14 ms·

The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator

205 points by _pius 12y ago

pskittle 12y ago
is this her recent conference talk in a blogpost?
- dkyc 12y ago
  Yep, as mentioned at the bottom. "(This post was derived from the talk I gave at Y Combinator's Female Founders Conference in 2015.)"
elmar 12y ago
Jessica is YC secret weapon.
mikeucb 12y ago
I agree completely. You can't overvalue the culture at a startup, and that each startup has its own culture.
gailees 12y ago
Culture can't be duplicated.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Culture is precisely a set of transmitted patterns of behavior; how to engineer a duplication of culture may be a difficult challenge that needs to be solved on a case-by-case basis and which lacks a simple, general solution, but "culture can't be duplicated" is untrue.
- brandnewlow 12y ago
  It can't no, but the things companies do to create culture can be duplicated to create a culture of their own. We borrowed a lot from the typical startup playbook at Perfect Audience and ended up with a place that was a pleasure to work at, but for its own idiosyncratic reasons unique to PA. The general methods, team dinners, relaxed environment, lack of meetings, hiring good friendly people, are the same, the culture that grows out of that is different everywhere.
elmar 12y ago
Culture is probably the single most important factor on the outcome of any organization.
lettergram 12y ago
The part I really enjoyed reading was: "Before Y Combinator, character had not traditionally been an important factor for investors. Investors have often funded people who were jerks but who seemed likely to succeed. But I couldn't do it. YC is not just an investment firm. It's like a family in that we're inviting these people into our place to have dinner every week." This is what I would attribute the success of Y Combinator to. By focusing on founders as opposed to ideas, individual drive, demeanor, and not business models become the center. Paul Graham on multiple occasions discusses Sam Altman as someone who can't be stopped. Here is an article[1] from Paul Graham's article titled "Five Founders," the prompt "Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years." Sam Altman made it as #5 up with Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, etc. "I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be." The idea, is if people have what it takes, have the drive, the heart, and the understanding of how to treat others, they can make anything happen. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged [1] http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html
- alecco 12y ago
  I'm amazed how Ayn Rand is still alive and kicking in the YC crowd.
  - juliangregorian 12y ago
    I'm not. Dismayed, but not surprised.
deleted 12y ago
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solve 12y ago
Just one thing I'm curious about: How do you later find out if you had been correct? Have you tried to estimate how often you've been correct by following up on the people later on? RE the article: awesome that you have the goal of funding good people and constantly asking yourself what's best for the founders.
- bhayden 12y ago
  It's not like YC gives them money and says "cya" and never talks to them again. They are probably forever involved in the start up until they exit, which doesn't seem to happen often.
  - paul 12y ago
    Exactly. We're painfully aware of our mistakes.
    - eaxitect 12y ago
      Then, why implicitly stating that "some" rejected applicants were bad persons? Why not simply saying "we did not invest because we don't think it will succeed."
  - im2w1l 12y ago
    That will reveal the false positives, but not the false negatives.
paul 12y ago
Culture is one of those factors that is very difficult to quantify, yet incredibly important for success. At companies with great cultures, employees are eager to show up and get things done because they genuinely care about the team and mission. That was very much my experience at early Google. Companies with bad cultures try to motivate employees with fear and intimidation, or simply fail to motivate them at all, and everyone wastes their time playing video games or whatever. Not surprisingly, those rarely do well. In my estimation, most startups have weak to poor culture, which is one reason why you read so many startup horror stories. My advice to anyone looking to join a startup it to pick a place where you are excited about showing up and contributing every day. I think that's a much better predictor of happiness and success than trying to follow the social media hype or hotness signals.
- Alex3917 12y ago
  It would be nice to have a coffee table book of startup culture inspiration with a spread for each company with a few office pics and bullet points on what makes their culture unique and successful. Everyone knows about Zappos and Google, but I feel like there are few enough well-known examples that every time I've ever been involved in white boarding on this at various startups we've always come up mostly empty handed.
- n72 12y ago
  > Companies with bad cultures try to motivate employees with fear and intimidation, or simply fail to motivate them at all, and everyone wastes their time playing video games or whatever. Not surprisingly, those rarely do well. This seems like it could be a chicken or the egg problem though. How do you know that good culture isn't a byproduct of success. If Google stock were tanking, how do you think the culture would look? I honestly don't know.
  - paul 12y ago
    I'm talking about the very early days, so there was no stock to tank, the company was largely unknown and not yet "successful".
  - Retra 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
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spcoll 12y ago
I'm genuinely curious here: what if you happen to be frankly ugly? What if you are really awkward around people? These characteristics don't necessarily mean you will be unable to build great products or a disruptive business. They don't mean your startup will fail. But they would almost certainly cause you to fail the character test. Admittedly, being awkward and ugly does put your startup at a disadvantage because it will be a bit harder to recruit and a bit harder to close sales. But I am positive it is still possible to succeed if you are delivering real value. The product will speak for itself. So aren't such character filters a bad business decision for YC? Aren't they passing on great startups by paying too much attention to things that ultimately don't impact success that much?
- Mz 12y ago
  People with good social radar can make a good distinction between things like character and awkward/ugly. It's people who lack such radar who confuse these things.
  - rwallace 12y ago
    Yes, but unfortunately, by that definition, most people think they have good social radar but only a tiny minority actually do. Jessica maybe in that tiny minority, but I'm not and you probably aren't either.
- petercooper 12y ago
  There are lots of successful actors, politicians, business people, sales people, etc. who are subjectively "ugly" to many. It's rarely about looks. Social skills, on the other hand, are important but, much like physical fitness, can be learned and trained unless you have a serious disability. Someone not willing to invest in their social skills might well deserve to fail a 'character test' for that reason alone.
  - ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
    Looks matter a lot, even though it sucks. It's called the Halo Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
guelo 12y ago
She sits in on interviews where she doesn't understand what people are talking about but she's still able to judge people on some vague character variable that's only based on her gut instinct? Sounds like bullshit to me. I wonder if there's any science behind being a good judge of character. I wonder how much being a 20-something white guy from an ivy league adds to your "character".
