Y Combinator Hits $100 Billion: Interview With YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston 7/27/18, 3:53 AM News Videos Quizzes Tasty As/Is More Search Facebook lost more than Y Combinator Hits $100 $100 billion in market value, the largest one-day drop by a single company Billion: Interview With in the history of the US market. YC Co-Founder Jessica Michael Cohen claims that then-candidate Donald Trump knew Livingston about the June 2016 Co-founder of the most successful accelerator of all time Trump Tower meeting that Donald Trump Jr. shares best kept secrets on how to become a unicorn held with a Russian Posted on July 27, 2018, at 1:43 a.m. lawyer. In her first interview since martineparis her show was cancelled, Community Contributor Roseanne Barr has said her tweet about Valerie Jarrett was not racist, but was "political". Connect With Community Like Us On Facebook Follow Us On Twitter https://www.buzzfeed.com/martineparis/y-combinator-hits-100-billion-interview-with-yc-3ehs5?utm_term=.wyy5zEV14#.yr2kOwKMD Page 1 of 10 Y Combinator Hits $100 Billion: Interview With YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston 7/27/18, 3:53 AM Now Buzzing Jessica Livingston / Via Twitter: @jesslivingston Go Shopping At Garage To Reveal Which Canadian Share Pin Celebrity Is Your BFF Y Combinator just crossed a major milestone in reaching $100 billion market value with over 1867 startups launched since 2005. 15 alum are billionaires, 70 alum are valued at over $100 million, and 3 have made it onto Shark Tank. By all measure, YC is the world's largest, most influential, and perhaps most beloved accelerator. The Bedroom You Design Just a quick look at its robust portfolio would make any Will Reveal Your Best And Worst Quality investor drool: Airbnb, Cruise, Reddit, Twitch, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacart, HipMunk, Mixpanel, Scribd, HumbleBundle, Dropbox, the list goes on and on. The accelerator has been so consistent in breeding winners that the YC moniker has become a mark of quality across the tech Ryan Reynolds Just Trolled industry, with entrepreneurs proudly putting YC after their His Mom Again And It's name like a professional designation. Funny AF Indeed it's harder to get into YC than Stanford University. According to Fortune, the YCW15 class had 7000 applications for 106 spots. That's an acceptance rate of 1.5%. Stanford's acceptance rate is currently at an all time low of 4.29%. After This Rapper Was According to Jessica Livingston, co-founder of Y Combinator, Shot, His O2 Academy that wasn't the original intention. "When we founded Y Show Was Cancelled — So He Decided To Hold A Combinator, our goal was to make funding for early stage Virtual Concert startups accessible to everyone, but we never imagined it would become this popular." https://www.buzzfeed.com/martineparis/y-combinator-hits-100-billion-interview-with-yc-3ehs5?utm_term=.wyy5zEV14#.yr2kOwKMD Page 2 of 10 Y Combinator Hits $100 Billion: Interview With YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston 7/27/18, 3:53 AM Along with her co-founders, her husband, Paul Graham, and his colleagues Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris, they set out to create a new funding model. Instead of investing large sums of money in just a few startups like traditional venture Attention, Everyone! Avis Is capital, they decided to invest small amounts of money into a Giving Amazon Customers large number of startups, pioneering what's now known as Discounts On Rental Cars micro venture capital. For over a decade, YC's focus has been the internet and mobile, but more recently they've begun backing frontier technologies like AR, VR and AI recognizing that we could be Nick Jonas And Priyanka at "one of the dividing lines in history where before and after Chopra Are Reportedly Engaged look totally different." YC now has its own AI vertical doing outreach for startups working at the intersection of AI and robotics across self-driving cars, personal transportation, smart homes, and manufacturing. The YC Request for Startups reads like a dystopian sci fi thriller the likes of Bladerunner. The RFS list is seeking founders working on merging humans and computers, downloading memories, reading and writing DNA, and biohacking longevity, cellular agriculture, and clean meat. Additionally, they're investing in the reinvention of programming tools, super batteries, carbon renewal, computer security, and fake video detection. Another area they're pouring money into is solving for automation displacement by funding companies that have the potential to create a million jobs, help creators and the working poor earn a sustainable living, and develop Brick and Mortar 2.0 solutions for the coming Retailpocalypse. "So many things are broken, so many things need to be disrupted," Livingston told me as we talked about YC's curation process. "Many of the