The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator

Culture is one of those factors that is very difficult to quantify, yet incredibly important for success.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;s a much better predictor of happiness and success than trying to follow the social media hype or hotness signals.

This is an excellent and inspiring post, but I&#x27;m worried people might try to use it as a model.<p>Neurotypical people think they can tell all sorts of things about someone&#x27;s character from a short face-to-face meeting, but it turns out this is all noise; people&#x27;s impressions of character obtained this way are not significantly more accurate than random chance.<p>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.<p>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 <i>you</i> are <i>not</i> 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.<p>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.

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!<p>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&#x27;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&#x2F;embarrassment that I&#x27;m not working hard or fast enough.<p>Even today, we still get introductions and advice from YC and when I reach out, I&#x27;ve never waited more than 24 hours for a response.<p>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&#x27;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!

I&#x27;m genuinely curious here: what if you happen to be frankly ugly? What if you are really awkward around people?<p>These characteristics don&#x27;t necessarily mean you will be unable to build great products or a disruptive business. They don&#x27;t mean your startup will fail. But they would almost certainly cause you to fail the character test.<p>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.<p>So aren&#x27;t such character filters a bad business decision for YC? Aren&#x27;t they passing on great startups by paying too much attention to things that ultimately don&#x27;t impact success that much?

The part I really enjoyed reading was:<p>&quot;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&#x27;t do it. YC is not just an investment firm. It&#x27;s like a family in that we&#x27;re inviting these people into our place to have dinner every week.&quot;<p>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.<p>Paul Graham on multiple occasions discusses Sam Altman as someone who can&#x27;t be stopped. Here is an article[1] from Paul Graham&#x27;s article titled &quot;Five Founders,&quot; the prompt &quot;Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years.&quot; Sam Altman made it as #5 up with Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, etc.<p>&quot;I was told I shouldn&#x27;t mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can&#x27;t be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he&#x27;s going to be.&quot;<p>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.<p>“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<p>[1] <a href="http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;paulgraham.com&#x2F;5founders.html</a>

I wonder how many good people never apply because of reading posts like this.<p>I am not saying any of this weeding out is a problem. It&#x27;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&#x27;t buy that being confident and secure is a requirement for success.)

I expected some backlash as Jessica made here &quot;hey guess what, I&#x27;m a co-founder of YC and I was as important as anyone&quot; tour complete with this post. Glad to see it wasn&#x27;t that bad.<p>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&#x27;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&#x27;s critical the record reflect that.

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).<p>What are the most common types of &quot;startup shitshows&quot; that YC sees besides cofounder disputes? Which are unrecoverable?

Just one thing I&#x27;m curious about: How do you later find out if you had been correct? Have you tried to estimate how often you&#x27;ve been correct by following up on the people later on?<p>RE the article: awesome that you have the goal of funding good people and constantly asking yourself what&#x27;s best for the founders.

&quot;Culture matters for startups. For a startup to succeed, it must have a culture that reflects what it wants to achieve.&quot;<p>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.<p>This emphasis on &quot;culture&quot; and &quot;culture fit,&quot; 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&#x27;t racists, sexists, or bigots of some other stripe.<p>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<p>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 &quot;culture&quot; is not the way to get them.

To a first approximation, a startup&#x27;s company culture is simply a reflection of the personality of the founder(s).

I think she is completely right at the importance of culture and the value of &quot;soft&quot; skills on building a company. But I don&#x27;t know about how judgemental they are about character. All sounds very much like a &quot;thumbs up&quot; or &quot;thumbs down&quot; 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&#x27;t even care to try to understand it, they just assume she has this superpower and we all shall trust it.<p>My point is not being a good person doesn&#x27;t matter on building companies. I too firmly believe it does. A &quot;fraternity of good people&quot; 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&#x27;t judge them on character so quickly and so often.<p>A recurrent topic here in HN is how language limit and direct thought. In english the verb &quot;to be&quot; 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 &quot;to be&quot;. We use &quot;ser&quot; and &quot;estar&quot;. &quot;Ser&quot; is for something more permanent. &quot;Estar&quot; is for something more transitory.<p>So when in english you say &quot;Your friend is ugly&quot;, you can tell is you judge the people as ugly for life, I mean, he just isn&#x27;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&#x27;t as astonishing as he use to be. To mean that you must add a time stamp, like &quot;Your friend is ugly today&quot;. So this phrasing and using of the verb &quot;to be&quot; in english nudge you to a very binary way of thinking. And people&#x27;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&#x27;s superpowers as &quot;being bad people&quot;.<p>All great arguments for culture and atmosphere were lost to me because of this judgemental stand.