- Mz 12y ago
  No, it's not bullshit. It is a different domain of expertise. And, yes, there are things you can study to up your game in this area.
- GuiA 12y ago
  > "I didn't always understand the details of the questions they'd been asked" > "she doesn't understand what people are talking about" Come on dude. Be better than that.
- myth_buster 12y ago
  Body language, as an example, is an interesting science. It correlates highly with experience so even if the person may not be well versed in the science of it but has experience, they can be in a position to analyze personality using their gut instincts. Hence they can end up with a strong "social-radar".
- Geekette 12y ago
  Not understanding details of certain questions ≠ not understanding what people are talking about. Knowledge of subject matter ≠ quality of personal character. Not privy to details, but I imagine the YC partners have observed a high # of her perceptions map out accurately. If you look, you'll find a lot of studies around character perception and related elements like body language.
- general_failure 12y ago
  Think of her like the 'lie to me' series doctor.
sajid 12y ago
To a first approximation, a startup's company culture is simply a reflection of the personality of the founder(s).
- nichochar 12y ago
  This is true in my experience too
- jrvarela56 12y ago
  The difference between 'good' and 'bad' cultures is that a 'good' culture was curated so as to remove founder traits that do not increase the company's chance of success.
- dcole2929 12y ago
  And this imo, is one of the reasons why JL's input has been so valuable to YC over the years. If a company's culture reflect that of it's founders personality focusing on founders who are "good" people goes a long way towards ensuring the companies YC funds act a certain way. Whether that way is good or not is up for debate but from pure anecdotal evidence I'd argue that YC startups tend to comport themselves better than others.
brezina 12y ago
ah, i remember those early dinners and fancy cheese plates that weren't orange nor formed into a brick. i've found that potential employees are getting more and more savvy about evaluating culture. One thing we do at Sincerely to share our culture and evaluate the candidate's character is to play a board game at lunch during interview days. The candidate drops their guard, treats communication less like an interivew, and we get to see deeper into their real character. And they get to see one of the ways we like to interact with our teammates outside of shipping products.
n72 12y ago
"but I can tell things like when people are BSing, how tough they are, if they get along, and surprisingly often, considering I only have 10 minutes to observe them, whether they're good people or not." How do you know you have this ability and it's not just bias? I really don't mean this as snark, but increasingly more research confirms that humans far overestimate their abilities in this area. In my own case, as I've grown older I've come to realize that I'm not nearly as good a judge of character as I thought I was in my early 20s. So, again, not snark, but how do you know? Have you set up a control group?
- sekasi 12y ago
  My job relies on me trying to establish the character of people in a quite limited time as well, and I can totally vouch for this. Human beings are notorious for overestimating their ability to 'judge character'. Myself included. There's been so many scientific studies done on this that I don't think you can make this claim anymore. Personal bias combined with past experience of similar character (or read character) influences your mental state a lot. I don't really like it when people say 'I can work out if they are good people or not', simply because it isn't true. Sorry, but evidence trumps opinions.
  - lazaroclapp 12y ago
    Telling whether someone is a good person is not only hard, it's ill-defined. Good with respect to what ethical standard? Good by which morality? At most, a hypothetical perfect empath could tell you if the person is self-consistent, list which values it shares with you, or maybe predict their actions given an input situation. Even those things seem more within the purview of yet to be proposed ASI than humans. That said, this part (for example) sounds both realistic and useful: "They'd get excited talking to the applicants about all the things they could do, and afterward think the interview went well, when sometimes all the applicants did was reflect their own ideas back at them. But it was second nature to me to notice these things." and I imagine there are many other insights someone trained to observe people (say a psychologist or anthropologist or someone self-trained in doing just that job) could gather that most engineers would miss by miles. Edit: Humans also overestimate their understanding of say, software systems (ask anyone who has ever tried to formally verify anything). Yet an experienced programmer can still tell a bad architecture from a good one with far more success than an untrained/novice one. Aesthetics are as hard to define as Ethics, if not more, yet designers do know what they are doing to a far greater extent than your average person. Isn't it likely to be the same for reading people?
throwaway41597 12y ago
Great to read more about startups from jl! Please keep posting, maybe you could split subjects across several posts next time and have more room for specific stories (if you can share them). What are the most common types of "startup shitshows" that YC sees besides cofounder disputes? Which are unrecoverable?
n72 12y ago
""Softer" stuff like values, culture and community is often ignored by the press, and more dangerously it's also sometimes ignored by founders." Really? Seems to me that there are in fact far too many stories about ping pong tables and nap times and such when it comes to startups. [Edited to remove a comment which just wasn't necessary and was a bit ad hominem.]
- dcole2929 12y ago
  Ping pong tables and nap times do not equate to values, culture or community. Sure they can be tangentially related but that's about it. These are surface level features that do very little to describe the "Softer" stuff that actually matters.
davemel37 12y ago
I wonder how many good people never apply because of reading posts like this. I am not saying any of this weeding out is a problem. It's not. But publicizing it will likely not scare off the competent BSers but will eliminate many good folks who are a little insecure. (I don't buy that being confident and secure is a requirement for success.)
- general_failure 12y ago
  People who apply for YC let themselves be 'judged' because that's what the interview process is all about. This post gives you more insight into this judgement process. So, I would say this post is valuable for people who will apply or intend to apply for YC.
  - davemel37 12y ago
    If it was about judging if a team can execute and if an idea has merits, that's one thing. If its about judging if they fit into a culture you are cultivating that is fine too. But if its about judging character...This filters out the humble people and curates the narcissistic. I guess I am saying that most good people don't go around thinking how good they are...and the better a person is the more likely they will take responsibility for everything in their lives, which may lead them to think less of themselves. Whereas, someone who is narcissistic thinks he is a good guy, and is actually really bad. I still think they should filter for culture fit and even ethical fit, but they should not publicize it, and definitely should not proclaim they are gifted at it and very accurate in their assessments. I can think of lots of good guys who would never want to be judged on their character in 10 minutes by someone the valley looks up to and who proclaims they almost always accurate when reading people. I know my own shortcomings. I am afraid Jessica will see right through me and see how rotten to the core I know I am. But who knows... maybe I am just hard on myself and I really am a great guy. I guess I would rather not find out for sure :)
