How Y Combinator Started

March 2012

Y Combinator's 7th birthday was March 11. As usual we were so
busy we didn't notice till a few days after. I don't think we've
ever managed to remember our birthday on our birthday.

On March 11 2005, Jessica and I were walking home from dinner in
Harvard Square. Jessica was working at an investment bank at the
time, but she didn't like it much, so she had interviewed for a job
as director of marketing at a Boston VC fund. The VC fund was doing
what now seems a comically familiar thing for a VC fund to do:
taking a long time to make up their mind. Meanwhile I had been
telling Jessica all the things they should change about the VC
business — essentially the ideas now underlying Y Combinator:
investors
should be making more, smaller investments, they should be funding
hackers instead of suits, they should be willing to fund younger
founders, etc.

At the time I had been thinking about doing some angel investing. I
had just given a talk to the undergraduate computer club at Harvard
about
how to start a
startup