Jessica Livingston

November 2015

A few months ago an article about Y Combinator said that early on
it had been a "one-man show." It's sadly common to read that sort
of thing. But the problem with that description is not just that
it's unfair. It's also misleading. Much of what's most novel about
YC is due to Jessica Livingston. If you don't understand her, you
don't understand YC. So let me tell you a little about Jessica.

YC had 4 founders. Jessica and I decided one night to start it,
and the next day we recruited my friends Robert Morris and Trevor
Blackwell. Jessica and I ran YC day to day, and Robert and Trevor
read applications and did interviews with us.

Jessica and I were already dating when we started YC. At first we
tried to act "professional" about this, meaning we tried to conceal
it. In retrospect that seems ridiculous, and we soon dropped the
pretense. And the fact that Jessica and I were a couple is a big
part of what made YC what it was. YC felt like a family. The
founders early on were mostly young. We all had dinner together
once a week, cooked for the first couple years by me. Our first
building had been a private home. The overall atmosphere was
shockingly different from a VC's office on Sand Hill Road, in a way
that was entirely for the better. There was an authenticity that
everyone who walked in could sense. And that didn't just mean that
people trusted us. It was the perfect quality to instill in startups.
Authenticity is one of the most important things YC looks for in
founders, not just because fakers and opportunists are annoying,
but because authenticity is one of the main things that separates
the most successful startups from the rest.

Early YC was a family, and Jessica was its mom. And the culture
she defined was one of YC's most important innovations. Culture
is important in any organization, but at YC culture wasn't just how
we behaved when we built the product. At YC, the culture was the
product.

Jessica was also the mom in another sense: she had the last word.
Everything we did as an organization went through her first — who
to fund, what to say to the public, how to deal with other companies,
who to hire, everything.

Before we had kids, YC was more or less our life. There was no real
distinction between working hours and not. We talked about YC all
the time. And while there might be some businesses that it would
be tedious to let infect your private life, we liked it. We'd started
YC because it was something we were interested in. And some of the
problems we were trying to solve were endlessly difficult. How do
you recognize good founders? You could talk about that for years,
and we did; we still do.

I'm better at some things than Jessica, and she's better at some
things than me. One of the things she's best at is judging people.
She's one of those rare individuals with x-ray vision for character.
She can see through any kind of faker almost immediately. Her
nickname within YC was the Social Radar, and this special power of
hers was critical in making YC what it is. The earlier you pick
startups, the more you're picking the founders. Later stage investors
get to try products and look at growth numbers. At the stage where
YC invests, there is often neither a product nor any numbers.

Others thought YC had some special insight about the future of
technology. Mostly we had the same sort of insight Socrates claimed:
we at least knew we knew nothing. What made YC successful was being
able to pick good founders. We thought Airbnb was a bad idea. We
funded it because we liked the founders.

During interviews, Robert and Trevor and I would pepper the applicants
with technical questions. Jessica would mostly watch. A lot of
the applicants probably read her as some kind of secretary, especially
early on, because she was the one who'd go out and get each new
group and she didn't ask many questions. She was ok with that. It
was easier for her to watch people if they didn't notice her. But
after the interview, the three of us would turn to Jessica and ask
"What does the Social Radar say?"
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