    - graeme 12y ago
      >But if its about judging character...This filters out the humble people and curates the narcissistic. Good judges of character can see through narcissism and appreciate humility. You seem to be assuming that anyone judging character will be easily fooled.
brayton 12y ago
If keeping the family aspect is an important goal, why not stay on a smaller scale? Why feel the need to go to 100+ per batch? With your metaphor of being Mom, can you know the names of 2000+ children?
- clay_to_n 12y ago
  Because the benefits of more founders presumably outweigh the loss of intimacy. I also think she mentioned "do things that don't scale" in the article (if she didn't someone did in the comments) - if you build an incubator where you treat 20 founders like family, when you get to 1000 founders you will still be trying to do that.
natural219 12y ago
First of all: Excellent piece. Every time I read about Jessica Livingston I inexplicably feel totally inadequate (in an inspiring way, don't worry :D). Secondly, about Culture. The problem with talking about culture is that it's too high-level of a model to have a conversation about and come out with useful, applicable results. Several commenters here expressed a belief that "culture = ping pong tables", or office naps, or not wearing suits or something. They're not wrong -- the word "culture" can feasibly refer to those things, but (I think) that's typically not what we talk about when we talk about how important Culture is to startups. I would like to read and hear about lower-level models of "Culture" that really drive success. Here are some really bad examples of what I mean: Clarity in speech, clear division of responsibility, product delivery / QA process norms, onboarding processes, personal respect, etc. You might not mean any of these things when you say "culture". I realize this is an incredibly hard if not impossible task -- the whole reason we defer to Culture is because its importance is matched only by its complexity. However, given that it seems like such a ubiquitous and important factor for startup success, I feel that progress in producing better startups can only be made by tackling this problem on the low-level.
bootload 12y ago
"... when people are BSing, how tough they are, if they get along, and surprisingly often, considering I only have 10 minutes to observe them, whether they're good people or not. ..." That's a difficult task. Was it the comfort/discomfort paradigm used here? (cf: Navarro: http://www.jnforensics.com http://www.jnforensics.com) From experience, you only really grasp the mettle of ones character in adversity. You can ask questions and see if the response is causing a person discomfort, but that's all. The reason for discomfort could be nervousness or a host of other things. More questions need to be asked based on the observation. "We continue to filter for character" Who are the worst offenders? Does the adage, 'want to get an honest answer by avoiding management and ask an engineer' apply?
eaxitect 12y ago
My own two cents: it's a very unfortunate blog post. 1) As mentioned few times here, "cultural variations" can not be handled as such, unless you have a special training on this -which I don't read so -. 2) It's totally a back pusher on applicants, if someone says "I see through you, and tell if you're evil", I say, "no thanks, have a nice day with your corporate culture". Indeed, I'm not considering to apply YC with this attitude. (Therefore, I'm not good, possibly caught by JL-radar) 3) Regarding 2, I think YC became too picky, so they're starting to sound these -nonsense- ideas to cutoff pouring applications. I miss PG's guidance.
pickwick 12y ago
"Culture matters for startups. For a startup to succeed, it must have a culture that reflects what it wants to achieve." Digital Equipment Corporation had a culture. Companies like Loopt (proto-grindr), InstallMonetizer (drive-by-download enabler), and GrooveShark (copyright infringement)--all YC funded--do not. This emphasis on "culture" and "culture fit," or any other subjective hiring or selection process for that matter, is bound to result in unintentional discrimination against those applicants who differ (racially, in gender, or some other respect) from the person or people doing the selection. The evidence continues to mount that humans are swayed by all kinds of unconscious biases, even those who sincerely believe they aren't racists, sexists, or bigots of some other stripe. If the partners of Y Combinator really want it to be something of a meritocracy, then these sorts of practices, rather than being openly boasted of, should be abandoned in favor of more quantitative, objective filters Note that I am not a progressive, even if the tone of this post came across as such. I just genuinely believe in meritocracy, and if evidence demonstrates that certain practices are harmful to it, then I feel obliged to speak out against them. If you sincerely want the best candidate regardless of race, gender, weight, attractiveness, or age, hiring based on something so subjective as "culture" is not the way to get them.
- lutorm 12y ago
  Like what? There is no well-defined figure of merit for "a startup that is likely to succeed".
leelin 12y ago
I interviewed almost exactly 6 years ago, right at the inflection point between the old style intimate and the modern structure. The impact from the atmosphere and community is enormous! Startup morale can seemingly come and go for the most arbitrary reasons, but the Tuesday dinners somehow always re-energized me into wanting to get back to work asap. It's some combination of (1) relief knowing other great founders face similar stumbling blocks, (2) excitement to try many fresh ideas overheard at dinner, and (3) fear/embarrassment that I'm not working hard or fast enough. Even today, we still get introductions and advice from YC and when I reach out, I've never waited more than 24 hours for a response. As far as the interview goes, I had the original, single-track 4 YC founders. I remember a bunch of questions from Paul and Trevor, but I'm only now realizing Jessica was the one subtly keeping the conversation on track. Near the end of the 20 minutes, Jessica made her one and only comment related to our idea, but it was the most insightful and for good reason. In 2009 our startup was positioned as anti-Craigslist and Jessica had recently interviewed Craig for Founders at Work!
jnem 12y ago
Im going to offer this info without comment: The first thing I check for when reading a blog article like this is Ctrl+ f " I ". The word "I" was stated 42 times in this post. Compare this to someone like Paul Graham's blog, who averages around 5-10 "I's" per article.
beamatronic 12y ago
Is that a homemade Segway clone? I'd like to know more about that!
- TheMakeA 12y ago
  http://tlb.org/#scooter2 http://tlb.org/#scooter2
  - beamatronic 12y ago
    Thanks! This is really cool!
tomasien 12y ago
I expected some backlash as Jessica made here "hey guess what, I'm a co-founder of YC and I was as important as anyone" tour complete with this post. Glad to see it wasn't that bad. For those that are put off by Jessica doing this: she is not going to get credit unless she takes it. She deserves it, she's earned it, and the historical record should indicate it. Good on her for taking the FFC and this post (and a couple interviews) to set the record straight. The story of YC is the story of a female founder and it's critical the record reflect that.
