Product Hunt Radio

Today I'm at the headquarters of High Fidelity in San Francisco talking with co-founder and CEO, Philip Rosedale. Philip and the team at High Fidelity are creating free and open source software that enables real-time, social virtual reality. Some of you may also know Philip as the creator of Second Life, the iconic “internet-scale virtual world.” In fact, this episode was actually recorded entirely in virtual reality. Philip and I were both wearing headsets in different rooms. You can actually watch a video capture of our 3D VR chat, featuring a slightly awkward-looking avatar of myself. In this episode we talk about: The most advanced uses of VR today, like school kids being able to take a virtual field trip into an Egyptian tomb, and where VR is headed in the future. We discuss what VR might look like 5, 10, and 20 years in the future and which companies are best positioned to take advantage of the shift to VR. How widespread adoption of VR will transform our lives, especially when it comes to how we work and go to school. Philip gives the example of kids being able to go to school together with others from the other side of the world and how that will change for the better how we relate to one another. We also get into some of the philosophical questions around VR, including how to deal with identity and anonymity in a virtual world and why VR can enable better privacy online. We also talk about some of Philip's favorite VR applications as well as some of his requests for products in the space. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, GE Ventures, Rally Rd, and AngelList for their support. 😸 Quotes From This Episode “If I can go to school on a virtual planet where there are kids from all over the whole world, look at the human impact of that versus me going to school with only the kids that are within ten blocks of my house. There’s a homogeneity to local places that is going to get completely turned off with VR.” — Philip “[In Second Life] people were surprisingly vocal with one identity. I think maybe we only have a certain amount of ability to imagine ourselves as different things and I think there’s a fatigue with really being out there far away from how you imagine yourself.” — Philip “Virtual worlds are very interesting in that they put a big spotlight on these issues around privacy, anonymity, and freedom of speech. We’re not going to have our real names floating around our heads in VR.” — Philip Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Facemoji — Emoji your face. HTC Vive — Discover virtual reality beyond imagination. Magic Leap — Lightweight wearable that brings dreams to life. Ubiquity6 — Edit reality together.

Today I'm at AngelList HQ in San Francisco for a bit of a reunion with two friends and investors: Parker Thompson and Erik Torenberg. Parker Thompson is a partner at AngelList and early stage investor. Prior to joining the family here (Product Hunt is an AngelList company), he was a partner at 500 Startups where he invested in Erik's first company, among many others. Before that, Parker spent six years at Pivotal Labs. As you'll hear, he's also behind the popular Twitter account @StartupLJackson. Erik Torenberg is co-founder and partner at Village Global, a network-driven venture firm. He is also co-founder and chairman of crypto company TokenDaily and On Deck, a community of top talent looking to start or join their next company. Erik was actually the first full-time teammate to join me at Product Hunt and prior to that, he co-founded rapt.fm, an app for participating in live online rap battles. In this episode we talk about: How investors choose which companies to bet on, including how investors think about investing in companies with distributed teams. We also run through the lessons learned from the early stage investing Parker, Erik and I have done and discuss the strategies founders should use when pricing their initial fundraising rounds. The emergence of crypto and whether it will pose a threat to Facebook as well as the challenges Facebook faces in trying to regulate what can and can't be said on their platform. We also talk about when decentralization makes sense and why some of the benefits of centralization might be overlooked in the rush to decentralize. How new business opportunities emerge through platform shifts, including whether voice as a platform is finally seeing its often-forecasted and much-anticipated shift to the mainstream. Erik and Parker also run through some of their requests for products. Of course, we also talk about some of their favorite products, including a social network for books, an app to help freestyle rappers, and a device that lets you cook food to perfection by vacuum-sealing it and submerging it in hot water. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Every time there's a platform shift you sort of have two different types of companies built on the new platform: new-old things — you take legacy products and add internet to it, like Casper, bed plus internet, or Coursera, education plus internet. Then you have the new-new thing — things that could only be created on the new platform, which for the internet is something like eBay or PayPal or Napster.” — Erik “I think just as a macro point, often we're too quick to extrapolate patterns like the new-new versus the new-old and with respect to crypto, I’m old enough to remember the lesson coming out of the 90s that open was always going to win. That’s how we built web 2.0… but then Facebook and Twitter came along… but now open/decentralized is coming back we're and saying actually we were right before and open is the future.” — Parker “You make choices in defaults — these algorithms are choices, and even when you try not to pick winners, you’re still picking winners.” — Parker “A lot of people criticize these incumbents, like Facebook or Amazon, saying these are the rent-seekers taking way too much and that we are going to build a decentralized version of them and pass on all the value to consumers. But what they don’t give enough credit to is that these products already pass along a lot of value to consumers... What I’m excited about with crypto networks is the ability to incentivize a lot more stakeholders, like the early users that contribute a lot to the platform. You have the ability to give upside to a lot more people than just early employees.” — Erik “A puzzle to me is, why is there not a billion dollar exercise video company? It just seems like something that should exist, and the way I think about investing is: you're just wandering through the world and encountering these puzzles and the answers are not obvious but then someone walks in the door with the answer because they’ve figured it out. That's when you get excited and do the deal.” — Parker Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Anova — Connected temperature-controlled cooking device. Goodreads — Popular social network for book lovers. Rhymeo — Freestyle app that provides material for your shareable raps. STEEZY — Online dance classes at your own pace. Udemy — Learn anything, on your schedule.

