Meet Kirsty Nathoo, Y Combinator’s Secret Financial And Operational Weapon

Secret weapon is the perfect phrase to describe Kirsty. She handles everything to do with money and investors at YC, and the situations she has to unravel, dealing with early stage startups, are often appallingly complicated. Considering the number of startups we fund, I bet there is no one in the world who understands more about the intricacies of early stage startup finances.

Totally deserved article, Kirsty is amazing.<p>There's a story in the article about Kirsty meeting a founder with a wad of cash at SFO. She did exactly the same for me when I arrived: waiting at the airport with a check so I could pay rent my first day in MV. Except this was on New Year's day, and my flight was delayed two hours. Thanks Kirsty!

&#62; Nathoo tells us that the last of the Sequoia money was used in the Summer 2012 class. Now Y Combinator is completely self funded through the money the incubator has made through its investments in startups (i.e. exits)<p>This sounds like an amazing accomplishment! Was this seen as a big milestone for YC?

Kirsty rocks, for the record.<p>What surprised me is the claim "Y Combinator and most investors will only invest in companies that have been in incorporated in Delaware, and many founders don’t know this."<p>This was quite surprising. PG: is this actually a criteria instead of a just preference? Or did TC get it wrong?

Kirsty is the best. She's helped so much with the worst part of startups - the paperwork.

I like Kirsty's quote: "I was shocked at the amount of trust that was being placed on me at first." It reminds me of how when I started at my current job, our head of engineering gave me logins and passwords for every piece of software we had. In my first meeting with her and my manager, my manager says, "Woah, I don't even have access to half this stuff." It was really inspiring to know they trusted me enough with the keys to the kingdom, and it made life so much easier than the previous companies where I had to fill out a form for access to just about anything. More companies could do well to place more trust in their employees like this.

People often underestimate how important the "back office" things are and how much help you get from an incubator. Apart from Kirsty, we've gotten a great amount of help from Jon Levy (YC lawyer) on legal stuff and of course Kirsty who's always sending us e-mail reminding us of taxes etc.

As my cofounder and I like to tell people, Kirsty is one of the world's foremost experts on startup formation / founder issues. It's hard to imagine finding someone who helps more startups with as wide a range of issues as she does. This article is definitely spot on and well-deserved!

And she still has time to break our heart with that rejection email.

Kirsty is amazing. I was surprised to learn (when she became a partner) that she wasn't always a partner.

Kirsty is one of the most amazing people I have met while at YC. Low profile, high impact.

I advise anyone starting YC to listen to Kirsty, in fact <i>to obey Kirsty</i>.<p>It will make your life so much easier.

"Another role Nathoo takes on with founders and startups is an accounting advisor. She’ll ensure that every company incorporates in the state of Delaware, and if they haven’t done this, she’ll help with that process. Y Combinator and most investors will only invest in companies that have been in incorporated in Delaware, and many founders don’t know this. Nathoo says that of the current class of 47 startups at Y Combinator, only one company’s incorporation documents were problem-free when joining the program."<p>If Kirsty were willing to publicly share any part of her accumulated knowledge in this area, I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one to appreciate it.

I wonder who the Kirsty character is at 500 Startups, Tech Stars, AngelPad, etc.

We had the pleasure of being in the first YC class when Kirsty started. She was very helpful throughout the entire process of the program. I think she even has her own office hours now!<p>Congrats on such a praising article Kirsty.

Way before I read the last line of the article I was convinced that she had one of the best jobs in the world - she's surrounded by [presumably] really smart and passionate people, solves problems of varying nature and challenge, and has immediate impact. It's weird because I always thought of accounting as an uninspiring and crushingly boring field, but obviously I've been wrong.

It seems to me that every organisation has 2-3 people who keep all the balls in the air. The company I work at certain does. They don't rank highly job title / power wise...but if they get hit by a bus...heaven help us. e.g. We've got one person coordinating about 300 people's schedules.

I am constantly being surprised by YC. They are moving quickly and I love it. A few months ago pg talked about trying to fix some of the scaling woes and you can <i>already</i> catch a glimpse of some of that work in articles about YC.

A few months back I was sort of afraid to write to PG/YC directly. We were putting in our first submission on HN (our web app) when we found that the domain name we held was somehow in HN's blocked-list.<p>After some hesitation I wrote a short mail (with etiquette of writing to busy people) on YC's email address and within seconds Kirsty replied to me. It made me feel good when she told us that "if it is blocked, avoid posting it again on HN. Have patience, PG will unblock it in a few minutes."<p>After sometime I received an email nod from PG too. From that point I just fell in love with Hacker News.