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Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator

We help founders make something people want. The Y Combinator Podcast is where builders talk about building. From the earliest days of an idea to scaling a company that changes the world, YC partners and founders share real stories, lessons, and tactics from the frontlines.

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  • 328 episodes
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Episodes328

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  • Jan 16, 2019 · 59 min

    #108 - Cindy Mi and Qi Lu

    Cindy Mi is the founder and CEO of VIPKID. VIPKID is a 1-on-1 teaching platform where children in China learn english from North American teachers. Qi Lu is the CEO of YC China and Head of YC Research. *** Topics 00:23 - Qi's intro 00:38 - Cindy's intro 1:38 - Moving to a new province as a teenager 4:38 - Being an educator and an entrepreneur 8:23 - Starting VIPKid in a hyper-competitive market 14:53 - Metrics for measuring product market fit 21:43 - How did she find the business model? 26:53 - What things did she try that didn't work? 30:38 - Strategy for product expansion 33:03 - Content expansion for Mandarin learning 34:53 - Building global companies 41:23 - Creating a global culture 44:13 - The future of education 48:08 - How should engineers and product managers think about edtech? 51:33 - Thoughts on AI 54:33 - Advice for entrepreneurs

  • Jan 9, 2019 · 35 min

    #107 - Vinod Khosla and Sam Altman

    Vinod Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures, a firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs to build impactful new energy and technology companies. Previously he was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. How to Build the Future is hosted by Sam Altman. *** Topics 00:30 - Vinod’s intro 01:20 - A zero-million-dollar company vs a zero-billion-dollar company 4:20 - What percentage of investors in Silicon Valley are good long-term company builders? 4:50 - Who has earned the right to advise an entrepreneur? 6:50 - Which risk to take when 7:20 - Helpful board members 8:15 - Who to trust for what advice 11:00 - First principles thinking and rate of change 13:00 - Evaluating a candidate in an interview 14:15 - How much should a founder have planned and how ambitious should a founder be? 16:30 - Recruiting great people 19:00 - Building a phenomenal early team 20:20 - Being generous with early employee equity 27:00 - Gene pool engineering 27:18 - The art, science, and labor of recruiting 28:20 - How founders should think about investors 31:00 - Doers vs pontificators 32:00 - What does Vinod want to do in the next ten years? 32:10 - Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology

  • Dec 20, 2018 · 1 hr 9 min

    #106 - Frank Lantz

    Frank Lantz is a game designer and Director of the NYU Game Center. He cofounded Area/Code Games and most recently released a game called Universal Paperclips in which you’re an AI that makes paperclips. Frank’s on Twitter @flantz and his site is franklantz.net. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:27 - "Games are the aesthetic form of thinking and doing" 6:57 - VR skepticism 9:42 - Universal Paperclips 14:27 - Explaining games to non-gamers 20:12 - Competitive gaming 22:57 - Building life lessons into games 31:42 - Teaching game design 36:17 - Inspiration, hard work, and taste 39:17 - Darker sides of gaming culture 43:07 - The indie game market 45:27 - Unexpected trends in gaming 49:17 - Benedict Fritz asks - Frank you seem much more interested in chess, go, poker, and other games with a long history than most game designers. Where do you think this comes from? 52:12 - Esports 55:37 - Inventing sports 57:27 - Pokemon Go 1:00:32 - Difficulty in predicting successes in entertainment 1:03:17 - Frank's game recommendations 1:05:47 - @fakebalenciaga asks - Why Tonto?