untilHellbanned 12y ago
This is a quite braggy post by someone who claims to dislike bragging. Lots of "I did this". > Before Y Combinator, character had not traditionally been an important factor for investors. Really, before 2005 social factors had nothing to do with people giving each other money?...Really? Comical generalizations and an absurdly ironic level of grandiosity on display here.
- emcarey 12y ago
  THIS IS NOT A BRAGGY POST.
- gargarplex 12y ago
  Nothing wrong with taking credit.. but from my dealings with YC founders, not all are ethical, polite, and honest.
- codecondo 12y ago
  I got the same impression, it felt like Jessica was trying to account for more than necessary. Either way, it's her World and she has done a lot for the company, if nobody else is giving her the credit where it's due; she does it herself.
- onion2k 12y ago
  Really, before 2005 social factors had nothing to do with people giving each other money?...Really? Yes. I was a developer for companies that raised money in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I can absolutely assure you that the decision to invest was driven by slidedecks and financial models far more than personalities and the social abilities of founders. If you could write a good business plan with all the right keywords you could raise an early round even if you were a total sociopath with no clue what you were doing. That's not to suggest there was anything actually wrong with that. People hadn't invested in SaaS businesses before because they didn't exist. No one really knew what was necessary for success. The personality of the founder or their ability to sell wasn't considered important. People thought that "Build it, they will come" was a viable route to market. The shift to investing in companies that have a good culture driven by interesting, exciting founders is something that investors learned relatively slowly.
rokhayakebe 12y ago
As I am reading this, I wish YC had stayed smaller.
projectileboy 12y ago
It was interesting to read how deliberately Jessica worked on the vibe and the culture. Many companies would be better places to work if their founders had done the same.
Fede_V 12y ago
Given that the dataset of YC companies is starting to be somewhat sizable, I'd be incredibly curious to see if people tried to run a regression between lots of plausible variables that affect success (founder demographic variables, subject area, exact time, etc) to see if there are any non-trivial correlations. The dataset is not quite big enough to train a very complex deep net, but even some simple linear regressions would be fascinating.
thomaspun 12y ago
One thing I told others about why YC is unique: Although technically they are our investors, they are more like parents which you could always go back no matter what shitty situation you have got yourself into. We were one of the last few batches with the original YC team and Jessica always had a way to cheer you up during weekly dinner.
aceperry 12y ago
Since I discovered yc, I've really enjoyed all of the articles, advice, and debates that came from them. The more I learn about their history and culture, the more impressed I get. Jessica Livingston's post has increased my appreciation for yc even more as I realize how much they've done for founders and vcs. Excellent article!
rwallace 12y ago
This is an excellent and inspiring post, but I'm worried people might try to use it as a model. Neurotypical people think they can tell all sorts of things about someone's character from a short face-to-face meeting, but it turns out this is all noise; people's impressions of character obtained this way are not significantly more accurate than random chance. Having said that, for all I know, Jessica may well be in the 0.1% of people who have extraordinary skill in this area, who really can accurately read character; if so, fair play to her, she has certainly made an immensely valuable contribution to Y Combinator. The problem arises when other people try to emulate her and filter job applicants, business partners etc. by intuitive reading of character from a face-to-face meeting, because there is a 99.9% probability that you are not in that 0.1%. So you end up turning away good people because their hair was messy while simultaneously falling prey to glib sociopaths who know what buttons to press. So by all means appreciate the post, and certainly appreciate Jessica herself if you have dealings with Y Combinator, but I would strongly advise against trying to copy the strategy of filtering people by intuitive reading.
elmar 12y ago
Jessica currently only scans 20% of YC candidates, so who is doing the "social radar" on the other 80%?
- herdrick 12y ago
  Good question, but that's the culture that's she's talking about having created. Although no one else has such good radar, everyone is at least paying attention to these matters.
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soneca 12y ago
I think she is completely right at the importance of culture and the value of "soft" skills on building a company. But I don't know about how judgemental they are about character. All sounds very much like a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" from a roman emperor. It is binary:you are a good person or you are a bad person. All this based on the myth fully internalized by both Paul Graham and Jessica herself that she can just judge character. They don't even care to try to understand it, they just assume she has this superpower and we all shall trust it. My point is not being a good person doesn't matter on building companies. I too firmly believe it does. A "fraternity of good people" can be very powerful. I try to keep close to myself only good people, including doing business. I also mentally veto bad people that could possibly give me good business. But I don't judge them on character so quickly and so often. A recurrent topic here in HN is how language limit and direct thought. In english the verb "to be" is used in two situations that are very different, and you can realize that if you speak a latin language. Myself, I speak portuguese, and we use to different verbs to translate "to be". We use "ser" and "estar". "Ser" is for something more permanent. "Estar" is for something more transitory. So when in english you say "Your friend is ugly", you can tell is you judge the people as ugly for life, I mean, he just isn't handsome, he is ugly, he must accept it. Or if you are actually meaning that he is ugly right now. He chose the wrong outfit, the wrong haircut for him or that simply he isn't as astonishing as he use to be. To mean that you must add a time stamp, like "Your friend is ugly today". So this phrasing and using of the verb "to be" in english nudge you to a very binary way of thinking. And people's character are not binary. Jessica might vet a very good person as being bad, just because in the day of the interview they were pissed that they found out that an ex has cheated all relationship and they were feeling more beligerant and raging than usual. And that was judged by Jessica's superpowers as "being bad people". All great arguments for culture and atmosphere were lost to me because of this judgemental stand.
herdrick 12y ago
I enjoyed reading this more than maybe anything ever on HN. Thanks, Jessica.
wellboy 12y ago
One of the best startup articles written in the last few years. Looks like the startup ecosystem is finally finding its standards as there is now real data to back up the soft values, i.e. what's a good founder, what co-founder dynamics are the most successful (you've been friends before the startup). Would be interesting to see some sort of compendium for that, or data on the soft values. Many investors or investor groups have those for themselves, but there's no one standardised summary of all of those yet.

