The social radar: Y Combinator’s secret weapon | Jessica Livingston (co-founder of YC, author)

Key ideas

Livingston explains what she watched for in founders at YC: commitment, openness, earnestness, and how cofounders treat each other, and why she sometimes backed founders over their ideas.

From a machine transcript of the audio. Quotes link to the moment they are said.

1. 1

   Bet on founders when the idea is doubtful

   Livingston says YC's partners disliked Airbnb's idea in the interview and funded it anyway after seeing the founders' energy and the cereal boxes they had reboxed and glued by hand, which she read as a sign they would work hard to make the company succeed. She describes a similar call on Goat's founders, whom she says she pushed to fund for their scrappiness while they worked on a different idea. She also warns that charisma isn't enough without substance, and says some uncharismatic people make good founders.

2. 2

   Treat defensiveness as a warning

   Livingston says founders get questioned constantly and often start with an imperfect idea, so getting defensive in an interview was always a bad sign to her; she wanted something closer to a tennis match. She links this to earnestness, which she ranks among the most important qualities: admitting you don't know, sharing your thinking, and actually caring about the problem. Early on, she adds, she sometimes argued against funding people she found unpleasant to work with, and she thinks that mattered to the helpful alumni culture that followed.

3. 3

   Look hard at the cofounder relationship

   Livingston says she spent much of her time at YC mediating cofounder disputes and that many startups died or nearly died from them. In applications and interviews she watched for one founder talking over another, open contradictions, lopsided equity, and programmers with little say, whom YC called hackers in a cage. She favors founders with a shared history and calls pairs who got together just to start a startup a massive red flag, while noting it sometimes works out.

4. 4

   Commit: eventually you must quit your job

   Livingston says starting on the side is a fine way to begin before raising money, but that at some point you have to commit. She says founders keeping a paycheck and health insurance did not quit when things got hard, and that such a cofounder often ended up leaving. She accepts some people can't leave for financial reasons, and says they shouldn't start a startup unless prepared to.

5. 5

   Build the radar by paying attention

   Livingston finds the skill hard to articulate, credits YC's advantage mostly to her deeply technical cofounders, and says she has been fooled many times. For those who want to improve, she suggests keeping a mental checklist, such as whether founders get along or get defensive, and asking plainly how they met and whether they have worked together. She also follows up years later on her strong gut calls to see whether she was right.

In Jessica’s words

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