  • Dec 14, 2018 · 55 min

    #105 - Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis

    Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis are the founders of AptDeco, where you can buy and sell used furniture. They were in the YC Winter 2014 batch and you can find them at AptDeco.com. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 0:21 - What is AptDeco? 1:06 - Why did Reham and Kalam start it? 2:51 - Were they considering other ideas? 5:06 - How did they prepare to start AptDeco after business school/the corporate world? 6:21 - Getting over the fear of starting 9:21 - Communicating that they're starting something to friends and family 14:21 - Starting a startup after business school 17:21 - Helpful learnings from a more traditional business education 27:21 - Early models of AptDeco vs today 31:51 - AptDeco's customers 34:06 - Brands and customer acquisition 38:46 - Learning how to do delivery 42:06 - Deciding not to warehouse furniture 43:51 - Ideas that didn't work and some that worked on the second attempt 48:21 - Analytics 50:51 - Being a NYC company in YC 52:11 - How to make the most of YC

  • Dec 6, 2018 · 1 hr 6 min

    #104 - Leonard Susskind

    Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and he’s regarded as one of the fathers of string theory. He’s written several books including: The Black Hole War, The Cosmic Landscape, and the Theoretical Minimum series. He also has over 100 lectures on YouTube. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 0:26 - Being perceived as an outsider physicist 4:26 - The perils of becoming too mainstream 6:11 - Where his ideas come from 7:26 - Claudio asks - Do you think the graviton can be experimentally found? 10:11 - The origins of String Theory 15:41 - Why should there be a grand unified theory? 16:56 - Quantum mechanics and gravity 20:16 - Large unanswered questions in physics 27:56 - Holographic principle 38:26 - Simulation hypothesis 40:41 - Richard Feynman on philosophy 42:26 - Feynman and the bomb 46:26 - Improving the world by discovering what the world is 49:26 - ER and EPR - Black holes and entanglement 56:26 - Noah Hammer asks - Could quantum teleportation be used in the future as a means of intergalactic communication? 58:26 - rokkodigi asks - How do you think quantum theory will shape technology in the future? 1:01:56 - Why teach physics for the public?

  • Nov 28, 2018 · 58 min

    #103 - Michael Seibel

    Michael Seibel is a partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the winter 2012 batch. In this episode Michael comments on five of his essays. The essays are: Why Should I Start a Startup?, One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup, The Real Product Market Fit, Users You Don’t Want, and Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money? Michael’s on Twitter @mwseibel. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 0:00 - Intro 0:42 - Why Should I Start a Startup? 2:00 - Three types of people: people highly motivated when working for themselves, people that could succeed starting a startup or within a big company, and people that could succeed within a big company. 6:00 - How do you decide what type of person you are? 7:30 - Identify bias in advice givers 10:30 - Peer advice becomes less valuable during college 14:40 - One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup 15:40 - People aren’t taught how to find ideas 17:20 - Find a particular problem that you’re passionate about 20:55 - Find some friends and brainstorm a solution 23:20 - Build an MVP 25:55 - Two failed orders of operations for starting a startup 29:57 - The Real Product Market Fit 30:57 - Why do many founders think they have product market fit when they don’t? 35:42 - Building a successful company is not a single variable problem 37:27 - Socialcam didn’t hit product market fit 38:37 - Justin.tv had $1M in profit before reaching product market fit 42:27 - Some companies take a long time 42:55 - Users You Don’t Want 44:25 - The spectrum of how users are using your product 45:55 - Users that take a lot of customer support time 48:50 - Don’t let the hijack users control the product roadmap 49:31 - Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money? 50:31 - A team, a product, and an office are all just a means to an end 51:31 - If you don’t really deserve money, what is an alternate path to create leverage? 53:16 - Breaking even at Justin.tv was a moment of infinite clarity 55:31 - Series A program and leverage

