions that we were asked around metrics or growth or how we’re rolling out with customers, I thought that we were treated pretty equally and pushed just as hard, and I liked that. The structure is nice because structure. The fact that YC is structured makes it more egalitarian. That kind of process is good, right, because if there’s a certain set of things that every company is focusing on, then that’s what you talk about.\nIt was nice having YC as an institution backing you as a female founder. So I did some fundraising meetings before YC and I had some comments where I was like, “You would never say this to any guy who walked into the room with my credentials.” But having YC as, like, this institution that backs you means that you have this pretty large, powerful, third-party organization that you can report bad behavior to and that you can also ask about bad behavior. So if an investor does something that’s sketchy or questionable, I have an organization that I can now go to, and be like, “This is weird, right? Like, I’m not being crazy?” And I think it’s really a lot more stressful when you are out there in the industry and you feel unprotected, because when you aren’t protected, that’s when you see a lot of really bad behavior.\nCraig: Yeah, you feel like you have no agency, I imagine.\nKate: Yeah. There’s nowhere to go. Like, if an investor were to do something to you, what would you even do about it? So I think that’s what I really liked. There were some moments where people in the organization said things that were uneducated, but not malicious. That’s pretty par for the course, and I gave the feedback to YC. So I felt comfortable enough to actually give feedback to the organization, which is a really big deal, because most of the time you don’t. You’re like, “Why would I give any feedback here, no one’s ever gonna listen to me?”\nBut I felt that YC would listen, because they’ve obviously done a lot of work to improve things. And so I assume and hope that they will continue to do a lot of work to improve things, which matters, honestly, a lot more than whether or not someone says some remark where you’re like, “That’s not quite right,” you know?\nThe nicest thing about being a founder is that you get to keep everything that you do, that’s the way I describe it. If investors are sexist, they usually don’t talk to you, which is great because then you don’t have to talk to them. If they don’t invest in you, it’s pretty binary. They’re not in your life if they don’t invest. You don’t have to spend any time with people who are sexist if you don’t want to.\nCraig: Hopefully, yeah.\nKate: The nicest thing about being a female founders is a lot of the sexist assholes don’t ever come talk to you, and a lot of the guys I know can’t figure out which ones are the assholes until too late, and then they’re stuck with someone that’s terrible, whereas I love all of my investors. They’re wonderful people, you know?\nCraig: Yup. Surrounding yourself with good people makes all the difference. So two more questions. Do you have advice you would give yourself when you were just out of college?\nKate: I think that there are some things I did that I’m glad I did. I do feel bad when I see founders who are much younger than me, even like in college or right out of college, because taking time to develop a set of skills and just to kind of see how organizations work and just how people work, is important. You can’t build a great organization unless you have an opinion on how an organization should operate, which you can’t have without that experience. And founders create company culture, so I really don’t think that founders should be that young. Like, I would never work for a young founder again. I would never work for a young founder again unless they put an adult in charge, because I think a lot of the gender issues in our industry come from just people who have zero management skills and zero understanding around what it takes to build and grow a team when starting companies.\nI would tell people to get experience out in the world and to mentor in their industry, too. And to kind of learn some management skills in addition to whatever core skills they’re learning if they wanna start a company.\nI would also recommend just meeting people and networking, not even networking for business, but just find people that you like, because when you do start a company all of the people that I’m working with now are people who are really talented who I know and think are just wonderful people, and I wouldn’t have them otherwise. I didn’t network with any of them in the sense of, like, “I’m gonna network with you so that I’ll know you later for business.” They’re just good people that I like who are good at something. So I think that that’s really important.\nCraig: Cool. Last question, what are your favorite books, podcasts, or just media in general.\nKate: I have a really hard time listening to podcasts. I don’t know why.\nCraig: [Laughter] Deleted. What about books?\nKate: I mean, I read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy novels.\nI usually read to escape reality. If I wanted to do anything self-help, I read a lot of blog posts. I don’t think I follow any one person in particular–just a whole bunch of different people. Normally, when I read, I just like to escape reality and read a good story, preferably set in space or a totally different world.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-Ernest-Cline/dp/0307887448/">Ready Player One</a> is one of the best new books out in that genre. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Neil-Gaiman/e/B000AQ01G2//">Neil Gaiman</a>. A lot of the famous fantasy authors <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Enders-Ender-Quintet-Orson-Scott/dp/0765337541//">Ender’s Game</a> is a classic, Orson Scott Card. Oh, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Dune-Frank-Herbert/dp/0441172717//">Dune. Oh my God, I quote Dune. I literally quote the book or movie almost every day.\nCraig: [Laughter] That’s very impressive.\nKate: [Laughter] Just because… I don’t know. It just comes up a lot for me, “They tried. They tried and failed. No, they tried and died.” And the people are like, “Wait, what?” And I’m like, “No. I’m just kidding. No one died.”\nCraig: [Laughter]\nKate: Someone was like, “Should the women in engineering, like, form a guild?,” and I was like, “Yeah. As long as we can have, like, a monopoly on baking and space-time travel, I’m in.” People were like, “What are you talking about?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I just make Dune references.”\n<hr />\n","comment_id":"1099169","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-04-24T01:31:32.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:10:53.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-04-24T01:31:32.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71175","name":"Interview","slug":"interview","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/interview/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/founder-stories-kate-heddleston/","excerpt":"Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Kate Heddleston is founder and CEO of Opsolutely (YC S16).Discussed: Developer Productivity; Human-Computer Interaction; Kate’s CS Degree;Academic vs. Practical Knowledge; Deciding to Do YC; Learnings from YC; Being aFemale Founder; Advice to College Students; Dune.","reading_time":20,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71968","uuid":"7338938f-532a-43c3-935b-4b2b56e4a06d","title":"Founder Stories: Reham Fagiri of AptDeco","slug":"founder-stories-reham-fagiri-of-aptdeco","html":"<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/founder-stories//">Founder Stories</a> are conversations with people that have been through YC.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/rfagiri/">Reham Fagiri</a> is cofounder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://AptDeco.com/">AptDeco (YC W14).\nDiscussed: Skills Learned During Her MBA; Going From a Bank to a Startup; Starting AptDeco; SF<>NYC During YC; Reham’s Favorite Podcasts.\n<hr />\nCraig: What does AptDeco do?\nReham: AptDeco is a marketplace for buying and selling furniture. We are currently in New York City and Washington D.C. We’re a vertically integrated company so we handle all the logistics ourselves as well.\nCraig: And you were which batch?\nReham: We were winter ’14. Wow, it’s been a while.\nCraig: [Laughter] And what did you do before YC?\nReham: I was an engineer at Goldman Sachs for six years. So anything from creating applications to eventually managing a team of engineers. I eventually left Goldman, went to business school, and then I started AptDeco after business school.\nCraig: So I have several questions related to that because a lot of our readers are where you were–in finance or getting an MBA. To start, would you recommend people get an MBA?\nReham: I think if you are looking to switch careers, it’s very helpful. For someone who came from engineering in the financial industry, I didn’t have a background in accounting, finance, and marketing. For me, learning all that was super, super helpful.\nAlso just having that network of people. Being close to so many different people who have done so many different things is great. If you’re thinking about starting a company, you get a lot of ideas and confidence from other people. I hadn’t started anything before so I think I used to be intimidated but then I met people who had started their own thing and I’m like, “Wait a minute. Who are these people? I think I’m as smart as them and they’re doing it. I can do it, too.”\nCraig: Were there other tangible learnings that you could point to? Maybe resources people could check out online?