best ideas we’ve funded were ones that surprised us, not ones we were waiting for." https://www.buzzfeed.com/martineparis/y-combinator-hits-100-billion-interview-with-yc-3ehs5?utm_term=.wyy5zEV14#.yr2kOwKMD Page 3 of 10 Y Combinator Hits $100 Billion: Interview With YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston 7/27/18, 3:53 AM YC selects hundreds of startups twice a year for the Winter and Summer batches via an online application process. All ideas at any stage of development are welcome and founders need only be 18 years or older, incorporated in the United States, and have 10% equity in the company to apply. There are no other requirements other than being able to articulate their brilliant idea. The successful application that Drew Houston submitted for Dropbox is viewable online as a guide. Startups are given $120,000 in exchange for 7% of the company, similar to other accelerators like Betaworks which gives $200,000 for 8%. The money serves as a 5-6 month runway to support the founders in their move to Silicon Valley where they spend 3 months being mentored on their investor pitches and go-to-market plans for presentation at Demo Days. YC benefits include access to a network of over 4000 influential alumni, special events and office hours. For categories like healthspan, YC is offering $500,000 to $1 million for 10-20% ownership including free lab space. For voice apps, there are partnering opportunities with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant teams. As these are boom times, YCW18 Demo Days was the largest in YC history featuring 141 startups. Average age of founders are under 30 and women are still hovering at the same level of underrepresentation since 2015 when it was 25%. This year it was at 27% despite 2016 stated goals of trying to get women to 50% parity. I asked Livingston what YC is doing to support women in tech. She responded, "We try to ensure our female founders will be successful by having female funders like Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures coach them on the fundraising process. We have external office hours for female founders with YC partners, highlight our female founders success stories on https://www.buzzfeed.com/martineparis/y-combinator-hits-100-billion-interview-with-yc-3ehs5?utm_term=.wyy5zEV14#.yr2kOwKMD Page 4 of 10 Y Combinator Hits $100 Billion: Interview With YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston 7/27/18, 3:53 AM our blog, and host an annual Female Founders Conference." Livingston believes that role models are the most important thing you need to encourage more women to start startups, and that it's the founders of the most successful startups who make the most influential role models. In her talk at the Female Founders Conference last year, she talked about the need for more women-led unicorns and shared these insights on the key things that need to happen to become a unicorn: 1. Be lucky - most successful founders have the right idea at the right time 2. Have right motives - be fanatically interested in what the company is doing 3. Hit a big need - make something a lot of people will pay for, or pay a lot for 4. Do something basic - Uber drives you places, Airbnb finds you places to sleep 5. Be willing to work on a dubious idea - be a maverick and non-conformist 6. Don't be afraid of a big idea - like expanding a site for the whole world 7. Be driven and resilient - no one has authority over you in a startup 8. Focus on life's work - must be your singular passion 9. Be able to evolve into a manager - be great at product and people I asked her about key metrics for measuring success in a startup and whether that includes Facebook MAUs, app store rankings, reviews or Alexa rank. She replied, "Measuring success for startups depends on each startup. But picking a metric and growing it is key. Revenue growth is the best https://www.buzzfeed.com/martineparis/y-combinator-hits-100-billion-interview-with-yc-3ehs5?utm_term=.wyy5zEV14#.yr2kOwKMD Page 5 of 10 Y Combinator Hits $100 Billion: Interview With YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston 7/27/18, 3:53 AM metric." The YC Startup School website has a free 10 week massive open online course for founders with lessons by some of the most inspirational leaders in tech including Paul Graham, Alan Kay, Sam Altman, Ron Conway, Peter Thiel, Mark Andreesen (a16z), Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskowvitz (Facebook), Justin Kan and Emmett Shear (Twitch), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Drew Houston (Dropbox), Anne Wojcicki (YouTube), Jason Kilar (Hulu), Brian Chesky (Airbnb), Ryan Junee (Parsable), Andy Bromberg (Coinlist), Jared Friedman (Scribd), Parker Conrad (Zenefits), Steve Huffman (Reddit) and Stewart Butterfield (Slack). If you're a company you can apply for group office hours, an advisor, access to the community and a $10,000 grant.