The Social Radars

In this episode, the hosts interview Patrick and John Collison, co-founders of Stripe. They discuss their first meeting and dinner as teenagers, the concept of the 'YC cool meter' in attracting startup founders, the early days of web hosting, and how they convinced banks and credit card companies to work with them.

Bill Clerico, co-founder of WePay, an early fintech pioneer, discusses the challenges faced during the transition of their business and their acquisition by JP Morgan. The podcast also includes a conversation on baby-proofing, concerns about the future world and climate change, and the innovative work of Overstory in monitoring vegetation growth around power lines using satellite imagery.

Dimitri Dadiomov, Co-Founder & CEO of Modern Treasury, discusses the complexity of money movement, liquidity issues during a bank run, ideal startup timing, and the future of Modern Treasury.

Brian Armstrong, Co-Founder & CEO of Coinbase, discusses the early days of Bitcoin, Coinbase's mission-driven approach, fraud prevention in cryptocurrency, and the concept of being aggressively independent minded as a founder.

Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, discusses the early days of the company, the impact of the pandemic, running a company with attention to detail, resilience during challenging times, the importance of determination, and the origins of Airbnb.

Announcing Season 2 of The Social Radars!

In this episode we talk to Edith Elliot, cofounder of the non-profit startup Noora Health. Like the best for-profit startups, Noora is relentlessly effective, but what they do with relentless effectiveness is save lives. Learn how what started as a graduate school project turned into an organization that has changed the world.

Today, we're doing something I do every day: talking to Paul Graham, who as well as being one of the founders of Viaweb and Y Combinator is also my husband. Paul has been involved with startups since 1995; before he invented the accelerator, he invented the web app. So there's a lot of information in this episode, but it was also, as you'll see, one of the funniest.

In today's episode, we're talking with Brian Chesky, cofounder and CEO of Airbnb. YC funded Airbnb in 2009, when the company was at death's door. During YC we watched the founders work frantically to get growth started and turn Airbnb into the rocketship that it is today. Learn what it takes to come up with an idea so weird that it seems like it will never work, and then make it work.

In this episode we walk down memory lane with Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, who was in Y Combinator's very first batch of startups in 2005. In those days Steve was a programmer fresh out of UVA. He had no idea that the site he was creating would become the forum of forums, still active and growing 18 years later. Hear about Reddit's eventful early years and how they affected what it eventually became.