\nReham: For me, financial modeling is definitely the thing that I took away from my MBA program. I use it now for forecasting, for projections for our company, everything. That was definitely very tangible, and I use that every day here.\nResources on financial modeling: \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar//">Aswath Damodaran’s Blog</a> \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.udemy.com/beginner-to-pro-in-excel-financial-modeling-and-valuation//">Udemy: Financial Modeling and Valuation</a>\nCraig: Cool. What about your experience at Goldman, what made you decide to switch to get an MBA while you were managing engineers?\nReham: I was looking to do a career switch. At the time, when I was at Goldman, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay within the tech world, to be honest. I was working at Goldman where technology was not the core business function and I felt I wanted to be part of the core business function. At the time, I’m like, “Well, that means I need to go get an MBA, and, you know, maybe I wanna work in consumer or something else.”\nWhat was interesting is once I joined the MBA class, a lot of people were asking me about being an engineer and how most of the business people I knew wanted to get into tech and I was trying to get out of tech. I’m like, “Wait a minute.”\nCraig: [Laughter] Can I sell you my job?\nReham: Yeah, exactly. So then I started looking into, potentially being part of a tech company since I have the tech background, but a company where the core function is technology itself, which makes a difference.\nCraig: And so how did you come upon the idea for AptDeco?\nReham: When I was finishing business school, I started selling my furniture before moving back to New York to actually join another company. It sucked. And the class at Wharton is pretty big. It’s 800 people. So everyone was trying to sell their furniture at the same time. Many of my friends were complaining about how painful it was. It was sort of an idea in the back of my mind at the time. I started dabbling with it during my break after business school before I started my new job. I just put together a small prototype and got a sale on the first day and I’m like, “Oh, wait, this actually works,” so I ended up doing that instead.\nCraig: [Laughter] Pretty straightforward. And was there a point at which you felt resistance around committing or did you just know that you wanted to commit and go for it?\nReham: No, I felt a lot of resistance from myself. It’s a big decision, right? There was a job that was going to pay me a whole lot of money and there are a lot of unknowns about, “Hey, does this make sense? Is it niche market?” Plus all the sacrifices that you have to make. So it took me a while to make that decision. That’s why I was sort of dabbling with it for a while.\nAnd for a whole other reason, I had to defer my start date for the other company I was supposed to join. That gave me extra time to sort of just test it out. And then, when I got my first sale, that’s when I actually committed. It felt like, “Wow, I just launched this thing and someone randomly in the world of the internet found me and decided to buy something. Okay, this seems like something that’s realistic.” So then I actually made the decision to not take that job.\nCraig: And how much was the first sale, because, to me, even that wouldn’t be enough for a lot of people.\nReham: It was like $100.\nCraig: That’s awesome. Okay, so what made you guys decide to apply to YC?\nReham: At the time I was working on it mostly on my own. My co-founder [Kalam Dennis] was working full-time at his job and working on AptDeco part-time. We were growing fast, but, you know, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was starting a company for the first time. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be focusing on–I was mostly figuring out how to get users. Then I heard from some friends, like, “Hey, you know, you should apply to YC.” And you know, in New York, YC isn’t as big of a thing unless you’re into startups. At that time, most people would not know what YC was, and I was one of those people.\nSo I looked into it and I’m like, “Well, it doesn’t hurt.” I wanted to be as focused and committed to building the company, and I thought that would be the best way to do that. Having all these people in the same place who have done this before to learn from is kind of like going back to business school all over again. So once we got in it was a no-brainer.\nCraig: Once you got in, how was the reality of YC different than the perception you had of it before?\nReham: That’s a great question. So my perception was it’s very structured. It would be super-structured where, the partners would be making sure that you do what you’re supposed to do, almost like school. The reality is you make it your own. So if you want to set up meetings with the partners, go ahead. If you want to take advantage of different partners, go ahead. If you want show up to dinners, go ahead. Nobody’s going to force you to do anything.\nIt’s really on you to take advantage of all the resources there. For example, when we went into partner meetings, we made sure we had an agenda–questions that we had in advance that we wanted to get addressed. We made it very structured for ourselves, which became very, very helpful in the long run.\nCraig: What were the most valuable lessons you learned in YC?\nReham: I mean, growing 10% a week. The cliché answer, I guess. For me and my co-founder, Kalam, coming from corporate backgrounds, we knew how to take something from 50 million to 100 million–sort of that larger scale growth versus taking something from $100 to $1,000. The things and the tools you need are very different so I was always asking about scaling. YC was all about, “Don’t worry about scaling. Just do the things that are unscalable and try to get as many customers in the door as possible and talk to these people.” Those lessons are unbelievable and I tell them to all my friends who are starting companies now.\nCraig: If you were to do YC again, would you give yourself any advice to get the absolute most out of it?\nReham: I’d spend more time with the batchmates. I just felt clueless the whole time, and it’s okay that you feel clueless because most of the time, they feel the same way and you’re not alone. So really take advantage of the network and talk to your batchmates.\nDuring the batch we were flying back and forth between New York and San Francisco every week. We didn’t stay in San Francisco so we couldn’t really connect with, the rest of the batch because we were only there Tuesday dinners, and that’s it. So we made it harder to make those connections, but I’m sure there would have been different ways for us to do that had we made it our priority.\nCraig: Good note. How did traveling back and forth work?\nReham: Oh my gosh. I think it was either PG or PB, one of the two. Our first meeting, they were like, “What are you gonna do in San Francisco? You need to go to New York City.” We’re like, “Oh, okay, but we subletted our place so we don’t have a place to stay in New York City.” And they said, “You guys need to be in New York, with your customers, and not in San Francisco.” And we actually rented a place in Mountain View. So we would spend one day in our place in Mountain View and then crash on a friend’s couches for the rest of the week in New York City.\nCraig: [Laughter] Wow, well done.\nReham: Gotta do what you gotta do, right?\nCraig: Definitely. That’s great. So I have a couple female founder questions that you don’t have to answer if you don’t feel like it.\nReham: I’ll answer them.\nCraig: Ok. Did you feel there was a difference being a female founder at YC?\nReham: For me, no. But I’ll preface this by saying that as an engineer, I’m used to being one of the only women in the room so it’s not any different than being in college. Is that response common?\nCraig: Yeah, that’s actually the most common response from female founder engineers. I haven’t spoken to every founder but seemingly, people who are not on the technical side feel the difference more.\nReham: Exactly, and I’ll tell you this. When I was in business school, I think our class was 45% females. That was weird for me because I wasn’t used to it, which was weird and refreshing in a way. And actually, I made a lot of friends, girl friends, for the first time. My entire career, I’ve just been around men most of my time. So it was really refreshing. But YC is just like, any college or university if you’re in engineering and such.\nCraig: Do you have thoughts as to how the industry could be more welcoming for female founders?\nReham: be open to different experiences and backgrounds. I think that’s the main thing.\nEven my own experience in meetings, you know, as a minority women tech engineer, I get questions that my batchmates did not get in investor meetings. And I think just having an open mind is important. Whether it’s a partnership with a company or an investor, you just have to have an open mind that people can come from different backgrounds and can achieve whatever someone who looks like you can.\nCraig: Cool, that’s a great answer. Okay, last question. What are your favorite books?\nReham: I don’t even read books anymore. It’s sad. I used to love reading books, but I don’t even read books anymore. I listen to a lot of podcasts.\nCraig: That’s perfectly acceptable. What are your favorite podcasts?\nReham: Right now, let me look at my list: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://gimletmedia.com/reply-all//">Reply All</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/">This American Life</a>, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts//">Radiolab… I really like <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://thisiscriminal.com//">Criminal. Have you heard of it?