  • Nov 20, 2018 · 1 hr 9 min

    #102 - Andrew Kortina

    Andrew Kortina is the cofounder of Venmo and Fin. Fin is a high quality, on-demand, personal assistant and executive assistant service. You can get a $100 credit to try Fin at https://fin.com/yc Andrew blogs at https://kortina.nyc/ The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:32 - Human dignity and work 8:07 - Creating jobs 10:07 - From The Beautiful Struggle // The Beautiful Game - You might argue that we’re already in a sort of failure mode, where our ability to assign dignity to arbitrary work and motivate people to work bullshit jobs is more efficient than our ability to allocate labor towards industry that would have greater social benefit, like education, healthcare, food, etc. If we’re already in this failure mode, it’s kind of the worst of all worlds, because not only are we assigning meaning to work that doesn’t need to be done, but, also, we could be redeploying that labor towards efforts that are actually important today. 18:32 - Travel 21:02 - Why do we want to do anything? 22:07 - Life after Fin 25:17 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I want to preface this talk by warning you that it’s quite possible you’ll interpret much of this talk as cynicism. It is not my intention to be cynical. My goal is to treat you with respect by speaking to you honestly, without any grand illusions. None of the companies trying to convince you to work for them will mention technological determinism. They will confirm what your parents and teachers told you, that your work and contribution will be totally unique and significant. 32:02 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I recognize that the meditative aspect of craft is an excellent way to cope with meaninglessness 38:32 - Technological determinism 43:02 - Andrew's company Fin 48:17 - Ryan Hoover asks - When (if ever) will Fin task completion be 100% AI-driven? 49:32 - Differences between running Fin and Venmo 56:47 - Venmo's Lucas ads 58:32 - Spencer Clark asks - How did you and your co-founders decide to sell Venmo? 1:02:02 - Charlie Kaufman on Screenwriting - What I’m trying to express – what I’d like to express – is the notion that, by being honest, thoughtful and aware of the existence of other living beings, a change can begin to happen in how we think of ourselves and the world, and ourselves in the world. 1:08:30 - Get $100 credit to Fin at https://fin.com/yc

  • Nov 14, 2018 · 1 hr 8 min

    #101 - Brian Donohue

    Brian Donohue is President of Instapaper and a Product Engineering Manager at Pinterest. You can find him on Twitter @bthdonohue. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:19 - The history of Instapaper 8:19 - Free competitors enter the market 10:19 - How Brian joined Instapaper 14:34 - Transitioning from paid to freemium 19:19 - Pinterest's acquisition of Instapaper 26:34 - Moving to California 29:04 - Working on Instapaper within Pinterest 32:19 - Spinning Instapaper out of Pinterest 42:34 - Jareau Wadé asks - What types of product integrations could Pinterest have done with Instapaper? 50:04 - Ryan Hoover asks - I’m curious how he and the team balance simplicity with new feature development/product expansion. 54:19 - Raymond Durk asks - I love the rapid reading mode but would also love a voice enabled mode where the Google Assistant or Siri reads it. Speaking of I'd use it on my Google Home to listen to news if that was a skill. 57:39 - Brian Kim asks - Any growth hacks that worked well? 1:00:04 - Gustaf Alströmer asks - How does it make time for focused time to catch up on everything he saves? What are his best productivity hacks related to this? 1:03:44 - Backpacking

  • Nov 8, 2018 · 36 min

    #100 - Sam Altman

    Sam Altman expands on ideas that have come up in several of his essays. Specifically: choosing projects, creating value, and finding purpose. Sam’s the president of YC Group and co-chairman of OpenAI. You can find him on Twitter @sama. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 1:25 - From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short - Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it. 3:50 - Stepping back and evaluating your work 5:30 - Creating metrics for your projects 6:30 - Taking a year off 9:30 - Figuring out when to commit 11:30 - Poker 12:30 - From Productivity - Sleep seems to be the most important physical factor in productivity for me. Exercise is probably the second most important physical factor. The third area is nutrition. 15:00 - From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?" 16:30 - From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short - Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. 17:30 - Perspective shifts 20:15 - From Productivity - My system has three key pillars: “Make sure to get the important shit done”, “Don’t waste time on stupid shit”, and “make a lot of lists”. 22:30 - What Happened to Innovation 24:50 - From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. 26:50 - The deferred life plan doesn’t work 31:50 - From The Merge - Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing. 34:10 - Weight training 35:30 - The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello

