Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston to take year-long sabbatical

Congrats to Jessica! As a parent of a 1 year old mastercrawler, I am also so grateful to Paul taking time off earlier to spend time to watch his kids grow up and I love his tales of them growing up. Having a family changes everything. Right now parenthood is incompatible with startups - how can we change this and make startups better for young parents as well who for now will just always try to get corporate jobs?

Congrats! It's amazing to live in an era of employers allowing friends to take a deep breath, reflect and come back to work with a renewed sense of themselves and their purpose. It is a great chance to reflect on what you have accomplished and what lies ahead.

SF, the city, just approved fully paid leave for new parents for 6 weeks for everybody.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;us&#x2F;article&#x2F;San-Francisco-poised-to-vote-on-full-paid-leave-7228281.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sfgate.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;us&#x2F;article&#x2F;San-Francisco-poised-t...</a>

Thanks for all the work thus far, isn&#x27;t a day goes by where I don&#x27;t use a YC company&#x27;s service.<p>hope there&#x27;s plenty quality time in this sabbatical!

serious question: does she even have to work anymore? I would assume that a cofounder of ycombinator has so much money by now, that they could just retire or do something more fun with their lives.

Good for her! A sabbatical sounds great. And she&#x27;s definitely earned it.

Good luck jl. Hope you come back refreshed with new ideas.<p>Was hoping to find some sabbatical stories in the comments. I was working 12 hours a day with no weekends and felt trapped in a state of urgency and like I was missing out on things. Took a 3 month sabbatical and it changed everything!<p>Sometimes you don&#x27;t notice that you could have done things better or differently until you take a step back. I&#x27;m about to pass out and wish I could&#x27;ve written more.

I met Jessica when I interviewed at YC (Summer 2014 batch). She was very nice in addition to extremely intelligent, of course. She was smiling the entire time and made a clear effort to make me less nervous. I hope she enjoys the recharge!

I just wanted to wish you all the best. I hope you have time for many happy memories with your family :)

Can we make hacker news independent of Ycombinator please ? Or does this already exist?

That&#x27;s kind of awesome.

I was thinking of taking a holiday too.

She needs time to &quot;think&quot;

I wish I could take a whole year off of work. I think SV lives in its own bubble.

&quot;Livingston disclosed that she hadn’t spent any real time away from her work, including after her children were born — she placed the blame on herself for that.&quot;<p>This always seems to be framed as a women&#x27;s obligation. The children have two parents.

Hard to think of any other individual who has made as large an impact on the global economy in the 21st century, in addition to opening up the playing field for women. Kudos.

From the article:<p>&gt; She believes that a decade from now, she expects to see “tons of women-founded unicorns.&quot;<p>Tons? Remove the women-founded filter and it&#x27;s still not believable. I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s realistic to expects tons of unicorns in general. How many have there been (total) in the past 10 years?