\nCraig: I haven’t listened to it, but I’ve heard of it, yeah. There’s a popular one going around YC right now that you might be into–<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.missingrichardsimmons.com//">Missing Richard Simmons</a>.\nReham: Oh, I’ll check it out. I’m always shopping for new podcasts.\nPostscript – Reham listened to Missing Richard Simmons and liked it. 🙂\n","comment_id":"1099018","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-04-10T01:47:59.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:12:14.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-04-10T01:47:59.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/founder-stories-reham-fagiri-of-aptdeco/","excerpt":"Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Reham Fagiri is cofounder and CEO of AptDeco (YC W14).Discussed: Skills Learned During Her MBA; Going From a Bank to a Startup;Starting AptDeco; SF<>NYC During YC; Reham’s Favorite Podcasts.","reading_time":8,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71961","uuid":"1a3c3582-8a03-4d35-b55e-1430568c7d82","title":"Founder Stories: Blake Scholl of Boom Technology","slug":"founder-stories-blake-scholl-of-boom-technology","html":"<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/founder-stories//">Founder Stories</a> are conversations with people that have been through YC.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://twitter.com/bscholl/">Blake Scholl</a> is founder and CEO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://boomsupersonic.com//">Boom Technology</a> (YC W16).\nDiscussed: Deciding to Start a Supersonic Airplane Company; Innovation in Aviation; Blake’s Career Before Boom; Deciding Whether or Not to Do YC; Being a Hard Tech Company in YC; Meeting with Richard Branson; Demo Day; Advice for Other Hard Tech Companies.\n<hr />\nCraig: Let’s start with the most simple question. What does Boom do?\nBlake: Boom is building supersonic passenger airplanes that lots of people can afford to fly. Fifty years after the design of the Concorde, we finally have the technology to make high-speed travel economical for airlines and affordable for passengers. We’re gonna make the planet more accessible.\nCraig: And where did the idea come from?\nBlake: Well, the idea of supersonic travel isn’t new, obviously. I’ve been a pilot since I was in college though I never got to fly on Concorde. It’s really a unique story in technology that we’ve had a capability and then we’ve actually gone backwards. Our phones are better, our computers are better, we’re about to have cars that drive themselves and genetically-engineered medicine, and yet we’re still flying at 1960 speeds. We had a supersonic airplane but we never took it mainstream. I’m unaware of any other story in technology that’s like this.\nIf you look back at the history of entrepreneurship and innovation in aviation, all of the big breakthroughs have come from founder-led companies. The first airplane was created by bicycle entrepreneurs, but also the first practical airliner, the DC-3, and the first jetliner, the De Havilland Comet, were all created by companies that were run by their founders. The last new commercial aircraft company was founded 1921. The last founder retired from the industry in 1958, which, coincidentally or not, was also the year we had the first jetliner.\nSince then the Boeings and Airbuses of the world have been… optimizing. They’ve been taking the same basic designs and making them more efficient and safer, and in doing so they’ve completely swapped out the technology stack. They’ve made the machinery more efficient, but they haven’t improved human capability. I believe very strongly that if we want more human capability, we need entrepreneurs, we need founders, and we need new companies.\nCraig: Why do you believe the founders make the difference?\nBlake: Founders have vision. Founders start things to make the world a better place. Founders take risks. They make bold bets. By contrast, the CEO of Boeing thinks they overshot on the 787 and has publicly said that their policy is “no more moonshots.” And this is from the company that was literally in the moonshot business!\nCraig: Wow. So you were a pilot before YC but that wasn’t your job, right?\nBlake: Yeah. I’ve loved airplanes since I was a kid, but it never really occurred to me to be in aviation as a career. I went to school for computer science and had a first career doing ecommerce and mobile. If you ask my closest friends, they’ll tell you that I’ve been talking about maybe doing supersonics for 10 years. My first startup was acquired by Groupon, and truth be told, there’s nothing like working on Internet coupons to make you yearn to work on something you really love, that you feel could make a difference in the world.\nSo after I left Groupon I started to make a list of all the startup ideas in descending order of how awesome it would be if they worked and completely leaving aside everything else. And I figured, “Well, I’ll cross things off the list and I’ll end up working on idea number five. It’ll be, like, a rental car company or something.” And, as luck had it, the more I got into supersonics, the more I learned that it’s not crazy, and actually the time is now.\nCraig: So what made you decide to apply to YC?\nBlake: At first I was really skeptical about YC. Isn’t YC for mobile social apps? How could they help a supersonic airplane startup? But Sam put me in touch with other hard tech founders who had done YC. They raved about the experience and how YC can help normalize and catalyze ideas that are off the beaten path. I concluded that YC might not help with the airplane building piece of our business, but they’d help with a lot of other pieces, like getting and demonstrating traction and raising capital. In the early days, capital was the biggest risk at Boom—there was a very real risk that we’d never get the money to build anything, and that the company would come and go without ever really starting.\nYC turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done. Boom would probably not be here today if it weren’t for YC, in so many ways. In YC, they basically gave us two big pieces of advice and it was exactly what we needed. Number one–get your ass out of stealth mode, it’s not helping you. And number two–go sell some airplanes.\nAnd I was like, “Okay, I don’t know how 10 guys in a basement who say they’re building supersonic jets are going to sell anything to airlines, but I could try.” And it turns out you can.\nCraig: Your first deal was with Virgin, right?\nBlake: Yeah, the advice that we got from our group partners during YC was, “Show up on demo day with sales or your goose is pretty cooked.” So I looked at my sales pipeline and it was like United, Delta, Lufthansa, and Air China. At that point, we had like eight or nine weeks to demo day and I’m like, “There’s no way I’m closing Lufthansa by demo day. Just not going to happen. I’ll be lucky if I close Lufthansa in nine years, let alone nine weeks.” So, I’m like, “Okay, well it’s either gonna be a startup airline or it’s gonna be Virgin.”\nSo we decided to focus all of our sales efforts on startups and Virgin. There have been some startup airlines that have done all business class. And so we went after all the guys who are either currently operating, are starting, or have started in the past all-business-class airlines. And we got one of them to do an LOI.\nUp to literally 24 hours before our slot on stage at demo day two, all we had was an LOI from a startup. If we had been on demo day one, the history of the company would be different, but because we were on demo day two we got an email from Virgin on the night of demo day one that said, “You can announce the following… We’ll take the first 10 airplanes, and we’ve got options on them. And through Virgin Galactic, we’re gonna help you build it.”\nI fell off my chair and almost screamed. I had to read the thing three times before I would tell the team because I didn’t believe it. And so, we went from what could have been the biggest laughingstock at demo day, to the team who showed up with five billion in LOIs, a record that probably won’t be broken soon.\nCraig: That’s amazing. Do you have any tips for achieving that sale that quickly?\nBlake: The biggest sales advice we got during YC was, “Be persistent. Be more persistent than you think you should be. Be so persistent that you’re sure you’re being annoying. And you’ll feel like you must be annoying, but when you have that feeling that means you’re probably doing it right.” And that worked.\nThe other thing that happened was, we went after Richard Branson directly. And we made sure we had two different avenues to him so that one of them couldn’t block us.\nWe had friends in Virgin Galactic that were supporting us and we had astronaut Mark Kelly, who hangs out with Richard, on our advisory board. And Mark was, like, working Richard for us. What ended up happening was, in February, about six weeks before demo day, Virgin Galactic was rolling out their new spaceship. We got an email in to Richard that said, “Hey, the Boom guys are gonna be in Mojave for the spaceship rollout, you should meet with them while they’re there.” And then we reached out to the Virgin Galactic guys and said, “Hey, we’re gonna be in town to see Richard, can we come to your rollout?”