205 points by _pius 12y ago

pskittle 12y ago

is this her recent conference talk in a blogpost?

dkyc 12y ago
Yep, as mentioned at the bottom. "(This post was derived from the talk I gave at Y Combinator's Female Founders Conference in 2015.)"

elmar 12y ago

Jessica is YC secret weapon.

mikeucb 12y ago

I agree completely. You can't overvalue the culture at a startup, and that each startup has its own culture.

gailees 12y ago

Culture can't be duplicated.

dragonwriter 12y ago
Culture is precisely a set of transmitted patterns of behavior; how to engineer a duplication of culture may be a difficult challenge that needs to be solved on a case-by-case basis and which lacks a simple, general solution, but "culture can't be duplicated" is untrue.
brandnewlow 12y ago
It can't no, but the things companies do to create culture can be duplicated to create a culture of their own. We borrowed a lot from the typical startup playbook at Perfect Audience and ended up with a place that was a pleasure to work at, but for its own idiosyncratic reasons unique to PA. The general methods, team dinners, relaxed environment, lack of meetings, hiring good friendly people, are the same, the culture that grows out of that is different everywhere.

elmar 12y ago

Culture is probably the single most important factor on the outcome of any organization.

lettergram 12y ago

The part I really enjoyed reading was: "Before Y Combinator, character had not traditionally been an important factor for investors. Investors have often funded people who were jerks but who seemed likely to succeed. But I couldn't do it. YC is not just an investment firm. It's like a family in that we're inviting these people into our place to have dinner every week." This is what I would attribute the success of Y Combinator to. By focusing on founders as opposed to ideas, individual drive, demeanor, and not business models become the center. Paul Graham on multiple occasions discusses Sam Altman as someone who can't be stopped. Here is an article[1] from Paul Graham's article titled "Five Founders," the prompt "Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years." Sam Altman made it as #5 up with Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, etc. "I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be." The idea, is if people have what it takes, have the drive, the heart, and the understanding of how to treat others, they can make anything happen. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged [1] http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

alecco 12y ago
I'm amazed how Ayn Rand is still alive and kicking in the YC crowd.
- juliangregorian 12y ago
  I'm not. Dismayed, but not surprised.

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solve 12y ago

Just one thing I'm curious about: How do you later find out if you had been correct? Have you tried to estimate how often you've been correct by following up on the people later on? RE the article: awesome that you have the goal of funding good people and constantly asking yourself what's best for the founders.

bhayden 12y ago
It's not like YC gives them money and says "cya" and never talks to them again. They are probably forever involved in the start up until they exit, which doesn't seem to happen often.
- paul 12y ago
  Exactly. We're painfully aware of our mistakes.
  - eaxitect 12y ago
    Then, why implicitly stating that "some" rejected applicants were bad persons? Why not simply saying "we did not invest because we don't think it will succeed."
- im2w1l 12y ago
  That will reveal the false positives, but not the false negatives.

paul 12y ago

Culture is one of those factors that is very difficult to quantify, yet incredibly important for success. At companies with great cultures, employees are eager to show up and get things done because they genuinely care about the team and mission. That was very much my experience at early Google. Companies with bad cultures try to motivate employees with fear and intimidation, or simply fail to motivate them at all, and everyone wastes their time playing video games or whatever. Not surprisingly, those rarely do well. In my estimation, most startups have weak to poor culture, which is one reason why you read so many startup horror stories. My advice to anyone looking to join a startup it to pick a place where you are excited about showing up and contributing every day. I think that's a much better predictor of happiness and success than trying to follow the social media hype or hotness signals.

Alex3917 12y ago
It would be nice to have a coffee table book of startup culture inspiration with a spread for each company with a few office pics and bullet points on what makes their culture unique and successful. Everyone knows about Zappos and Google, but I feel like there are few enough well-known examples that every time I've ever been involved in white boarding on this at various startups we've always come up mostly empty handed.
n72 12y ago
> Companies with bad cultures try to motivate employees with fear and intimidation, or simply fail to motivate them at all, and everyone wastes their time playing video games or whatever. Not surprisingly, those rarely do well. This seems like it could be a chicken or the egg problem though. How do you know that good culture isn't a byproduct of success. If Google stock were tanking, how do you think the culture would look? I honestly don't know.
- paul 12y ago
  I'm talking about the very early days, so there was no stock to tank, the company was largely unknown and not yet "successful".
- Retra 12y ago

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spcoll 12y ago

I'm genuinely curious here: what if you happen to be frankly ugly? What if you are really awkward around people? These characteristics don't necessarily mean you will be unable to build great products or a disruptive business. They don't mean your startup will fail. But they would almost certainly cause you to fail the character test. Admittedly, being awkward and ugly does put your startup at a disadvantage because it will be a bit harder to recruit and a bit harder to close sales. But I am positive it is still possible to succeed if you are delivering real value. The product will speak for itself. So aren't such character filters a bad business decision for YC? Aren't they passing on great startups by paying too much attention to things that ultimately don't impact success that much?

Mz 12y ago
People with good social radar can make a good distinction between things like character and awkward/ugly. It's people who lack such radar who confuse these things.
- rwallace 12y ago
  Yes, but unfortunately, by that definition, most people think they have good social radar but only a tiny minority actually do. Jessica maybe in that tiny minority, but I'm not and you probably aren't either.
petercooper 12y ago
There are lots of successful actors, politicians, business people, sales people, etc. who are subjectively "ugly" to many. It's rarely about looks. Social skills, on the other hand, are important but, much like physical fitness, can be learned and trained unless you have a serious disability. Someone not willing to invest in their social skills might well deserve to fail a 'character test' for that reason alone.
- ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
  Looks matter a lot, even though it sucks. It's called the Halo Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

guelo 12y ago

She sits in on interviews where she doesn't understand what people are talking about but she's still able to judge people on some vague character variable that's only based on her gut instinct? Sounds like bullshit to me. I wonder if there's any science behind being a good judge of character. I wonder how much being a 20-something white guy from an ivy league adds to your "character".