  • Oct 23, 2018 · 1 hr 9 min

    #99 - Laura Deming

    Laura Deming is a partner at The Longevity Fund. They invest in companies that will allow us to live longer and healthier lives. You can learn more about them at Longevity.vc. Laura’s on Twitter @LauraDeming. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:22 - Why focus on longevity now? 2:12 - How did Laura get started in longevity? 3:22 - Why raise a fund? 5:52 - What does Laura do personally for longevity? 9:07 - Worm and mouse studies 10:44 - Craig's personal habits 12:37 - Human studies 15:22 - Mica asks - Do you think immortality is going to be achieved by: 1. Curing all disease and stop aging so we could live with our own bodies forever 2. OR is going to be something like porting our brain, "mind" to a computer/robot? 17:37 - Most likely strategies to increase lifespan 19:47 - Ryan Hoover asks - Ask about the ethics of longevity. Jack J. Fernandes asks - Do people actually want to live longer? 21:44 - Mica asks - How would immortality change society? Wouldn't we become more complacent? Since we have "forever" to do things wouldn't that diminish our rate of innovation? And since less new individuals are being created we would have access to less new ideas. We would just stop creating new Newtons, Einsteins, Mozarts… 24:52 - Cognitive enhancement 25:52 - Daily habits 34:12 - Tech environment changes in the past 5-10 years 39:22 - What percentage of people in labs want to start companies? 41:37 - Pioneer 43:57 - Confidence 45:52 - Podcasting 49:12 - Choosing media to consume 52:17 - Sam Betesh asks - The last thing that led to a step function change in average life span was germ theory. What new areas of research might provide the next step function change? 55:07 - Extending fertility windows 57:22 - Jason Choi asks - What % of longevity is attributable to lifestyle choices vs genetics and the progress of technology in influencing both. 58:37 - Fatih asks - is blood transfusion a thing or just a hoax 1:00:42 - Rapamycin 1:02:27 - Testosterone 1:04:37 - Chris asks - Aubrey De Grey, IIRC, mentioned a number of times that we might, in the future, replace organs and tissues with new organic ones before they fail. Is this actually a reasonable idea, or is it more likely that we'll replace them with synthetic ones, if we replace them at all? 1:06:07 - Mica asks - Laura did a "cookie diet" for one month. Why did you do it? How did you feel? Doesn't it go against all the research on longevity? ;-) 1:08:07 - Is Laura actually not doing anything strange in her diet?

  • Oct 16, 2018 · 56 min

    #98 - Shola Akinlade

    Shola Akinlade is CEO and cofounder of Paystack. Paystack helps businesses in Africa get paid online and offline. They’re based in Lagos, Nigeria and were part of the Winter 2016 batch. Shola’s on Twitter @shollsman. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:26 - What is Paystack? 01:06 - Shola's background and previous company 4:26 - Paystack's YC application 6:01 - Meeting his cofounder 7:26 - Interviewing at YC 10:21 - Joining YC as a Nigerian company 10:56 - Differences between startups in Nigeria and the US 13:26 - Nigeria's payments market 15:56 - Paystack's growth 19:26 - Expanding to other countries and hiring 25:26 - The best part of doing YC 29:26 - Crypto developments in Africa 30:21 - Creative Joe asks - How difficult is it to get into YC? 30:56 - Educating US investors 32:06 - Paul Israel asks - What gaps do you think still exist in the Nigerian fintech space? 33:01 - Nelson asks - Are there any conventional startup advice that did not work for Paystack as their target market is Africa? 35:21 - Nelson asks - What are some important lessons he learnt while building Paystack? 37:46 - Nelson asks - What are some applications he would love to see been built on top of Paystack? 39:56 - Building for Africa 42:16 - Nestor Ezeagu asks - Do you think something like GoFundMe could work in Nigeria? 42:46 - Car Joyy asks - Can I receive payments as an MVP ecommerce site before registering as a company? 44:06 - Achyut Shrestha asks - What’s your tech stack? 44:41 - Jordan Jackson asks - What are the biggest cultural differences that you account for in UX and product design? 48:41 - Shola's outlook 50:36 - What he misses about life before Paystack 52:51 - Paystack in five years 54:16 - Music recommendations