\nCraig: [Laugher]\nBlake: So we got the Richard meeting and we basically crashed the rollout. I had to fight my way past the 18-year-olds that were, like, blocking and checking the invite list but we met with Richard. We had, like, 15 minutes over breakfast with him and his mom. And we showed him what we were doing, and we said, “Look, we’re not asking for your money, we’re asking, ‘When this flies, do you want a Virgin logo on it?'” And I think that was key. You gotta ask for the right thing. When you have a deal that’s probably gonna be hard to close–ask for what’s really gonna help you. We told Richard, “Look, if you’re a customer we’ll get the money elsewhere. We don’t need the money from you.” And that was crucial.\nThe other thing that was crucial was having a deadline. For us that was demo day. And if you know anything about Virgin, you know they really care about their brand, they really care about publicity, and we told them, “We are launching the company on demo day, and either you can be part of it or not.” And it would not have happened if we hadn’t had that believable deadline. And they had all heard of Y Combinator, and they took demo day actually a lot more seriously than I thought they would, and they really wanted to be part of it.\nBlake: If I had to boil all that down, I would say, be fricking persistent, have a deadline, and if you’re in a hurry, make the deal as sweet as you possibly can for the other side.\nCraig: Great. And, just to jump back a little bit, I love that comment you made about selling internet coupons making you want to start a startup. What advice would you give to someone at a job that’s pretty cush but they feel like they should go do something more interesting?\nBlake: I believe you have to find something in the world that you desperately want to exist. Startups are hard – all startups are hard – and I think what makes the difference many times is are you working on something that is so meaningful to you, that it is worth it for you to go through hell to make it happen? Because all startups are going to go through hell. I’m unaware of a single one that hasn’t, and the question is, “Is it worth it?”\nPick something that’s going to be worth it, to you, personally. Stack the deck in your favor. Stack the deck such that you will be motivated and when you look at what you can possibly create versus staying at Google or Facebook or Amazon, it should pale in comparison.\nIf you haven’t found that, don’t start a startup just to start a startup. I did that my first time and it was a horrible idea. Start a startup when you’re like, “I must make this happen.” And something that I’ve come to believe personally is that the bigger the idea actually, the easier it can be because it motivates you. It motivates the people around you. You can attract better people to come and work with you on it. The team we have around us at Boom is phenomenal, and we wouldn’t have it if we were building an app or a small airplane, even. We’re able to get these people because everyone looks at what we’re building, and they’re like, “I can tell my grandkids about this! It’s either we’re going to fail or we’re going to change the world. There’s no in between.”\nI think there are a lot of ideas out there of that scale that people pass on it because they think it’s too hard. Or sometimes the most important problems are kind of hiding in plain sight, and we’re so used to them we don’t see them. I’d love to see more founders just go for broke on that stuff. Maybe that’s the wrong metaphor, but, you know, find big ideas and go after big ideas.\nCraig: Yeah. I think we could fund bigger bets–maybe even slightly crazy people. Even if one in a thousand of those companies worked out it’d have such a huge impact.\nBlake: I mean, I wasn’t dinging YC for that. YC’s doing that better than, I think, anybody else already. But I agree. It’s also not just about what gets funded, it’s about who we inspire, and what we inspire them to do.\nCraig: Definitely. So I’m interested in talking about your experience at YC. Do you have any advice for hardware companies in YC?\nBlake: I think the thing that makes a hardware company a little bit different at YC is you have to figure out what you can build that you’re going to show at demo day. And for a software company, it’s probably relatively easy to figure out an MVP, for a hardware company you’ve got things that have a longer lead time. It might not be possible to have your product done or in the market or even have a working demo. You should figure out really early on something that both is and looks like actual, substantive progress towards the product.\nWhen we were brainstorming on this, most of the ideas we came up with first were, like, “Well this is the most meaningful technical progress, but no one’s gonna be able to appreciate it because it’s like, ‘Oh, in our simulations we get a lift-drag ratio that’s hitting a critical threshold’ right? And, that’s actually super meaningful, but no one’s gonna understand it or believe it or get excited about it.” Then there was a bunch of stuff that was in the category of kinda just for show. Like, we talked about building a flight simulator.\nWe ended up working on the aerodynamics and then we built a model of the airplane and made it look great. And we can talk about, like, “Look at this. You can see these innovations in the model. That’s why it works. That’s why this is possible.” And, you know, that was concrete for people. We basically did the high-level design of the jet engine and made a 3D printed model of it and then we actually physically brought to demo day the engine. One of the three engines that will power the first airplane. And people, of course, were like, “OMG, jet engine.”\nCraig: Yeah, it’s a nerd magnet.\nBlake: Exactly. And we found and bought the one that we were gonna fly. So, it wasn’t bullshit. So, I think that’s my biggest thing–find the thing that you’re gonna get done in three months that is progress and looks like progress.\nCraig: That is an excellent point. Okay, last question. What are your favorite books, movies, podcasts… any type of media, really.\nBlake: I mean, far and away my favorite book is <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145/">Atlas Shrugged</a>, and it’s probably not an accident that all the heroes in Atlas Shrugged are also pilots. Not an accident for me, personally, anyway.\nLet’s see, what else… I love things that give you insight into the basics of a field, even if you’re not in it. I like learning about biology on the side. There’s a defunct podcast called <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://futuresinbiotech.com//">Futures in Biotech</a> that, if you are not a biologist but you think biotech is cool, look up Futures in Biotech. Listen to all the old episodes, they have amazing guests, and you’ll feel like you know enough about biotech to kind of appreciate it. What else? I’m trying to think of what’s not a standard recommendation.\nCraig: It doesn’t have to be non-standard.\nBlake: In that case, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205/">The Hard Thing About Hard Things</a> is good. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244/">The Innovator’s Dilemma</a>, everyone talks about it, I wonder how many people actually read it. You should actually read it. You should know what disruptive innovation actually means.\n","comment_id":"1098921","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-03-24T07:31:32.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:12:23.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-03-24T07:31:32.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71175","name":"Interview","slug":"interview","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/interview/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/founder-stories-blake-scholl-of-boom-technology/","excerpt":"Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Blake Scholl is founder and CEO of Boom Technology (YC W16).","reading_time":11,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a7195f","uuid":"00d31ca5-9203-4390-bafd-29e3fa4c98d9","title":"Founder Stories: Leah Culver of Breaker","slug":"founder-stories-leah-culver-of-breaker","html":"<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/founder-stories//">Founder Stories</a> are conversations with people that have been through YC.\nLeah Culver is cofounder and CTO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/breaker-podcast-listening-discovery/id1215095006?mt=8\%22>Breaker (YC W17).\nDiscussed: Starting a Startup as a Side Project; Interviewing; Working at Dropbox; Being a Female Founder; Leah’s Favorite Podcasts.\n<hr />\nCraig: What does your company do?\nLeah: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/breaker-podcast-listening-discovery/id1215095006?mt=8\%22>Breaker is an end-to-end podcasting company. Right now we’re building <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/breaker-podcast-listening-discovery/id1215095006?mt=8\%22>an iOS app for listening to podcasts</a> focused on social discovery. In other words you can see what’s popular amongst the folks you follow and the users of the app.\nCraig: What did you do before YC?\nLeah: I was an engineer at Dropbox. I worked on engineering product design operations. Basically handling engineering productivity and happiness throughout the lifecycle of an engineer. Stuff like onboarding, growth, and keeping engineers informed and engaged. For me that meant working on the platform for our internal tools–our corporate directory and our seating charts.\nCraig: How long were you there?\nLeah: Three years. I started as a developer advocate then switched to internal tools.\nCraig: How did you end up a Dropbox?\nLeah: I actually came across Dropbox at a career fair. I was looking for a job and they were there. I didn’t know if I would be a good fit because I’m not a scalability or performance engineer. I’m more of a product engineer. They had me interview with a couple people on the API team and I love the API team so it ended up being a great fit.