Cindy Mi is the founder and CEO of VIPKID. VIPKID is a 1-on-1 teaching platform where children in China learn english from North American teachers.Qi Lu is the CEO of YC China and Head of YC Research.***Topics00:23 - Qi's intro00:38 - Cindy's intro1:38 - Moving to a new province as a teenager4:38 - Being an educator and an entrepreneur 8:23 - Starting VIPKid in a hyper-competitive market14:53 - Metrics for measuring product market fit21:43 - How did she find the business model?26:53 - What things did she try that didn't work?30:38 - Strategy for product expansion33:03 - Content expansion for Mandarin learning34:53 - Building global companies41:23 - Creating a global culture44:13 - The future of education48:08 - How should engineers and product managers think about edtech?51:33 - Thoughts on AI54:33 - Advice for entrepreneurs

Vinod Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs to build impactful new energy and technology companies. Previously he was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors.How to Build the Future is hosted by Sam Altman.***Topics00:30 - Vinod’s intro01:20 - A zero-million-dollar company vs a zero-billion-dollar company4:20 - What percentage of investors in Silicon Valley are good long-term company builders?4:50 - Who has earned the right to advise an entrepreneur?6:50 - Which risk to take when7:20 - Helpful board members8:15 - Who to trust for what advice11:00 - First principles thinking and rate of change13:00 - Evaluating a candidate in an interview14:15 - How much should a founder have planned and how ambitious should a founder be?16:30 - Recruiting great people19:00 - Building a phenomenal early team20:20 - Being generous with early employee equity27:00 - Gene pool engineering27:18 - The art, science, and labor of recruiting28:20 - How founders should think about investors31:00 - Doers vs pontificators32:00 - What does Vinod want to do in the next ten years?32:10 - Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology

Frank Lantz is a game designer and Director of the NYU Game Center. He cofounded Area/Code Games and most recently released a game called Universal Paperclips in which you’re an AI that makes paperclips.Frank’s on Twitter @flantz and his site is franklantz.net.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics00:27 - "Games are the aesthetic form of thinking and doing"6:57 - VR skepticism9:42 - Universal Paperclips14:27 - Explaining games to non-gamers20:12 - Competitive gaming22:57 - Building life lessons into games31:42 - Teaching game design36:17 - Inspiration, hard work, and taste39:17 - Darker sides of gaming culture43:07 - The indie game market45:27 - Unexpected trends in gaming49:17 - Benedict Fritz asks - Frank you seem much more interested in chess, go, poker, and other games with a long history than most game designers. Where do you think this comes from?52:12 - Esports55:37 - Inventing sports57:27 - Pokemon Go1:00:32 - Difficulty in predicting successes in entertainment1:03:17 - Frank's game recommendations1:05:47 - @fakebalenciaga asks - Why Tonto?

Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis are the founders of AptDeco, where you can buy and sell used furniture. They were in the YC Winter 2014 batch and you can find them at AptDeco.com.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics0:21 - What is AptDeco?1:06 - Why did Reham and Kalam start it?2:51 - Were they considering other ideas?5:06 - How did they prepare to start AptDeco after business school/the corporate world?6:21 - Getting over the fear of starting9:21 - Communicating that they're starting something to friends and family14:21 - Starting a startup after business school17:21 - Helpful learnings from a more traditional business education27:21 - Early models of AptDeco vs today31:51 - AptDeco's customers34:06 - Brands and customer acquisition38:46 - Learning how to do delivery42:06 - Deciding not to warehouse furniture43:51 - Ideas that didn't work and some that worked on the second attempt48:21 - Analytics50:51 - Being a NYC company in YC52:11 - How to make the most of YC

Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and he’s regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.He’s written several books including: The Black Hole War, The Cosmic Landscape, and the Theoretical Minimum series.He also has over 100 lectures on YouTube.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics0:26 - Being perceived as an outsider physicist   4:26 - The perils of becoming too mainstream6:11 - Where his ideas come from7:26 - Claudio asks - Do you think the graviton can be experimentally found?10:11 - The origins of String Theory15:41 - Why should there be a grand unified theory?16:56 - Quantum mechanics and gravity  20:16 - Large unanswered questions in physics27:56 - Holographic principle38:26 - Simulation hypothesis40:41 - Richard Feynman on philosophy42:26 - Feynman and the bomb46:26 - Improving the world by discovering what the world is49:26 - ER and EPR - Black holes and entanglement56:26 - Noah Hammer asks - Could quantum teleportation be used in the future as a means of intergalactic communication?58:26 - rokkodigi asks - How do you think quantum theory will shape technology in the future?1:01:56 - Why teach physics for the public?

