I just saw the story "Y Combinator-Backed Zenefits Gives Small Businesses A One-Stop Shop For Finding And Managing Employee Benefits" on Techcrunch, and was quickly reminded how difficult I found my short stint in that line of work to be (office side of managing employee benefits). YC is investing in such an incredibly large variety of startups, and getting into many different big industries. I can barely imagine the kind of work it must be to research everything so you can make good decisions<p>Between maintaining HN, being a VC who many founders look up to for advice, etc., doesn't it ever get a little too much? If yes, what do you do to keep your composure?
There are around 20 people working full or part time for YC now, including 5 of us doing what I used to do alone in the old days. There are 47 startups in the current batch, which works out to less than 10 apiece. So things are actually pretty easy right now.<p>Last night's server troubles took more out of me than anything I've had to deal with in YC proper.
I watched an interview with the Reddit founders and at a couple points they were close to tears overwhelmed with the kind of community they had helped enable. When I first saw this Ask PG, I thought that's the kind of "overwhelm" the OP was asking about. This forum alone and the number of people it touches would be enough to overwhelm me from time to time.
PG isn't alone. YC do have staff, so it's not a one-man operation. If PG were running everything by himself then yes, he probably would be overwhelmed but there are a lot of people PG can call upon to help him out.
btw, there is a mood, like so-called flow, when you just do it, just as best as you can, without even worrying of anything. It is like surfing - you just keeping your balance and going with a wave.<p>Being overwhelmed is a side-effect of fears, doubts and ignorance - what they call insecurity. As long as one tames them, uninterfered awareness is what remains.<p>It is like a performance of professional musician or painter - you just do it out of habit.<p>Just doing with relaxed mind is also called Zen.)