\nCraig: Why did you decide to leave?\nLeah: So I started working on Breaker as a side project. My cofounder Erik Michaels-Ober and I worked on it for about nine months as a side project actually. Before we interviewed at YC we quit our day jobs and decided to either do YC or make it happen another way. We had a prototype and user feedback by the time we quit our jobs. This was different from past startups, where I quit my job before starting to work on the product\nCraig: And what did you do before Dropbox?\nLeah: I did YC W11 with Convore, which was group, topic-based chat. We pivoted that to Grove, which was kind of like Slack. Eventually we wound that down and I started working at Sincerely as an iOS developer. Then I spent three months contracting at Medium then I had a break then joined Dropbox.\nI actually talked to about 30 companies before choosing Dropbox. I did 8 or 9 in-person interviews. I really wanted to see what was out there.\nCraig: Whoa. What did you learn from interviewing at so many places?\nLeah: Because I was exploring so many options, I was interviewing them just as much as they were interviewing me. I wanted to be open to different types of companies and see where it went. It was actually pretty surprising. There were famous, well-known companies that I thought I would love working for but when I went in for the interview I was realized I definitely didn’t want to work there. The day-to-day wasn’t what I wanted.\nCraig: How did you suss that out in the interview?\nLeah: The first thing was the people. Who was I interviewing with? Did I respect them and their work? Did I want to get to know them more? A lot of it was the company itself–corporate policies, the office layout. And then lots of little things. What’s the temperature of the office? Do they have plants? All those things that you wouldn’t think really matter but affect your day-to-day life in a big way. So yeah, I was looking for a comfortable, fun work environment and top notch people.\nCraig: So you’re one of an increasing number of people that have done YC twice. What are the differences between W17 and W11?\nLeah: The weekly dinners and talks are pretty similar. The group structure is different. We have four groups now and there used to be one big group so there were no group partners. The group partners have been a huge improvement. Tim [Brady] and Dalton [Caldwell] have been invaluable as a resource to call upon quickly and reliably. We don’t talk to them every day but definitely more than once a week, which is different than last time.\nCraig: What made you want to do YC a second time?\nLeah: Erik hadn’t done YC before and really wanted the experience. For me, I felt like I wanted YC to be part of any success I had in the future. I was so grateful for them the first time and it was such a huge help both times. I’m happy to give YC and the partners ownership in anything I do because when I become successful I want YC to be part of it.\nCraig: Why did you decide to work on a podcasting app?\nLeah: I love building new products but when I’m starting something new I like to know that it’s valuable–to me personally or, more importantly, as a product. Everyone asked me after my first two companies if I was going to start another and my answer was always “no”. It’s so stressful and so much work. But I had a condition that if I found a space which could be greatly improved and I had an amazing team, then I’d try again.\nI started listening to podcasts when I was running. I was kind of happy with the existing players but I was having a hard time with discovery. I didn’t find the existing directories of podcast to be particularly relevant to me. So I reached out to Erik who had mentioned a year or so before to reach out if I was looking to start another company. My email to him was about one sentence, “What do you think of podcasts?”, and his reply was pages long. He had been working at Soundcloud and was more into talk audio than the streaming music, and had a lot of ideas.\nCraig: What’s it like being a female founder at YC?\nLeah: Surprisingly not too different from being a male founder. YC has a large number of female founders. Even in 2011. I’m always pleasantly surprised with that, especially the number of technical female founders. I think YC does a good job of being welcoming and very open to female founders.\nCraig: Do you have thoughts on how the industry could be better for female founders?\nLeah: I mostly stay out of this discussion because I don’t have solutions. As an engineer I always try to find solutions to problems and I don’t feel like this has an obvious or easy solution. That said, I do encourage female engineers and founders to apply to YC. I often tell them to do it because how they think of YC in their head and what it actually is are usually two different things. The founders in YC are quite diverse. They’re not all American. They’re not all young, white men. It’s a bigger mix than maybe you’d believe.\nCraig: On that point, are there other perception vs reality differences with YC that are apparent to you?\nLeah: Some people think YC is full-time in the sense you have to live at YC. [Laughter] That’s totally not the case. YC likes you to live near YC but you don’t live at PG and Jessica’s house.\nCraig: Any advice for people working at big companies that are thinking about starting a startup?\nLeah: Do what we did! Build things on the side. Honestly mostly build Breaker on Sundays. We iterated on the product for months before leaving our jobs. You don’t have to quit your job to do a startup. I think it’s actually better to explore when you have that safety net.\nOur initial direction wasn’t the direction we ended up going in. I was interested in building tools for podcasters. Then when we started to talking to podcasters we realized that podcasters just want listeners and data about those listeners. Just providing good tools didn’t really solve that problem. So we shifted focus to work on the user app first. That change in strategy would have been much more painful if we had quit our day jobs to learn it.\nCraig: What made you decide to go all in?\nLeah: Those choices are always a gradient for me. I’ve had other projects where I’m just not that motivated to finish it or keep going. And I think that’s ok. Many people think of that as a failure but for me it’s ok. If you’re feeling lukewarm about something there’s probably a reason why. Maybe something you’ve learned has changed your perception.\nWhat was nice about Breaker is that I think Erik and I both felt that there was something there. We both kept motivated with day jobs, which said something about the space and the ideas. That made it easier to commit. And having some early users helped us keep going, too.\nCraig: What advice would you give yourself when you were just starting out?\nLeah: So right out of college I moved to SF. At the time I was very lonely. I didn’t know anyone here. Knowing that I would reestablish myself eventually would have been very comforting. That’s not really startup advice though…\nCraig: I think that’s great advice for doing anything new though.\nLeah: Yeah. It will be comfortable eventually. It’s uncomfortable now because it’s not familiar but it’ll get easier.\nCraig: What are your favorite podcasts right now?\nLeah: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.missingrichardsimmons.com//">Missing Richard Simmons</a>: E01 – This is kind of hot right now for all of Breaker. It’s a new serialized mystery show. It’s about what happened to the 80s exercise guru, Richard Simmons. He disappeared from the public eye and has been out of touch with his friends and family and nobody knows why.. It’s sort of like Serial… but I hope no one gets murdered! Ep: 1\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://soundcloud.com/here-to-make-friends/bachelor-s21e9-with-claire-fallon-emma-gray/">Here To Make Friends</a>: S21E09 – It’s Slate’s Bachelor recap show. The hosts discuss this week’s episode with insight from previous contestants and some backstory about The Bachelor. They know a little more about the show than the average viewer.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/kentgoldman//">The Twenty Minute VC</a>: Using Valuations As A Litmus Test – They’re short interviews with VCs. The episodes are on a variety of different topics related to VC and tech.\n","comment_id":"1098911","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-03-21T05:30:43.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:12:35.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-03-21T05:30:43.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/founder-stories-leah-culver-of-breaker/","excerpt":"Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Leah Culver is cofounder and CTO of Breaker (YC W17).Discussed: Starting a Startup as a Side Project; Interviewing; Working atDropbox; Being a Female Founder; Leah’s Favorite Podcasts.","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},{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71957","uuid":"7a1454fe-fd3e-483a-b874-e2f8a99d2b94","title":"Founder Stories: Ritesh Malik of Innov8","slug":"founder-stories-ritesh-malik-of-innov8","html":"<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/founder-stories//">Founder Stories</a> are conversations with people that have been through YC.\nRitesh Malik is cofounder of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.innov8.work//">Innov8 (YC S16).\nDiscussed: Starting Innov8, Being an International Founder in YC, India’s Startup Ecosystem, Advice, and Ritesh’s Favorite Books.\n<hr />\nCraig: What does your company do?\nRitesh: Innov8 offers coworking offices in India.\nCraig: What did you do before YC?