Today's episode of Product Hunt Radio is the largest gathering yet, featuring Arlan, Christie, Bryan, and Amiah from the Backstage Capital team. Arlan Hamilton isn't your typical VC. She went from being homeless not long ago to founding and scaling Backstage Capital, a fund dedicated to investing in underrepresented (or underestimated, as she coined) founders. Since 2015, they have invested millions of dollars into over 80 companies. Prior to starting the fund, she worked in the music industry, where she was a tour manager and founder and publisher of INTERLUDE, an internationally distributed indie magazine. Christie Pitts is the co-founder of Backstage Studio, their recently announced venture studio. Prior to teaming up with Arlan and team, she worked with Verizon Ventures portfolio and following emerging technology trends. Bryan Landers is Backstage's recently promoted COO and producer of two of Backstage's podcasts. Previously he worked as a designer and product manager at Zapier and as a consultant. Amiah Sheppard is an operations associate and analyst working on the deal flow team at Backstage. She has a particular focus on beauty and wellness startups. In this episode we talk about: Arlan's mission to find underrepresented and underestimated founders and the importance, even as adults, of being able to look up to role models who look like you. Arlan hopes to be a role model to a new generation of people of color that want to build companies. The crew, as they call the team at Backstage, walk through some of their requests for products, including waterproof headgear, online book clubs, and a way to bring the shared experience of live music online. Aspiring founders, take note! Also mullets make another appearance (see last week's episode for more chatter about mullet). Except this time it's not about a mullet strategy or mullet businesses, it's about the actual, for-real hockey hair. We also talk about some of their favorite products, like an app that lets you experience live music in virtual reality, a service that lets you search live audio, and a way to add pictures, maps or quotes to your favorite podcasts. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “I cried when I saw this cover [Fast Company October 2018] because I was looking back a few years to see who I wanted to see [on a magazine cover.]” — Arlan “We’re about to have another mobile revolution [with 5G]. There are companies working on the technology, but I think there will be a whole new wave of companies that change the way we interact with each other.” — Christie “You have thousands and thousands of people who are finally getting their shot at starting a company.” — Arlan “As long as you can’t download a t-shirt, live music will always win. They said that a few years ago, but now you can download a t-shirt.” — Arlan Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode CEEK — Explore, share and live the moment in VR. Entale — Add pictures, maps and quotes to your favorite podcasts. Nēdl — Find what's playing or saying now on live audio broadcasts. Turntable.fm (RIP) — Music-streaming, chat rooms and voting. Also explore this collection of Backstage Capital's headliners (aka portfolio companies) on Product Hunt.