Mz 12y ago
No, it's not bullshit. It is a different domain of expertise. And, yes, there are things you can study to up your game in this area.
GuiA 12y ago
> "I didn't always understand the details of the questions they'd been asked" > "she doesn't understand what people are talking about" Come on dude. Be better than that.
myth_buster 12y ago
Body language, as an example, is an interesting science. It correlates highly with experience so even if the person may not be well versed in the science of it but has experience, they can be in a position to analyze personality using their gut instincts. Hence they can end up with a strong "social-radar".
Geekette 12y ago
Not understanding details of certain questions ≠ not understanding what people are talking about. Knowledge of subject matter ≠ quality of personal character. Not privy to details, but I imagine the YC partners have observed a high # of her perceptions map out accurately. If you look, you'll find a lot of studies around character perception and related elements like body language.
general_failure 12y ago
Think of her like the 'lie to me' series doctor.

sajid 12y ago

To a first approximation, a startup's company culture is simply a reflection of the personality of the founder(s).

nichochar 12y ago
This is true in my experience too
jrvarela56 12y ago
The difference between 'good' and 'bad' cultures is that a 'good' culture was curated so as to remove founder traits that do not increase the company's chance of success.
dcole2929 12y ago
And this imo, is one of the reasons why JL's input has been so valuable to YC over the years. If a company's culture reflect that of it's founders personality focusing on founders who are "good" people goes a long way towards ensuring the companies YC funds act a certain way. Whether that way is good or not is up for debate but from pure anecdotal evidence I'd argue that YC startups tend to comport themselves better than others.

brezina 12y ago

ah, i remember those early dinners and fancy cheese plates that weren't orange nor formed into a brick. i've found that potential employees are getting more and more savvy about evaluating culture. One thing we do at Sincerely to share our culture and evaluate the candidate's character is to play a board game at lunch during interview days. The candidate drops their guard, treats communication less like an interivew, and we get to see deeper into their real character. And they get to see one of the ways we like to interact with our teammates outside of shipping products.

n72 12y ago

"but I can tell things like when people are BSing, how tough they are, if they get along, and surprisingly often, considering I only have 10 minutes to observe them, whether they're good people or not." How do you know you have this ability and it's not just bias? I really don't mean this as snark, but increasingly more research confirms that humans far overestimate their abilities in this area. In my own case, as I've grown older I've come to realize that I'm not nearly as good a judge of character as I thought I was in my early 20s. So, again, not snark, but how do you know? Have you set up a control group?

sekasi 12y ago
My job relies on me trying to establish the character of people in a quite limited time as well, and I can totally vouch for this. Human beings are notorious for overestimating their ability to 'judge character'. Myself included. There's been so many scientific studies done on this that I don't think you can make this claim anymore. Personal bias combined with past experience of similar character (or read character) influences your mental state a lot. I don't really like it when people say 'I can work out if they are good people or not', simply because it isn't true. Sorry, but evidence trumps opinions.
- lazaroclapp 12y ago
  Telling whether someone is a good person is not only hard, it's ill-defined. Good with respect to what ethical standard? Good by which morality? At most, a hypothetical perfect empath could tell you if the person is self-consistent, list which values it shares with you, or maybe predict their actions given an input situation. Even those things seem more within the purview of yet to be proposed ASI than humans. That said, this part (for example) sounds both realistic and useful: "They'd get excited talking to the applicants about all the things they could do, and afterward think the interview went well, when sometimes all the applicants did was reflect their own ideas back at them. But it was second nature to me to notice these things." and I imagine there are many other insights someone trained to observe people (say a psychologist or anthropologist or someone self-trained in doing just that job) could gather that most engineers would miss by miles. Edit: Humans also overestimate their understanding of say, software systems (ask anyone who has ever tried to formally verify anything). Yet an experienced programmer can still tell a bad architecture from a good one with far more success than an untrained/novice one. Aesthetics are as hard to define as Ethics, if not more, yet designers do know what they are doing to a far greater extent than your average person. Isn't it likely to be the same for reading people?

throwaway41597 12y ago

Great to read more about startups from jl! Please keep posting, maybe you could split subjects across several posts next time and have more room for specific stories (if you can share them). What are the most common types of "startup shitshows" that YC sees besides cofounder disputes? Which are unrecoverable?

n72 12y ago

""Softer" stuff like values, culture and community is often ignored by the press, and more dangerously it's also sometimes ignored by founders." Really? Seems to me that there are in fact far too many stories about ping pong tables and nap times and such when it comes to startups. [Edited to remove a comment which just wasn't necessary and was a bit ad hominem.]

dcole2929 12y ago
Ping pong tables and nap times do not equate to values, culture or community. Sure they can be tangentially related but that's about it. These are surface level features that do very little to describe the "Softer" stuff that actually matters.

davemel37 12y ago

I wonder how many good people never apply because of reading posts like this. I am not saying any of this weeding out is a problem. It's not. But publicizing it will likely not scare off the competent BSers but will eliminate many good folks who are a little insecure. (I don't buy that being confident and secure is a requirement for success.)

general_failure 12y ago
People who apply for YC let themselves be 'judged' because that's what the interview process is all about. This post gives you more insight into this judgement process. So, I would say this post is valuable for people who will apply or intend to apply for YC.
- davemel37 12y ago
  If it was about judging if a team can execute and if an idea has merits, that's one thing. If its about judging if they fit into a culture you are cultivating that is fine too. But if its about judging character...This filters out the humble people and curates the narcissistic. I guess I am saying that most good people don't go around thinking how good they are...and the better a person is the more likely they will take responsibility for everything in their lives, which may lead them to think less of themselves. Whereas, someone who is narcissistic thinks he is a good guy, and is actually really bad. I still think they should filter for culture fit and even ethical fit, but they should not publicize it, and definitely should not proclaim they are gifted at it and very accurate in their assessments. I can think of lots of good guys who would never want to be judged on their character in 10 minutes by someone the valley looks up to and who proclaims they almost always accurate when reading people. I know my own shortcomings. I am afraid Jessica will see right through me and see how rotten to the core I know I am. But who knows... maybe I am just hard on myself and I really am a great guy. I guess I would rather not find out for sure :)
  - graeme 12y ago
    >But if its about judging character...This filters out the humble people and curates the narcissistic. Good judges of character can see through narcissism and appreciate humility. You seem to be assuming that anyone judging character will be easily fooled.