Michael Seibel is a partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the winter 2012 batch.In this episode Michael comments on five of his essays. The essays are: Why Should I Start a Startup?, One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup, The Real Product Market Fit, Users You Don’t Want, and Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?Michael’s on Twitter @mwseibel.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics0:00 - Intro0:42 - Why Should I Start a Startup?2:00 - Three types of people: people highly motivated when working for themselves, people that could succeed starting a startup or within a big company, and people that could succeed within a big company.6:00 - How do you decide what type of person you are?7:30 - Identify bias in advice givers10:30 - Peer advice becomes less valuable during college14:40 - One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup15:40 - People aren’t taught how to find ideas17:20 - Find a particular problem that you’re passionate about20:55 - Find some friends and brainstorm a solution23:20 - Build an MVP25:55 - Two failed orders of operations for starting a startup29:57 - The Real Product Market Fit 30:57 - Why do many founders think they have product market fit when they don’t?35:42 - Building a successful company is not a single variable problem37:27 - Socialcam didn’t hit product market fit38:37 - Justin.tv had $1M in profit before reaching product market fit42:27 - Some companies take a long time42:55 - Users You Don’t Want44:25 - The spectrum of how users are using your product45:55 - Users that take a lot of customer support time48:50 - Don’t let the hijack users control the product roadmap49:31 - Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?50:31 - A team, a product, and an office are all just a means to an end51:31 - If you don’t really deserve money, what is an alternate path to create leverage?53:16 - Breaking even at Justin.tv was a moment of infinite clarity55:31 - Series A program and leverage

Andrew Kortina is the cofounder of Venmo and Fin. Fin is a high quality, on-demand, personal assistant and executive assistant service. You can get a $100 credit to try Fin at https://fin.com/ycAndrew blogs at https://kortina.nyc/The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics 00:32 - Human dignity and work8:07 - Creating jobs10:07 - From The Beautiful Struggle // The Beautiful Game - You might argue that we’re already in a sort of failure mode, where our ability to assign dignity to arbitrary work and motivate people to work bullshit jobs is more efficient than our ability to allocate labor towards industry that would have greater social benefit, like education, healthcare, food, etc. If we’re already in this failure mode, it’s kind of the worst of all worlds, because not only are we assigning meaning to work that doesn’t need to be done, but, also, we could be redeploying that labor towards efforts that are actually important today. 18:32 - Travel21:02 - Why do we want to do anything?22:07 - Life after Fin25:17 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I want to preface this talk by warning you that it’s quite possible you’ll interpret much of this talk as cynicism. It is not my intention to be cynical. My goal is to treat you with respect by speaking to you honestly, without any grand illusions.None of the companies trying to convince you to work for them will mention technological determinism. They will confirm what your parents and teachers told you, that your work and contribution will be totally unique and significant.32:02 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I recognize that the meditative aspect of craft is an excellent way to cope with meaninglessness38:32 - Technological determinism43:02 - Andrew's company Fin48:17 - Ryan Hoover asks - When (if ever) will Fin task completion be 100% AI-driven?49:32 - Differences between running Fin and Venmo56:47 - Venmo's Lucas ads58:32 - Spencer Clark asks - How did you and your co-founders decide to sell Venmo?1:02:02 - Charlie Kaufman on Screenwriting - What I’m trying to express – what I’d like to express – is the notion that, by being honest, thoughtful and aware of the existence of other living beings, a change can begin to happen in how we think of ourselves and the world, and ourselves in the world.1:08:30 - Get $100 credit to Fin at https://fin.com/yc