\nRitesh: I started my first startup in 2012, Alive App, which was acquired by Times of India. Since then I have been an angel investor in Indian startups.\nCraig: Why did you decide to start Innov8?\nRitesh: India has some of the most uninspiring & mundane offices. People spend over half of their non-sleeping hours in these offices. Indians live for the weekends and drift unexcitedly from Monday through Friday. We saw an opportunity to revolutionize the way people work in our country by building a workstyle brand with elements of design, community & technology over the layer of real estate.\nCraig: What’s it like being an international founder at YC?\nRitesh: YC is amazing! I’m a medical doctor by education. Having no formal management degree, YC was my 3 month MBA for scaling startups. It was one of the most wide learning experiences of my life. The network, the partners, and the guidance YC provides are super helpful in addition to being associated with the YC brand.\nComing from a country like India, where the startup ecosystem is hugely exaggerated and the fundamental knowledge of product supremacy and raising capital is still juvenile, YC has given me a clear rationale of how to create great companies.\nCraig: Do you have thoughts on how the industry could be better for international founders?\nRitesh: I think the industry is great for international founders. People are super helpful! Didn’t expect this much support for international founders in the Valley.\nCraig: Any advice for people that are thinking about starting a startup?\nRitesh: Go through the YC blog. Read each and every line and implement. Take action and start don’t worry about whether you’ll fail. Focus on product supremacy. Great companies are built on great products. Don’t worry about money. Create an amazing customer experience.\nCraig: What advice would you give yourself when you were just out of college?\nRitesh: Keep dreaming big! Irrespective of your current position, every individual has the ability to do whatever he/she wants to do. People don’t fail because of lack of aptitude/knowledge or skills but because of lack of dreaming big. Insane ambitions are a common ingredient of all the might in the world!\nCraig: What are your favorite books?\nRitesh: Here are a few:\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/1591847788/">Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products</a> by Nir Eyal\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/">The Lean Startup</a> by Eric Reis\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp/1449389554/">Hackers & Painters</a> by Paul Graham\n","comment_id":"1098764","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-03-15T01:54:37.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:12:56.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-03-15T01:54:37.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/founder-stories-ritesh-malik-of-innov8/","excerpt":"Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Ritesh Malik is cofounder of Innov8 (YC S16).Discussed: Starting Innov8, Being an International Founder in YC, India’sStartup Ecosystem, Advice, and Ritesh’s Favorite Books.","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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71955","uuid":"025e7b76-1c47-459e-9223-ba9d6da0c069","title":"Founder Stories: Nicky Goulimis of Nova Credit","slug":"founder-stories-nicky-goulimis","html":"<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/founder-stories//">Founder Stories</a> are conversations with people that have been through YC.\nNicky Goulimis is cofounder and COO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.neednova.com//">Nova Credit</a> (YC S16).\nDiscussed: Her Work Before YC, Meeting Cofounders, Getting an MBA, Being a Female Founder, and Advice for Other Founders.\n<hr />\nCraig: What does Nova do?\nNicky: Nova is a cross-border credit bureau. We’ve built an API that provides credit data from overseas to lenders, telcos, tenant screeners, etc. so they can acquire immigrants as customers.\nCraig: What did you do before YC?\nNicky: My cofounders and I all met at Stanford. Misha [Esipov] and I were getting MBAs. Loek [Janssen] was in the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Engineering doing his masters. I guess Nova is sort of a class project gone wrong! We’d all experienced the challenge we’re solving around credit access as non-Americans, but exploring this problem while in school made us realize how much bigger this problem is than we’d originally understood, and how much data is actually available that could take this problem away.\nCraig: What made you transition Nova from class project to startup?\nNicky: I think it truly was incrementally seeing how much lenders care about this problem too, and that it isn’t just a consumer pain-point. I particularly remember one time when I was driving and kept getting missed calls from the same number. So I pulled over and it was the CEO of a Credit Union telling me that he was worried his emails were going to my junk folder and that he was very eager to work with us. A little cheesy but it felt in line with YC’s “Make something people want.”\nCraig: What did you do before Stanford?\nNicky: I imagine no one thinks that they have a “classic founder journey”, but this was definitely not the path I’d chosen. I studied English Literature as an undergraduate, worked in consulting at Bain, and subsequently in agricultural development in East Africa.\nI came to Stanford thinking that agriculture was the world I’d go back to. It’s funny because for me in the middle of Silicon Valley doing a startup was not aspirational. I didn’t understand why my friends were always tinkering with what I thought were the most ludicrous ideas, and I felt a disconnect with the sheer grandiosity of it all.\nBut then just happened to do a class project with people I deeply respect and love working with. We have amazing chemistry and found an important problem to work on. And even in the middle of loving working together, it took me a long time to re-frame my self-perception as “someone who would do a startup” and to let go of a very different personal narrative I’d built up in my head.It wasn’t who I thought I’d be.\nCraig: How are you dealing with your new identity?\nNicky: Ha! Well I’m not sure it’s a new identity, as much as a discovery that doing startups can be awesome. I keep trying to share this epiphany with other “people like me” or less traditional founders and patronizingly push them to do startups – but then it turns out that they’re all already building amazing ventures.\nAnd perhaps I’m realizing that people can do startups on their own terms. I’ve resigned myself that I’m not going to become Steve Jobs overnight but I also accept some other strengths I have.\nI wish the pictures of less traditional founders were elevated more, and that we could achieve broader participation in this huge privilege\nCraig: Are there particular traits of those less traditional founders you’d highlight?\nNicky: It’s tough answering these questions without being reductive. I hate the rhetoric that women founders “bring empathy to a team.” Maybe not. Maybe they’re terrible.\nInstead, I’d just say that having a team where this is complementarity in skillsets and the ability to disagree leads to strength. And that selecting from and attracting 100% of the population likely leads to higher quality .\nCraig: Did you feel there was any difference in being a female founder at YC?\nNicky: I admire all that YC is doing to support female founders in the program, as well as more broadly in tech. And I felt very proud when YC barred a VC from Demo Day who had made sexually insinuative remarks towards a woman in my batch.\nBut I think we’re still not there. I feel sad when I look around my batch and see only 13% women in the room or when all our speakers are white men. Every minority founder I know has some horror stories about fundraising, or sales, or hiring, or whatever interaction they have with the outside world.\nIt’s a tough balance between celebrating progress, and also acknowledging failings. I am so grateful to have opportunities that my grandmother would have killed for. But we’re also in such a hurry to proclaim that “it’s a great time to be a minority founder” that we eliminate some of the opportunities to continue evaluating and progressing.\nUltimately, that’s what impressed me most about YC. Whenever I gave YC feedback, I not only felt heard, but I also saw action come out of it. And that gives me a lot of hope.\nCraig: Do you have thoughts on how the industry could be better for female founders?\nNicky: One thought is that so often we see diversity as the mantle for minorities to take on. But women’s inclusion is not just a women’s problem. And it’s also important to make sure power is involved. I find strength in a lot of women’s events and women’s communities, but often I see organizations do that and think “okay, we’ve checked the boxed, we’re putting all the women together”. When actually, what’s needed is for powerful men to invest in women. It sends an organizational signal, provides the access that women so often lack, and gives them an opportunity to prove themselves. What if every leader committed to spending a minimum amount of time each week coaching a minority founder or team-member?\nBeyond such initiatives for racial and gender diversity in Silicon Valley, there’s also the issue of economic diversity. How do we make entrepreneurship viable for founders who can’t afford to not pay themselves for six months? Could we let go of some of the emphasis on ramen profitability or on enormous progress before funding to make entrepreneurship more inclusive?\nCraig: On that point, are there other perception vs reality differences with YC that are apparent to you?