Andrew Chen, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and former Uber growth leader, teams up with sister Ada Chen, COO of Notejoy and advisor to multiple startups. They dive into the evolution of the Silicon Valley ecosystem and discuss the 'mullet strategy' for startups. Ada reflects on the contrasting skills needed in large companies vs. startups. The duo also tackles the impact of remote work on collaboration and innovative productivity tools, essential for navigating today's tech landscape.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm in the sunny hills of Los Angeles at the home of Sophia Amoruso with Suzy Ryoo. Sophia Amoruso is an incredible entrepreneur who I've gotten to know over the past year. She got her start very young, when at 22 she founded NastyGal, selling vintage clothing on eBay. It turned into a massive company with hundreds of employees, until a decade later the company filed for bankruptcy. She's the author of the New York Times bestseller #GIRLBOSS and more recently founded Girlboss, a company focused on bringing together and helping women professionals. They put on community events, publish a daily newsletter and host a wildly popular podcast. Suzy Ryoo is a very special person to me (full disclosure: She's my SO). We met at Coachella in 2015 just before she transitioned her career from entertainment and media to venture capital. At Atom Factory, she works with entrepreneur, artist manager, and investor, Troy Carter. They manage the Prince Estate and are investors in companies like Lyft, Uber, Warby Parker, Spotify, and Girlboss. She is also a partner at Cross Culture Ventures, a seed stage fund in Los Angeles. In this episode we talk about: The best tools and techniques we've used to build healthy habits, whether it's getting more exercise, meditating more frequently (even for five minutes at a time) or just having a calmer mind. We also talk about the ways that being part of a non-judgmental online community — yes, those do exist online — can help everybody involved reach their goals. Sophia talks about her journey as an entrepreneur, including building a huge company like Nasty Gal “by accident” and the lessons she's taking from her time at Nasty Gal as she starts Girlboss, which, as she likes to say, is the first company she's started “on purpose.” Why Suzy is still a power user of location-based check-in apps like Swarm and Foursquare. We also talk about some of the unappreciated merits of what sometimes seem like “creepy” products. The ups-and-downs of investing, and why sometimes you can make a sound decision at the time that you later come to regret. Of course, we also chat about some of their favorite products, including a $40 (!) astrology app, apps that promise “a vacation for your mind,” as well as startups that deliver the best vitamins and probiotics. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Platforms can become really huge, but when you have a community and there's a sense of context around what they’re talking about and what they’re there to do, ultimately if they help one another, then that's as good as the internet gets.” — Sophia “Twitter can be like a dialog with yourself, especially if you don’t have a following. I promised myself that I would tweet every time I run, and little known to me, during 2017 I ran 200 miles. I think that feedback loop really helped me.” — Suzy “I like to say that I’ve started two brands on accident but this is my first business I've started on purpose.” — Sophia “Like my dad says, 'health is wealth!'” — Suzy “You don’t really count the places you go in real life, but then you do it digitally [via check-in apps like Foursquare] and you’re like wow, I do a lot of stuff!” — Sophia Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Bird — Enjoy the ride — quick scooter hires for city commutes. Complete — A community-based to-do app. Help each other GTD. Co-Star — Hyper-personalized astrology. Evernote — Note taking gets even simpler. Fair — Get a car right on your phone and return it whenever you want. 1st Dibs — It's like Fab for the 1%. Foursquare — Find the best places everywhere. Girlboss — A new media site for women. Headspace — Meditation made simple in just 10 minutes a day. Highlight (RIP) — Find friends and new people nearby. Hi Hello — Exchange contacts, seamlessly. Lime — Rent bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters. Nike+ Running — Track your runs. Polymail — A simple, beautiful, and powerful email client for Mac. Ritual — Reinventing the vitamin, delivered monthly. Sanctuary— Free daily horoscopes for the cosmically curious. Seed — Your daily probiotics + prebiotics for systemic health. Simple Habit— Meditation for people who never have time. Swarm — Keep up and meet up with your friends. Tesla — The mass market electric car. TimePassages — Astrology tools at your fingertips. Trello — Organize anything, together. Uber — Get a ride in minutes. Universe — The easiest way to make an awesome website. From your phone. Wonderschool — Airbnb for preschools and child care.