Brian Donohue is President of Instapaper and a Product Engineering Manager at Pinterest.You can find him on Twitter @bthdonohue.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics00:19 - The history of Instapaper8:19 - Free competitors enter the market10:19 - How Brian joined Instapaper14:34 - Transitioning from paid to freemium19:19 - Pinterest's acquisition of Instapaper26:34 - Moving to California29:04 - Working on Instapaper within Pinterest32:19 - Spinning Instapaper out of Pinterest42:34 - Jareau Wadé asks - What types of product integrations could Pinterest have done with Instapaper?50:04 - Ryan Hoover asks - I’m curious how he and the team balance simplicity with new feature development/product expansion.54:19 - Raymond Durk asks - I love the rapid reading mode but would also love a voice enabled mode where the Google Assistant or Siri reads it. Speaking of I'd use it on my Google Home to listen to news if that was a skill.57:39 - Brian Kim asks - Any growth hacks that worked well?1:00:04 - Gustaf Alströmer asks - How does it make time for focused time to catch up on everything he saves? What are his best productivity hacks related to this?1:03:44 - Backpacking

Sam Altman expands on ideas that have come up in several of his essays. Specifically: choosing projects, creating value, and finding purpose.Sam’s the president of YC Group and co-chairman of OpenAI. You can find him on Twitter @sama.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics1:25 - From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short - Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it.3:50 - Stepping back and evaluating your work5:30 - Creating metrics for your projects6:30 - Taking a year off 9:30 - Figuring out when to commit11:30 - Poker12:30 - From Productivity - Sleep seems to be the most important physical factor in productivity for me. Exercise is probably the second most important physical factor. The third area is nutrition. 15:00 - From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?"16:30 - From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short - Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths.17:30 - Perspective shifts20:15 - From Productivity - My system has three key pillars: “Make sure to get the important shit done”, “Don’t waste time on stupid shit”, and “make a lot of lists”.22:30 - What Happened to Innovation24:50 - From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. 26:50 - The deferred life plan doesn’t work31:50 - From The Merge - Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing. 34:10 - Weight training35:30 - The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello

Laura Deming is a partner at The Longevity Fund. They invest in companies that will allow us to live longer and healthier lives.You can learn more about them at Longevity.vc.Laura’s on Twitter @LauraDeming.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics00:22 - Why focus on longevity now?2:12 - How did Laura get started in longevity?3:22 - Why raise a fund?5:52 - What does Laura do personally for longevity?9:07 - Worm and mouse studies10:44 - Craig's personal habits12:37 - Human studies15:22 - Mica asks - Do you think immortality is going to be achieved by: 1. Curing all disease and stop aging so we could live with our own bodies forever 2. OR is going to be something like porting our brain, "mind" to a computer/robot?17:37 - Most likely strategies to increase lifespan19:47 - Ryan Hoover asks - Ask about the ethics of longevity. Jack J. Fernandes asks - Do people actually want to live longer?21:44 - Mica asks - How would immortality change society? Wouldn't we become more complacent? Since we have "forever" to do things wouldn't that diminish our rate of innovation? And since less new individuals are being created we would have access to less new ideas. We would just stop creating new Newtons, Einsteins, Mozarts…24:52 - Cognitive enhancement25:52 - Daily habits34:12 - Tech environment changes in the past 5-10 years39:22 - What percentage of people in labs want to start companies?41:37 - Pioneer43:57 - Confidence45:52 - Podcasting49:12 - Choosing media to consume52:17 - Sam Betesh asks - The last thing that led to a step function change in average life span was germ theory. What new areas of research might provide the next step function change?55:07 - Extending fertility windows57:22 - Jason Choi asks - What % of longevity is attributable to lifestyle choices vs genetics and the progress of technology in influencing both.58:37 - Fatih asks - is blood transfusion a thing or just a hoax1:00:42 - Rapamycin1:02:27 - Testosterone1:04:37 - Chris asks - Aubrey De Grey, IIRC, mentioned a number of times that we might, in the future, replace organs and tissues with new organic ones before they fail. Is this actually a reasonable idea, or is it more likely that we'll replace them with synthetic ones, if we replace them at all?1:06:07 - Mica asks - Laura did a "cookie diet" for one month. Why did you do it? How did you feel? Doesn't it go against all the research on longevity? ;-)1:08:07 - Is Laura actually not doing anything strange in her diet?