\nNicky: I think YC is shrouded in mystery, so I didn’t really know what to expect. But it was definitely surreal. I remember the first week when I was sitting at dinner and I look up and Sam Altman rolls in on a hoverboard. He then sits down and immediately starts talking about building new cities from scratch.\nYC is a lot less programmatic than I’d expected. I think I realized a little too late that there was the opportunity to build such a custom experience – from learning from expert partners, or building a batch community in whatever way felt right.\nI also came to realize that startups are startup-y for a lot longer than I had previously envisioned. Everyone always envies the consumer startup in the batch that has the hockey stick growth but they’re still a startup. Seeing that they’re still hustling every day was very cool.\nCraig: What was your experience in getting your MBA? And would you recommend other people do it?\nNicky: Yes, I would. I loved my MBA and I never would have done a startup without it. It gave me a unique opportunity to explore interests and get to do Nova Credit. And I use what I learned every day – both the hard skills in thinking through business strategy, but also the soft skills for recruiting, or collaborating with teams, or approaching tough conversations.\nCraig: What advice would you give yourself when you were just out of college?\nNicky: When I was just out of college, I struggled with reconciling my identity as a good student with the reality that I had no real skillset. I think I held myself back from doing new things because I wouldn’t be good at them. In the last few years, I’ve tried to push myself to not worry so much about my current abilities, and focus more on the learning process. Right now I’m in a position where I’m pretty dreadful at sales but I’ve got to learn it because someone’s got to do it for the company. So I’m trying to focus on enjoying that learning rather than beating myself up for not being the best yet.\nCraig: What are your favorite books?\nNicky: I love reading fiction and I truly believe we learn the most by exercising empathy.\nTwo of my favorite books are <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Mill-Floss-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0198707533//">The Mill on the Floss</a> by George Eliot because of how it explore ethics and yet resists allegory, and my grandmother Athina Cacouri’s With the Wings of Marika (sadly available only in Greek) because of its sheer energy in transporting us to an important historic moment.\n<hr />\n","comment_id":"1098809","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-03-13T02:10:05.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:12:58.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-03-13T02:10:05.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71152","name":"Founder Stories","slug":"founder-stories","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/founder-stories/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a7116f","name":"Female Founders","slug":"female-founders","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/female-founders/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/founder-stories-nicky-goulimis/","excerpt":"Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Nicky Goulimis is cofounder and COO of Nova Credit (YC S16).Discussed: Her Work Before YC, Meeting Cofounders, Getting an MBA, Being aFemale Founder, and Advice for Other Founders.","reading_time":6,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71936","uuid":"b4c72ecf-84cd-4a40-abef-fc9bdca9d6bc","title":"Tuesday Q&A with Rob Rhinehart of Soylent","slug":"tuesday-qa-with-rob-rhinehart-of-soylent","html":"During the batch we invite a speaker in for every Tuesday dinner. <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://robrhinehart.com//">Rob Rhinehart</a> of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://soylent.com/">Soylent joined us during the W17 batch.\nOther speakers this batch are: Tracy Young and Ralph Gootee of PlanGrid; Mike Maples of Floodgate; Ron Conway of SV Angel; Patrick Collison of Stripe; Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk of Airbnb; Tobi Lutke of Shopify; and others.\nIf you have specific questions for a speaker, send them to <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"mailto:Macro@YCombinator.com\">Macro@YCombinator.com</a>.\n<hr />\nHow do you describe Soylent? \nHealthy fast food.\nWhat’s a common misconception about Soylent you’d like to clarify? \nPeople are often pleasantly surprised that it can taste good and be nutritious, especially our new flavors. Also Soylent is not a commitment. You don’t need to give up regular food to use it. It’s just another option when you want something fast and filling.\nWhat’s the hardest part about making a food product vs electronics? \nThere is more variation in biological ingredients than electronics, but we still manage to make a consistent product. Also the safety and quality controls are much more strict, as they should be.\nYou pivoted after YC. What were you making before? \nA wireless network for small connected devices.\nWhy did you pivot? \nFunctional food meets a universal basic need and has more potential for repeat customers.\nHow have you found the fundraising process for a food product? \nFundraising is the worst.\nWhat were the most meaningful learnings you’ve had while working on Soylent? \nBetter is a friendship based on business than a business based on friendship\nWhat’s the most impactful thing you’ve done in terms of selling Soylent? \nWrite.\nIf you weren’t working on Soylent, what would you be working on? \nAffordable housing.\nAny advice for people? \nAlways take the high road.\nLast question. What books do you recommend? \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/End-Eternity-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0765319195/">The End of Eternity</a> by Isaac Asimov \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Rich-Paul-Getty/dp/0515087378/">How to Be Rich</a> by J Paul Getty \n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Thrift-Editions-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/048629823X/">Meditations by Marcus Aurelius\n","comment_id":"1098334","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2017-01-27T04:37:23.000-08:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:15:44.000-07:00","published_at":"2017-01-27T04:37:23.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71175","name":"Interview","slug":"interview","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/interview/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71175","name":"Interview","slug":"interview","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/interview/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tuesday-qa-with-rob-rhinehart-of-soylent/","excerpt":"During the batch we invite a speaker in for every Tuesday dinner. Rob Rhinehart of Soylent joined us during theW17 batch.Other speakers this batch are: Tracy Young and Ralph Gootee of PlanGrid; MikeMaples of Floodgate; Ron Conway of SV Angel; Patrick Collison of Stripe; BrianChesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk of Airbnb; Tobi Lutke of Shopify; andothers.If you have specific questions for a speaker, send them to Macro@YCombinator.","reading_time":1,"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":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71923","uuid":"be5f4e4d-68dc-4256-af31-18c4d056ace9","title":"Office Hours in London - 12/20 & 12/21","slug":"office-hours-in-london","html":"We’re hosting office hours in London on Tuesday, December 20 and Wednesday, December 21, 2016.\nTues, Dec 20, 2016 from 9am-1:30pm GMT. \nWeds, Dec 21, 2016 from 9am-1:30pm GMT.\nOffice hour slots are 20 minutes each. If you’re selected, we’ll reach out with your time slot and the location by end of day on Friday, December 16.\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/82/" target=\"_blank\">Sign up here</a>\n","comment_id":"1098041","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2016-12-06T17:00:32.000-08:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T13:17:15.000-07:00","published_at":"2016-12-06T17:00:32.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"}],"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":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a71084","name":"Craig Cannon","slug":"craig-cannon","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Craig-1.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Craig is the Director of Content at YC. ","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/craig-cannon/"},"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/office-hours-in-london/","excerpt":"We’re hosting office hours in London on Tuesday, December 20 and Wednesday,December 21, 2016.Tues, Dec 20, 2016 from 9am-1:30pm GMT.Weds, Dec 21, 2016 from 9am-1:30pm GMT.Office hour slots are 20 minutes each. If you’re selected, we’ll reach out withyour time slot and the location by end of day on Friday, December 16.","reading_time":0,"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 Craig Cannon","featured":null,"pagination":{"page":1,"limit":10,"pages":4,"total":31,"next":2,"prev":null}},"url":"/blog/author/craig-cannon","version":null,"rails_context":{"railsEnv":"production","inMailer":false,"i18nLocale":"en","i18nDefaultLocale":"en","href":"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/author/craig-cannon","location":"/blog/author/craig-cannon","scheme":"https","host":"www.ycombinator.com","port":null,"pathname":"/blog/author/craig-cannon","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-ed7a2735-f1be-4b7b-8e7a-ee84417881ef","server_side":true}" data-reactroot="">