  • Oct 11, 2018 · 1 hr 4 min

    #97 - David Hua and Vincent Ning

    David Hua is CEO and cofounder of Meadow. Meadow makes retail and delivery software for dispensaries. They were part of the Winter 2015 batch. You can check them out at GetMeadow.com. David’s on Twitter @Hua. Vincent Ning is CEO and cofounder of Nabis. Nabis is a cannabis services group. They offer distribution, logistics, sales, and marketing. You can check them out at GetNabis.com. Vincent's on Twitter @vcning. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:38 - What David brought with him 5:48 - Microdosing 6:48 - What are people buying? 10:38 - Customer demographics 12:00 - CBD 14:58 - Changing vocabulary around cannabis 17:13 - What is Meadow? 17:38 - What is Nabis? 17:53 - Why did they choose to not do cannabis product manufacturing? 22:38 - Fundraising as a cannabis company 26:08 - Why is there not one dominant cannabis company? 29:53 - Legalization across Canada 31:38 - Banking as a cannabis company 36:13 - Taxes 37:38 - Price sensitivity 40:14 - Brand loyalty 43:23 - What will the market look like in 5-10 years? 50:08 - Cannabis media 52:23 - Psychedelics 56:38 - Exonerations and social equity programs

  • Oct 3, 2018 · 48 min

    #96 - Mathilde Collin

    Mathilde Collin is the cofounder and CEO of Front. Front is a shared inbox for teams and they were part of the YC Summer 2014 batch. You can check out Front at https://frontapp.com/ The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:25 - Tuomas Grannas asks - What's your favorite LEGO theme? 1:25 - What is Front? 3:50 - Google Inbox shutting down 5:25 - Prioritizing features 7:50 - Features that have increased Front usage 9:50 - What Front looked like at launch 12:45 - Early user acquisition 15:40 - Starting Front and meeting her cofounder 19:10 - The idea for Front 20:25 - When her cofounder was diagnosed with cancer 23:20 - Hardest moments running Front 25:25 - Employee retention 30:55 - Transparency 32:40 - Front's office in France 33:30 - KP asks - What is the one unique insight about the problem you didn’t have at the start but only discovered later after your launch? 36:15 - Did she consider other ideas Front? 37:40- Jordan Jackson asks - Email at least for me - has taken on a different meaning in a life of messaging apps and chat platforms. It is more serious in a way. How do you see email evolving and the ecosystem that encompasses in peoples lives? 39:55 - If she could remove any email feature 41:20 - When did they hit product market fit? 45:05 - Meditation

  • Sep 27, 2018 · 52 min

    #95 - Eli Schwartz

    Eli Schwartz is the Director of SEO and Growth at SurveyMonkey. He came in to answer commonly asked questions about SEO. Eli blogs about SEO and growth at elischwartz.co You can find him on Twitter at 5le. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:23 - Does SEO matter in 2018? 2:23 - Where should a company start with SEO? 3:53 - Who’s doing SEO well? 4:48 - Why is Amazon doing SEO well? 5:48 - How should you crosslink? 7:33 - Paying for links 7:58 - SEO don’t dos 8:38 - Things that are no longer useful in SEO 9:43 - Keywords 13:08 - Reviews 13:48 - Content 17:48 - Images 23:08 - Link building 28:23 - How much time to give SEO? 28:53 - Mobile 30:58 - Ranking 32:08 - International SEO 34:18 - Translation 37:38 - International search 39:53 - GDPR 42:13 - Hiring someone to do SEO 44:08 - What to do when you organic SEO disappears 46:53 - Metrics for an SEO hire 48:53 - Tools for SEO 50:23 - Getting started in SEO

