Uncapped with Jack Altman
· Jack Altman, Harj Taggar
[00:00:00] S0: Just talk about them all. Come on. [00:00:00] S2: It’s not like we have new initiatives that don’t feel core. I still think it all falls under the umbrella of the core thing. How do you create more great startups? Keep pushing down on that. As Jared mentioned, Fellows is just an example of something we just launched last year. What’s another bottleneck? More founders. We want to meet founders earlier, college students before they’re ready to do startups. So we started offering grants and community to exceptional college students who we feel aren’t ready to start a startup right now, but they might be in a year or two. [00:00:00] S0: That’s a good example of widening the base even further. Because you could almost narrow the top and say, “we’re going to put a bunch of money into growth.” Obviously you did that. But the other way to go is you could widen the base and say, “we’re going to try to have some engagement with 10,000 founders.”
· Jack Altman, Jared Friedman
[00:00:00] S0: That’s a good example of widening the base even further. Because you could almost narrow the top and say, “we’re going to put a bunch of money into growth.” Obviously you did that. But the other way to go is you could widen the base and say, “we’re going to try to have some engagement with 10,000 founders.” [00:00:00] S1: That’s basically what we think about a lot. The amount of follow-on capital is not really the bottleneck right now. The bottleneck for us is really getting more great founders to want to do startups and to do YC. That’s what the bottleneck should be. If the bottleneck is anything else, something is weird about the world. That’s what the bottleneck always should be. For a long time, YC was struggling so much to just scale the operational side. We were like a post-product-market-fit company that couldn’t keep up with demand. So instead of focusing on growth, how do we get… We were like YouTube when it was scaling 2x every month. Everyone was just trying to figure out how to keep the site up. That was certainly the first few years of me at YC. We were just trying to figure out how to not fall over. But now that we’ve really got the operations down, we can go back to focusing on what we should be focusing on. How do we broaden the base? How do we get more great people into our ecosystem early? How do we inspire more people to start companies?
· Jared Friedman, Garry Tan, Harj Taggar
[00:00:00] S1: That’s basically what we think about a lot. The amount of follow-on capital is not really the bottleneck right now. The bottleneck for us is really getting more great founders to want to do startups and to do YC. That’s what the bottleneck should be. If the bottleneck is anything else, something is weird about the world. That’s what the bottleneck always should be. For a long time, YC was struggling so much to just scale the operational side. We were like a post-product-market-fit company that couldn’t keep up with demand. So instead of focusing on growth, how do we get… We were like YouTube when it was scaling 2x every month. Everyone was just trying to figure out how to keep the site up. That was certainly the first few years of me at YC. We were just trying to figure out how to not fall over. But now that we’ve really got the operations down, we can go back to focusing on what we should be focusing on. How do we broaden the base? How do we get more great people into our ecosystem early? How do we inspire more people to start companies? [00:00:00] S3: One of the most fun things… I pinch myself that I get to… I had left YC and now I get to go hang out with PG and Jessica again, hang out with Brian Chesky who’s on the board. One of the directives from the board that’s awesome was: “You need to make sure that we’re having fun.” That was true back in 2011. [00:00:00] S2: The laughter test.
· Harj Taggar, Garry Tan, Jack Altman
[00:00:00] S2: The laughter test. [00:00:00] S3: Basically that’s the directive we got this year, and it’s not a directive at all. It’s awesome. If we’re not having fun then we’re doing something wrong actually. I remember being around YC and the partners and PG and PB and Geoff. It was just very, very hilarious all the time. It was unbelievable how weird startups can be. It’d be like, “Can you believe this thing happened?” I feel like our partner lunches are that again, which is really fun. [00:00:00] S0: That’s so important, having a partnership where everybody trusts and enjoys each other, and respects what people think. That’s got to make the whole experience so much better. [00:00:00] S2: It’s why all the partners are former YC founders. It feels a little bit more than a job for everyone. Everyone’s paying it forward. YC changed their life in some way. It just adds to the good vibes. [00:00:00] S0: It is obviously an iconic and very important institution. You guys are doing a great job running it. I’m sure it feels like a heavy responsibility, but I’m glad you’re having fun with it. You guys, this was really fun. Thanks for doing it. Really appreciate you making time. [00:00:00] S3: Thanks, Jack. So when are you going to be a YC partner? [00:00:00] S0: I keep checking my inbox.