Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Avni Patel Thompson founded Poppy, which helped parents book the best caregivers. They went through the YC Winter 2016 batch and recently shut down. Avni asked to come on the podcast to talk about what the process of shutting down was like.Kat Manalac is a partner at YC.You can find Avni on Twitter at @APatelThompson and Kat at @KatManalac.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - @CraigCannon.***Topics00:35 - Kat’s intro01:15 - Avni’s intro2:15 - When did it become clear that scaling Poppy wasn’t working?5:50 - Experiments Avni tried with Poppy9:55 - The last six months of runway13:25 - Choosing to shut Poppy down17:25 - Pivot or shut down?20:10 - Who did Avni have these hard conversations with?24:35 - Communicating with investors during the process of shutting down31:20 - How does Avni feel since shutting down Poppy?38:30 - Tying self-worth to your accomplishments and how it feels after shutting down39:30 - “This is what trying looks like.”44:00 - The effects of having raised money46:00 - Starting to think about what’s next49:00 - Struggling with unstructured nothing49:45 - Kindness

Samantha Bradshaw is a researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project and a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute. She’s been tracking the phenomenon of political manipulation through social media.You can find Samantha on Twitter at @sbradshaww.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.***Topics:53 - What is a bot?2:53 - When computational propaganda began3:53 - Changes in bot tactics since 20165:53 - Using bots for content creation7:28 - WhatsApp and the upcoming Indian election9:23 - Trends in computational propaganda10:53 - How bots integrate into platforms13:23 - Responsibilities of platforms to remove fake accounts14:53 - The role of governments in media manipulation18:18 - Fake news and selecting news that aligns with your beliefs19:53 - Are platforms getting better or worse?21:33 - Samantha's personal internet habits23:03 - Sentiment around tracking in the UK vs the US24:23 - The Mueller report and US midterms29:18 - Canadian elections30:18 - 2020 US elections30:53 - Deepfakes31:48 - Optimistic thoughts for the future33:08 - How to help against computational propaganda

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