brayton 12y ago

If keeping the family aspect is an important goal, why not stay on a smaller scale? Why feel the need to go to 100+ per batch? With your metaphor of being Mom, can you know the names of 2000+ children?

clay_to_n 12y ago
Because the benefits of more founders presumably outweigh the loss of intimacy. I also think she mentioned "do things that don't scale" in the article (if she didn't someone did in the comments) - if you build an incubator where you treat 20 founders like family, when you get to 1000 founders you will still be trying to do that.

natural219 12y ago

First of all: Excellent piece. Every time I read about Jessica Livingston I inexplicably feel totally inadequate (in an inspiring way, don't worry :D). Secondly, about Culture. The problem with talking about culture is that it's too high-level of a model to have a conversation about and come out with useful, applicable results. Several commenters here expressed a belief that "culture = ping pong tables", or office naps, or not wearing suits or something. They're not wrong -- the word "culture" can feasibly refer to those things, but (I think) that's typically not what we talk about when we talk about how important Culture is to startups. I would like to read and hear about lower-level models of "Culture" that really drive success. Here are some really bad examples of what I mean: Clarity in speech, clear division of responsibility, product delivery / QA process norms, onboarding processes, personal respect, etc. You might not mean any of these things when you say "culture". I realize this is an incredibly hard if not impossible task -- the whole reason we defer to Culture is because its importance is matched only by its complexity. However, given that it seems like such a ubiquitous and important factor for startup success, I feel that progress in producing better startups can only be made by tackling this problem on the low-level.

bootload 12y ago

"... when people are BSing, how tough they are, if they get along, and surprisingly often, considering I only have 10 minutes to observe them, whether they're good people or not. ..." That's a difficult task. Was it the comfort/discomfort paradigm used here? (cf: Navarro: http://www.jnforensics.com http://www.jnforensics.com) From experience, you only really grasp the mettle of ones character in adversity. You can ask questions and see if the response is causing a person discomfort, but that's all. The reason for discomfort could be nervousness or a host of other things. More questions need to be asked based on the observation. "We continue to filter for character" Who are the worst offenders? Does the adage, 'want to get an honest answer by avoiding management and ask an engineer' apply?

eaxitect 12y ago

My own two cents: it's a very unfortunate blog post. 1) As mentioned few times here, "cultural variations" can not be handled as such, unless you have a special training on this -which I don't read so -. 2) It's totally a back pusher on applicants, if someone says "I see through you, and tell if you're evil", I say, "no thanks, have a nice day with your corporate culture". Indeed, I'm not considering to apply YC with this attitude. (Therefore, I'm not good, possibly caught by JL-radar) 3) Regarding 2, I think YC became too picky, so they're starting to sound these -nonsense- ideas to cutoff pouring applications. I miss PG's guidance.

pickwick 12y ago

"Culture matters for startups. For a startup to succeed, it must have a culture that reflects what it wants to achieve." Digital Equipment Corporation had a culture. Companies like Loopt (proto-grindr), InstallMonetizer (drive-by-download enabler), and GrooveShark (copyright infringement)--all YC funded--do not. This emphasis on "culture" and "culture fit," or any other subjective hiring or selection process for that matter, is bound to result in unintentional discrimination against those applicants who differ (racially, in gender, or some other respect) from the person or people doing the selection. The evidence continues to mount that humans are swayed by all kinds of unconscious biases, even those who sincerely believe they aren't racists, sexists, or bigots of some other stripe. If the partners of Y Combinator really want it to be something of a meritocracy, then these sorts of practices, rather than being openly boasted of, should be abandoned in favor of more quantitative, objective filters Note that I am not a progressive, even if the tone of this post came across as such. I just genuinely believe in meritocracy, and if evidence demonstrates that certain practices are harmful to it, then I feel obliged to speak out against them. If you sincerely want the best candidate regardless of race, gender, weight, attractiveness, or age, hiring based on something so subjective as "culture" is not the way to get them.

lutorm 12y ago
Like what? There is no well-defined figure of merit for "a startup that is likely to succeed".

leelin 12y ago

I interviewed almost exactly 6 years ago, right at the inflection point between the old style intimate and the modern structure. The impact from the atmosphere and community is enormous! Startup morale can seemingly come and go for the most arbitrary reasons, but the Tuesday dinners somehow always re-energized me into wanting to get back to work asap. It's some combination of (1) relief knowing other great founders face similar stumbling blocks, (2) excitement to try many fresh ideas overheard at dinner, and (3) fear/embarrassment that I'm not working hard or fast enough. Even today, we still get introductions and advice from YC and when I reach out, I've never waited more than 24 hours for a response. As far as the interview goes, I had the original, single-track 4 YC founders. I remember a bunch of questions from Paul and Trevor, but I'm only now realizing Jessica was the one subtly keeping the conversation on track. Near the end of the 20 minutes, Jessica made her one and only comment related to our idea, but it was the most insightful and for good reason. In 2009 our startup was positioned as anti-Craigslist and Jessica had recently interviewed Craig for Founders at Work!

jnem 12y ago

Im going to offer this info without comment: The first thing I check for when reading a blog article like this is Ctrl+ f " I ". The word "I" was stated 42 times in this post. Compare this to someone like Paul Graham's blog, who averages around 5-10 "I's" per article.

beamatronic 12y ago

Is that a homemade Segway clone? I'd like to know more about that!