Today I'm visiting Stripe's office in San Francisco to chat with Patrick Collison and Courtland Allen, shortly after they announced their latest round of funding, valuing the company at a whopping $20B. Patrick Collison is the CEO and co-founder of Stripe, an ambitious company aiming to increase the GDP of the internet. The now 1,300 person company was started in 2010 by Patrick and his brother, John Collison, at the age of 23 and 21, respectively. While young, this isn't their first startup. Prior to founding Stripe, Patrick and his brother started and sold Auctomatic for $5M in 2008. Courtland Allen is a super talented designer and developer. In 2016 he founded Indie Hackers, an awesome community of bootstrappers and makers sharing their stories. Nine months later Stripe acquired the company. Courtland is also a Y Combinator alumnus and an MIT graduate with a degree in Computer Science. In this episode we talk about: Who Patrick and Courtland's role models were when they were building their businesses, and how the right role models today can help build a more inclusive tech ecosystem. The influence of Indie Hackers on Stripe and why even with the great tech for online communication today, some of the best interactions between its community members happen at meetups. If there's too much or too little funding in tech and how the investor-founder dynamic changes when you move outside of Silicon Valley. Why Stripe started a book publishing business (in 2018) and the reading habits of Patrick, Courtland, and others at Stripe. We of course also talk about some of their favorite products including a product to tell you how you sleep, helpful tools for building your next app, and some “oldies-but-goodies” that you might have forgotten about. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “How do we help increase the number of successful companies that get started in the world? The number of companies that get started is not some sort of cosmological constant, and if it can be increased then I think it's incredibly valuable to go and do that.” — Patrick “Indie Hackers the movement wouldn’t have been as possible ten years ago, because there's so much more knowledge being exchanged now and so many more tools to help you build things — it's just easier to do with a small team than it ever has been.” — Courtland “People are subject to extremely strong Girardian herd effects, so I don’t think investors are unique in this regard — they index on this popular conception of things. I think startups outside of the popular hubs are less popular than they ought to be and that people update too slowly based on changing trends.” — Patrick “There should be more funding in the world, but more spread out and distributed more evenly.” — Courtland “It all comes back to this idea of, 'how do we grow the GDP of the internet?'” — Patrick Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Airtable — Realtime spreadsheet-database hybrid. Firebase — App success made simple by Google. JUMP — Electrified, dockless bike rentals. Emfit — Contactless sleep sensing solutions. Pocket — Save and read news, articles and videos that fuel your mind. Retool — Build custom internal tools in minutes. Uber — Get a ride in minutes. WhatsApp — Fast, cross-platform messenger. Yelp — Crowd-sourced reviews for local businesses.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm visiting TechCrunch HQ to hang out with two journalists that see more startups in a month than most people in a lifetime. Josh Constine is the Editor-At-Large at TechCrunch where he specializes his analysis on social products, including everything Facebook. Two fun facts: He's a Stanford graduate with a Master's degree in cybersociology and (like myself) a big fan of live music. Sarah Buhr is a new mother and, as she announces on the show, is taking a break from reporting at TechCrunch to raise her child. I've known Sarah since she joined TechCrunch in 2014 and more recently she's focused her writing on the wild world of biotechnology. We also have one more special guest: Sarah's beautiful six month old baby boy, Hayes. If you hear crying and clapping in the background, it's probably him. In this episode we talk about: The baby boom in Silicon Valley, including some of the coolest tech-enabled baby products helping tired moms and dads, as well as the ways that tech company cultures have changed since their founders and employees started having children. Why it might be possible to beat unhealthiness with convenience. We talk about a number of startups that are trying to get you fit by making the healthy option the easier option, similar to how Spotify beat piracy by making streaming easier than pirating. The future of work and education and how it will affect the world baby Hayes grows up in. We talk about why Sarah and her husband have been debating whether they should be saving for Hayes to go to college, how AR and VR will transform education and how automation will affect the workplace. All things Facebook – whether new startups can compete with the massive social network and some quick thoughts on their first hardware product, Portal. We of course also talk about some of their favorite products including a robot that makes burgers, a time-sucking app for meme lovers, and a virtual assistant that can do things for you when you run out of time (because you were browsing memes). We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “It's not just about transferring the work from humans to robots, because I think that gives us all that empty dystopic feeling. The idea is that rather than removing the humans from the equation, you instead want to remove the robotic elements of the humans’ jobs so that the humans can actually focus on the most personable, human, empathic part of the job.” — Josh “Harvard came out with a study that said that lots of screen time isn’t bad for your child — what's critical is that