Given that the dataset of YC companies is starting to be somewhat sizable, I&#x27;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.<p>The dataset is not quite big enough to train a very complex deep net, but even some simple linear regressions would be fascinating.

<i>&quot;... 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&#x27;re good people or not. ...&quot;</i><p>That&#x27;s a difficult task. Was it the comfort&#x2F;discomfort paradigm used here? (cf: Navarro: <a href="http://www.jnforensics.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jnforensics.com</a>) From experience, you only really grasp the mettle of ones character in adversity.<p>You can ask questions and see if the response is causing a person discomfort, but that&#x27;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.<p><i>&quot;We continue to filter for character&quot;</i><p>Who are the worst offenders? Does the adage, <i>&#x27;want to get an honest answer by avoiding management and ask an engineer&#x27;</i> apply?

ah, i remember those early dinners and fancy cheese plates that weren&#x27;t orange nor formed into a brick.<p>i&#x27;ve found that potential employees are getting more and more savvy about evaluating culture.<p>One thing we do at Sincerely to share our culture and evaluate the candidate&#x27;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.

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&#x27;s a good founder, what co-founder dynamics are the most successful (you&#x27;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&#x27;s no one standardised summary of all of those yet.

Is that a homemade Segway clone? I&#x27;d like to know more about that!

&quot;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&#x27;re good people or not.&quot;<p>How do you know you have this ability and it&#x27;s not just bias? I really don&#x27;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&#x27;ve grown older I&#x27;ve come to realize that I&#x27;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?

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.

First of all: Excellent piece. Every time I read about Jessica Livingston I inexplicably feel totally inadequate (in an inspiring way, don&#x27;t worry :D).<p>Secondly, about Culture. The problem with talking about culture is that it&#x27;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 &quot;culture = ping pong tables&quot;, or office naps, or not wearing suits or something. They&#x27;re not wrong -- the word &quot;culture&quot; can feasibly refer to those things, but (I think) that&#x27;s typically not what we talk about when we talk about how important Culture is to startups.<p>I would like to read and hear about lower-level models of &quot;Culture&quot; that really drive success. Here are some really bad examples of what I mean: Clarity in speech, clear division of responsibility, product delivery &#x2F; QA process norms, onboarding processes, personal respect, etc.<p>You might not mean any of these things when you say &quot;culture&quot;. 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 <i>only</i> be made by tackling this problem on the low-level.

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

Jessica is YC secret weapon.

&quot;&quot;Softer&quot; stuff like values, culture and community is often ignored by the press, and more dangerously it&#x27;s also sometimes ignored by founders.&quot;<p>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.<p>[Edited to remove a comment which just wasn&#x27;t necessary and was a bit ad hominem.]

Since I discovered yc, I&#x27;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&#x27;s post has increased my appreciation for yc even more as I realize how much they&#x27;ve done for founders and vcs. Excellent article!

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.

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

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

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?

I agree completely. You can&#x27;t overvalue the culture at a startup, and that each startup has its own culture.

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

Culture can&#x27;t be duplicated.

is this her recent conference talk in a blogpost?

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

Im going to offer this info without comment: The first thing I check for when reading a blog article like this is Ctrl+ f &quot; I &quot;. The word &quot;I&quot; was stated 42 times in this post. Compare this to someone like Paul Graham&#x27;s blog, who averages around 5-10 &quot;I&#x27;s&quot; per article.

My own two cents: it&#x27;s a very unfortunate blog post.<p>1) As mentioned few times here, &quot;cultural variations&quot; can not be handled as such, unless you have a special training on this -which I don&#x27;t read so -.<p>2) It&#x27;s totally a back pusher on applicants, if someone says &quot;I see through you, and tell if you&#x27;re evil&quot;, I say, &quot;no thanks, have a nice day with your corporate culture&quot;. Indeed, I&#x27;m not considering to apply YC with this attitude. (Therefore, I&#x27;m not good, possibly caught by JL-radar)<p>3) Regarding 2, I think YC became too picky, so they&#x27;re starting to sound these -nonsense- ideas to cutoff pouring applications.<p>I miss PG&#x27;s guidance.