TheMakeA 12y ago
http://tlb.org/#scooter2 http://tlb.org/#scooter2
- beamatronic 12y ago
  Thanks! This is really cool!

tomasien 12y ago

I expected some backlash as Jessica made here "hey guess what, I'm a co-founder of YC and I was as important as anyone" tour complete with this post. Glad to see it wasn't that bad. For those that are put off by Jessica doing this: she is not going to get credit unless she takes it. She deserves it, she's earned it, and the historical record should indicate it. Good on her for taking the FFC and this post (and a couple interviews) to set the record straight. The story of YC is the story of a female founder and it's critical the record reflect that.

untilHellbanned 12y ago

This is a quite braggy post by someone who claims to dislike bragging. Lots of "I did this". > Before Y Combinator, character had not traditionally been an important factor for investors. Really, before 2005 social factors had nothing to do with people giving each other money?...Really? Comical generalizations and an absurdly ironic level of grandiosity on display here.

emcarey 12y ago
THIS IS NOT A BRAGGY POST.
gargarplex 12y ago
Nothing wrong with taking credit.. but from my dealings with YC founders, not all are ethical, polite, and honest.
codecondo 12y ago
I got the same impression, it felt like Jessica was trying to account for more than necessary. Either way, it's her World and she has done a lot for the company, if nobody else is giving her the credit where it's due; she does it herself.
onion2k 12y ago
Really, before 2005 social factors had nothing to do with people giving each other money?...Really? Yes. I was a developer for companies that raised money in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I can absolutely assure you that the decision to invest was driven by slidedecks and financial models far more than personalities and the social abilities of founders. If you could write a good business plan with all the right keywords you could raise an early round even if you were a total sociopath with no clue what you were doing. That's not to suggest there was anything actually wrong with that. People hadn't invested in SaaS businesses before because they didn't exist. No one really knew what was necessary for success. The personality of the founder or their ability to sell wasn't considered important. People thought that "Build it, they will come" was a viable route to market. The shift to investing in companies that have a good culture driven by interesting, exciting founders is something that investors learned relatively slowly.

rokhayakebe 12y ago

As I am reading this, I wish YC had stayed smaller.

projectileboy 12y ago

It was interesting to read how deliberately Jessica worked on the vibe and the culture. Many companies would be better places to work if their founders had done the same.

Fede_V 12y ago

Given that the dataset of YC companies is starting to be somewhat sizable, I'd be incredibly curious to see if people tried to run a regression between lots of plausible variables that affect success (founder demographic variables, subject area, exact time, etc) to see if there are any non-trivial correlations. The dataset is not quite big enough to train a very complex deep net, but even some simple linear regressions would be fascinating.

thomaspun 12y ago

One thing I told others about why YC is unique: Although technically they are our investors, they are more like parents which you could always go back no matter what shitty situation you have got yourself into. We were one of the last few batches with the original YC team and Jessica always had a way to cheer you up during weekly dinner.

aceperry 12y ago

Since I discovered yc, I've really enjoyed all of the articles, advice, and debates that came from them. The more I learn about their history and culture, the more impressed I get. Jessica Livingston's post has increased my appreciation for yc even more as I realize how much they've done for founders and vcs. Excellent article!

rwallace 12y ago

This is an excellent and inspiring post, but I'm worried people might try to use it as a model. Neurotypical people think they can tell all sorts of things about someone's character from a short face-to-face meeting, but it turns out this is all noise; people's impressions of character obtained this way are not significantly more accurate than random chance. Having said that, for all I know, Jessica may well be in the 0.1% of people who have extraordinary skill in this area, who really can accurately read character; if so, fair play to her, she has certainly made an immensely valuable contribution to Y Combinator. The problem arises when other people try to emulate her and filter job applicants, business partners etc. by intuitive reading of character from a face-to-face meeting, because there is a 99.9% probability that you are not in that 0.1%. So you end up turning away good people because their hair was messy while simultaneously falling prey to glib sociopaths who know what buttons to press. So by all means appreciate the post, and certainly appreciate Jessica herself if you have dealings with Y Combinator, but I would strongly advise against trying to copy the strategy of filtering people by intuitive reading.

elmar 12y ago

Jessica currently only scans 20% of YC candidates, so who is doing the "social radar" on the other 80%?

herdrick 12y ago
Good question, but that's the culture that's she's talking about having created. Although no one else has such good radar, everyone is at least paying attention to these matters.

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soneca 12y ago

I think she is completely right at the importance of culture and the value of "soft" skills on building a company. But I don't know about how judgemental they are about character. All sounds very much like a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" from a roman emperor. It is binary:you are a good person or you are a bad person. All this based on the myth fully internalized by both Paul Graham and Jessica herself that she can just judge character. They don't even care to try to understand it, they just assume she has this superpower and we all shall trust it. My point is not being a good person doesn't matter on building companies. I too firmly believe it does. A "fraternity of good people" can be very powerful. I try to keep close to myself only good people, including doing business. I also mentally veto bad people that could possibly give me good business. But I don't judge them on character so quickly and so often. A recurrent topic here in HN is how language limit and direct thought. In english the verb "to be" is used in two situations that are very different, and you can realize that if you speak a latin language. Myself, I speak portuguese, and we use to different verbs to translate "to be". We use "ser" and "estar". "Ser" is for something more permanent. "Estar" is for something more transitory. So when in english you say "Your friend is ugly", you can tell is you judge the people as ugly for life, I mean, he just isn't handsome, he is ugly, he must accept it. Or if you are actually meaning that he is ugly right now. He chose the wrong outfit, the wrong haircut for him or that simply he isn't as astonishing as he use to be. To mean that you must add a time stamp, like "Your friend is ugly today". So this phrasing and using of the verb "to be" in english nudge you to a very binary way of thinking. And people's character are not binary. Jessica might vet a very good person as being bad, just because in the day of the interview they were pissed that they found out that an ex has cheated all relationship and they were feeling more beligerant and raging than usual. And that was judged by Jessica's superpowers as "being bad people". All great arguments for culture and atmosphere were lost to me because of this judgemental stand.

herdrick 12y ago

I enjoyed reading this more than maybe anything ever on HN. Thanks, Jessica.

wellboy 12y ago

One of the best startup articles written in the last few years. Looks like the startup ecosystem is finally finding its standards as there is now real data to back up the soft values, i.e. what's a good founder, what co-founder dynamics are the most successful (you've been friends before the startup). Would be interesting to see some sort of compendium for that, or data on the soft values. Many investors or investor groups have those for themselves, but there's no one standardised summary of all of those yet.