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Founder Stories: Reham Fagiri of AptDeco

by Craig Cannon4/10/2017

Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Reham Fagiri is cofounder and CEO of AptDeco (YC W14).Discussed: Skills Learned During Her MBA; Going From a Bank to a Startup;Starting AptDeco; SF<>NYC During YC; Reham’s Favorite Podcasts.

Founder Stories: Blake Scholl of Boom Technology

by Craig Cannon3/24/2017

Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Blake Scholl is founder and CEO of Boom Technology (YC W16).

Founder Stories: Leah Culver of Breaker

by Craig Cannon3/21/2017

Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Leah Culver is cofounder and CTO of Breaker (YC W17).Discussed: Starting a Startup as a Side Project; Interviewing; Working atDropbox; Being a Female Founder; Leah’s Favorite Podcasts.

Founder Stories: Ritesh Malik of Innov8

by Craig Cannon3/15/2017

Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Ritesh Malik is cofounder of Innov8 (YC S16).Discussed: Starting Innov8, Being an International Founder in YC, India’sStartup Ecosystem, Advice, and Ritesh’s Favorite Books.

Founder Stories: Nicky Goulimis of Nova Credit

by Craig Cannon3/13/2017

Founder Stories areconversations with people that have been through YC.Nicky Goulimis is cofounder and COO of Nova Credit (YC S16).Discussed: Her Work Before YC, Meeting Cofounders, Getting an MBA, Being aFemale Founder, and Advice for Other Founders.

Tuesday Q&A with Rob Rhinehart of Soylent

by Craig Cannon1/27/2017

During the batch we invite a speaker in for every Tuesday dinner. Rob Rhinehart of Soylent joined us during theW17 batch.Other speakers this batch are: Tracy Young and Ralph Gootee of PlanGrid; MikeMaples of Floodgate; Ron Conway of SV Angel; Patrick Collison of Stripe; BrianChesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk of Airbnb; Tobi Lutke of Shopify; andothers.If you have specific questions for a speaker, send them to Macro@YCombinator.

Office Hours in London - 12/20 & 12/21

by Craig Cannon12/7/2016

We’re hosting office hours in London on Tuesday, December 20 and Wednesday,December 21, 2016.Tues, Dec 20, 2016 from 9am-1:30pm GMT.Weds, Dec 21, 2016 from 9am-1:30pm GMT.Office hour slots are 20 minutes each. If you’re selected, we’ll reach out withyour time slot and the location by end of day on Friday, December 16.

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