Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Adora Cheung is a partner at YC and she also cofounded Homejoy, which went through YC in the Summer 2010 batch.For this episode we took questions from the internet. If you have questions for a future office hours episode, just tweet them our way.Questions0:41 - topherPedersen asks - How many users did you have when you applied to YC? Also, how much revenue had you generated?2:55 - Hatlii asks - How do you keep going if you can’t raise any money?4:54 - Alejandro Ruperti asks - When/how do you decide to walk away from something you started?10:41 - Chris Melnick-MacDonald asks - What advice and lessons did you learn in entering the #Canadian market?13:16 - Yahya Elamrani asks - Do I have to work on culture in the very early stage?15:39 - Adam Sanders asks - What was the best decision you made for Homejoy?16:53 - Ujjawal Chauhan asks - Would love to know what’s the one thing she’d do differently in hindsight if she were to start over again?20:35 - Nikita Butakov asks - What are some unique data science / machine learning challenges faced by Homejoy?22:07 - Alejandro Ruperti asks - From @tferriss : how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for a later success?32:37 - Siamak Freydoonnejad asks - What are the best practices when doing a cold reach out to an investor?33:14 - 😎rliesaurus @ ✈️ 🇪🇺asks - Is Uber for X still a thing people would invest in, in the US?36:21 - Fedor Paretsky asks - How have YC's views on cryptocurrency/blockchain-related startups changed since Coinbase?42:56 - Manav asks - What type of companies is YC seeing more of this time around?46:45 - Yahya Elamrani - What are the best marketing strategies for year one for a b2c startup?53:55 - Yahya Elamrani asks - What would you say to a founder from a third world country where there is a big lack in tech talents (and you can't compete with big corps due to lack of resources) in term of hiring?55:50 - Aspiring Angel asks - What’s the best way for investors interested in startup seed/angel funding get started? How does location affect the process?

Liz Wessel is the cofounder and CEO of WayUp. WayUp is a job and internship platform for college students and recent graduates. They were part of the Winter 2015 YC batch.Read the transcript here.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Simon Benjamin is a Professor of Quantum Technologies at Oxford. He is also the Principle Investigator for Oxford’s project on Quantum Optimisation and Machine Learning.This episode is more technical than last week’s episode with John Preskill. We start by covering some fundamentals then go into different approaches for constructing and scaling a quantum computer.Read the transcript here.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

John Preskill is a theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech.He once won a bet with Steven Hawking, which as he writes made him “briefly almost famous.” John and Kip Thorne bet that singularities could exist outside of black holes and after six years Hawking conceded that they were possible in very special, “nongeneric” conditions.In this episode we cover what John’s been focusing on for years: quantum information, quantum computing, and quantum error correction.Read the transcript here. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Carola Schönlieb is an applied mathematician at the University of Cambridge. She’s also a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and the head of the Image Analysis group at Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.In this episode we cover mathematical approaches to image processing.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Sean Mitchell is the cofounder and CEO of Rezi. REZI helps landlords find high quality, long-term tenants in 48 hours. They were part of the Winter 2017 batch.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Linda Xie is the cofounder of Scalar Capital, a cryptoasset fund. Before that she was a Product Manager at Coinbase (YC S12).Avichal Garg is a Managing Partner at Electric Capital, a value fund for digital assets. He’s also an Expert at YC. Prior to that he was the Director of Product Management at Facebook.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Patrick Moberg is the cofounder of Playdots, which is a mobile game studio in New York. They make Dots, Two Dots, and Dots and Co.Holly Liu is is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before that she cofounded the gaming company Kabam.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Miles Brundage and Tim Hwang discuss the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency, risks of emerging technologies, contrasting policy approaches, interdisciplinary research at FHI, short-term vs long-term AI concerns, and predictions for superhuman gaming and meta learning.

Claire McDonnell is cofounder and COO of True Link Financial (YC S13). True Link is a financial services firm that offers money management, investment, and insurance products, primarily for retirees.Jennifer Kim is currently advising startups. Prior to that she was the Head of Employee Experience and Development at Lever. Lever makes recruiting software and they were part of the Summer 2012 batch.Kat Manalac is a partner here at YC.