you’re there present watching the screen with your child.” — Sarah “You can’t just take peoples' livelihood away and give them the money instead, because they’re not going to feel like they have any purpose anymore.” — Josh “I think what we’ve seen is that even if you make $19 billion off your startup, like WhatsApp, and you sell it to someone else, that means that you are no longer the captain of that ship and you may never get such a beautiful ship again.” — Josh Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Creator — Robot-made burgers. Fin — Virtual assistant service. Imgur — The most viral images on the internet. Libby — Borrow eBooks and audiobooks for free instantly through your local library. Mirror — The mirror that's also an interactive home gym. O.school — Original videos and GIFs to learn sex, pleasure, and dating. Snoo — The world's most technologically advanced bassinet. TBH — The only anonymous app with positive vibes. Thistle — Healthy meal subscription service. Tonal — Machine learning digital gym + personal training built in.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm recording from my home in San Francisco to talk to two young entrepreneurs. Tiffany Zhong interned at Product Hunt while she was still in high school. After she finished school, she worked in venture capital before starting Zebra Intelligence, a startup helping brands and old people like myself better understand Gen Z. She's also an investor with her fund, Pineapple Capital. Drake Rehfeld is CEO of Splish, a Y Combinator-backed company that's building social apps to make the internet more fun. He formerly worked at Snap, where he was one of the youngest hires, as well as at Team 10. Drake's been a tech entrepreneur since high school when he created a product for school events that made real money. In this episode we talk about: “What the kids are using these days” and all things Generation Z, including what they're looking for in products and some of the common misconceptions about this younger demographic. The projects that Tiffany, Drake and I started while still in high school, including the story of a OperationLaugh.com, a site I created with the goal of earning $100,000 that netted $70 before I shut it down. (Tiffany and Drake had more success with their high school ventures). “Digital influencers” on Instagram, what Gen Z thinks of them, and why you would start your own. Also — why any of this has anything to do with fake plants. The phenomenon of a “finsta,” the ways that “the kids these days” are reshaping how identity works on the web, and some of the experimental social apps that don't have any of the typical social features like comments, followers or likes. We of course also talk about some of their favorite products, including the HQ Trivia of music, a tool for creating your very own “digital influencer” and an anonymous app that (surprisingly) brings positive vibes. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “I like calling this [Gen Z] the side hustle generation, because nothing can stop us from building a company, given the internet.” — Tiffany “I think [online identity] is less about real name versus fake name and more about the persistence of identity.” — Drake “The future is going to be digital celebrities selling digital merchandise and digital collectibles.” — Tiffany “You see someone who is 13 or 14 across the world shipping things and you see that and think, I could do that too.” — Tiffany “You make what you use and there's this wave of products feeling more like toys than full-on utilities. People want toys not tools.” — Drake Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Facemoji — Emoji your face (via webcam). IGTV — Long-form vertical videos from Instagram. IRL — Hang out with friends in real life. TikTok (formerly Musical.ly) — A creative music video clip maker. Out of Tune — The HQ trivia of music. Shots (RIP) — An online selfie-sharing app. Splish — Live photo filters and animated effects. Suprize — “Win sick sh*t.” TBH — The only anonymous app with positive vibes. Zebra Intelligence — Gen Z, Gen Z, Gen Z.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm in Los Angeles talking to Brian Norgard and Jeff Morris Jr., both of whom may be indirectly responsible for a generation of “Tinder babies”. Brian Norgard is an entrepreneur, investor, and Chief Product Officer at Tinder. He has worked on a number of other products and was Tinder's first acquisition. He collaborated with Sean Rad on an earlier app called Chill, which we discuss on the podcast. Brian is also an investor in Lyft, SpaceX and AngelList. Jeff Morris Jr. is the Director of Product for Tinder's revenue initiatives. He previously worked at Zaarly and has created a number of products, including one stretch over three months where he built and launched three products, reaching the top of Product Hunt. He is also an investor in Lyft, CryptoKitties, Particle, Brat and others. In this episode: The joy of turning online connections into real-world connections. Jeff is great at this. He once went biking with Lance Armstrong in Hawaii after reaching out to Armstrong on Twitter. How seemingly minor design decisions, like adding a subtle animation to a play button, can “nudge” users into a new pattern of behavior and make products more enjoyable to use. Brian and Jeff discuss the design of Tinder Places, including the thoughtfulness that went into the privacy features of the product, and how they took inspiration from Foursquare. We get nostalgic and discuss some of our favorite products from the past, like Chill and Highlight. They leveraged location on mobile in an attempt to merge the online and offline world. Jeff tells the story of the time he reached out on Twitter about a job opportunity and less than 48 hours later had moved from San Francisco to Kansas City. Why Product Hunt has gained a reputation as a positive, fun, and upbeat community and how subtle, very intentional design decisions — like our ridiculous Google Glass-sporting cat — contribute to the community and brand. Of course, we also chat about some of their favorite products, including messaging apps, trivia games as well as a couple of now-obsolete apps that were onto something at the time but didn't end up taking off. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “I like to respond to people who I shouldn't be taking to. I'll email people I shouldn't email. I don't care if they email me back. One in one hundred responses could change your life.” — Jeff “Tinder's really a serendipity engine... It's one of the few experiences where you're actually leaning forward to meet someone you don't know.” — Brian “[After he hired me via Twitter and a Skype interview] he said 'I'm in Kansas City, will you move here?' I packed my bags, got on a plane, moved to Kansas City and didn't go back to San Francisco for nine months. That was all from Twitter, within 48 hours.” — Jeff “[When building products and communities ] follow the traffic anywhere. Things happen, a bunch of people aggregate, you find ways to give them unique value, and you reduce the friction because people are already there.” — Brian “No one wants another copycat product in any category.” — Brian Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Chill (RIP) — A fast and fun way to communicate. Discord — Free voice and text chat for gamers. Highlight (RIP) — Find friends and new people nearby. HQ Trivia — Live trivia game show by the founder of Vine. Slack — Be less busy. Real-time messaging, archiving & search. Telegram — Fast, encrypted messaging app. Tinder Boost — Skip the line for 30 minutes to get more matches. Tinder Places — Discover new people who hang where you hang.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm visiting Y Combinator's San Francisco headquarters to talk to two of the people who are integral to Y Combinator — Kat Manalac and Michael Seibel. Kat is a Partner at Y Combinator and one of the people that convinced us to apply to join the program back in 2014. She's been at YC for five years, focusing on founder outreach, company pitch perfection, and much much more.. Prior to joining YC, she was Chief of Staff to Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian and also worked on brand and strategy at WIRED. Michael is CEO of Y Combinator's accelerator program. He has been through YC himself a couple of times — first in 2007, as co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv — and again in 2012 as co-founder and CEO of Socialcam. Justin.tv later became Twitch and sold to Amazon, and Socialcam was sold to Autodesk. In this episode we talk about: The evolution of Y Combinator. It's changed a ton since Product Hunt went through the program four years ago. They've been working on several programs for founders — things that Michael wishes existed when he went through the program. Michael and Kat's advice for founders, including counterintuitive tips they've learned after working with literally *thousands *of startups. A key mistake that trips up new founders when pitching their company, as well as advice for founders seeking a technical co-founder. How YC has scaled the organization as a 50-person company with its 4,000 (and growing) alumni. Of course, we also chat about some of their favorite products, including a virtual assistant that will do anything, a $1,500 smart mirror that will get you fit, and a beverage that will get you high. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode "80% of the pitch is to tell me what you do and 20% is to tell me why it's good." — Michael "[When pitching] it is always best to start [by answering] one line: 'what do you actually do'?" — Kat “The goal is always to make sure that people who are smart and want to build things have the opportunity to get funding and startup advice no matter who they know or where they come from." — Michael "I think that a lot of people try to hustle around having a technical co-founder, which is possible, but I don’t think they realize how hard it is to hustle around that, [and if they did] I think they would just hustle to get a technical co-founder." — Michael "Instead of pitching your tech friends on whatever your solution to that problem is, instead pitch your friends on how important that problem is." — Michael "I recommend talking to as many people as possible about your idea because you never know who is going to be excited about it, or who might be interested in being an early investor, or who might want to join the team." — Kat "You’ve got to get it out and into the hands of users, otherwise how do you know that they actually want what you’re building." — Michael "It takes a special personality I think [to be a startup founder] — that you wouldn’t want to do anything else — that you couldn’t maybe. A lot of startup founders I know would be terrible employees." — Michael Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Bitwise — The world's first cryptocurrency index fund. California Dreamin' — Cannabis infused sodas. DearBrightly— Personalized prescription skincare products. Fin — Virtual assistant service. Gixo — Live fitness classes wherever you are. JUMP — Electrified, dockless bike rentals. Magic — Get whatever you want on demand with no hassle, through SMS. Mirror — The mirror that's also an interactive home gym. Nanit Baby Monitor — Smart baby monitor that tracks sleep using computer vision. Peloton — World class indoor cycling experience wherever you are. Remix — The platform for designing your city’s transportation future. Robinhood — $0 commission stock brokerage. Station.io — One app to rule them all. STEEZY — Online dance classes with the world's best instructors. Titan — Built like a hedge fund. Tonal — Machine learning digital gym + personal training built in. Twindog — Find other dogs and their owners around you.