  • Sep 17, 2018 · 51 min

    #94 - Joan Lasenby

    Joan Lasenby is a University Reader in the Signal Processing and Communications Group of the Cambridge University Engineering Department, and is a College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Engineering at Trinity College. Here's a list of her published work. In this episode we talk about Joan’s research into 3D reconstruction from multiple cameras and her interest in geometric algebra. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:32 - What's a tangible example of geometric algebra? 1:52 - What is geometric algebra? 6:47 - What resparked interest in geometric algebra? 7:42 - Why is it important? 11:32 - When did Joan start working on it? 13:27 - Rotations 17:17 - Computer vision in the early 90s 19:32 - Joan's fellowship at the Royal Society 23:32 - What's changed in computer vision since the 90s to allow for Joan's drone research? 30:07 - Machine learning in computer vision 31:52 - How Joan and her students are applying machine learning 35:02 - Unifying qualities of geometric algebra 41:02 - Joan's paper ending up on Hacker News 45:32 - Where could geometric algebra take hold? 47:32 - Running and mobility 48:32 - Where to learn more

  • Sep 6, 2018 · 49 min

    #93 - Peter Reinhardt

    Peter Reinhardt is cofounder and CEO of Segment. Segment helps companies capture data from every customer touchpoint and send it to the tools where it can be used most effectively. They were part of the YC Summer 2011 batch. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 00:26 - What is Segment? 1:56 - Segment’s first customers 3:31 - Their YC application 4:26 - Going through YC 5:56 - Realizing their first product didn’t work 10:56 - Launching Analytics.js 12:11 - Experiencing product market fit 17:21 - Debating whether to launch or build out the product 19:41 - Evan Farrell asks - You mentioned in the SS lecture that you had to totally pivot to Analytics.js to find PMF, is it possible to purely iterate on something people kinda like to find PMF, or should it be clear from the outset if a new idea is something people want? 20:56 - The importance of having a skeptic on your team 23:56 - Customer interviews 26:56 - Benjamin Liam asks - How did they know they have the right messaging to explain their product? 28:26 - Idea generation 33:11 - Danny Prol asks - What values and standards do you have in place for your team at Segment? And how do you actively build that culture into your company? 37:26 - Ashwin Doke asks - How has GDPR impacted Segment's business model? 39:41 - Andrew Pikul asks - Any advice he has on asking for more money than you're comfortable asking for. 42:11 - Juan Carlos Garza asks - How did YC help you to where Segment is right now? 43:41 - Juan Carlos Garza asks - In an early stage, what's the thin line between ignoring a customer suggested feature or moving a customer requested feature to the core of your application? 45:11 - Biggest learnings since YC 45:16 - Important hires at Segment

  • Aug 30, 2018 · 59 min

    #92 - Ryan Petersen

    Ryan Petersen is the founder and CEO of Flexport. Flexport is a global freight forwarder powered by software and analytics. They are making international trade easier for over 10,000 companies in 70 countries. They were part of the YC Winter 2014 batch. *** Topics 0:23 - What is a freight forwarder? 3:08 - Selling electric scooters on eBay 15 years ago 5:53 - Ryan’s business school experience 10:23 - Amazon competing with their vendors 13:23 - Matt Susk asks - What were the most important takeaways from Columbia Business School? Would you encourage entrepreneurs to pursue a MBA? 17:03 - Tyler Hogge asks - How did you get your first three clients at Flexport? 20:03 - Being a solo founder 23:08 - Varun Khurana asks - What's your strategy for rapidly hiring the best talent in so many different global hubs? 25:53 - Challenges of scaling Flexport 27:38 - Some of Ryan’s favorite books 29:43 - Scaling culture 34:23 - Jassim Ali asks - How has the Trump policy on foreign trade affected your business so far? 39:23 - PowerDecal asks - How do you poach clients from legacy providers? 46:23 - Automation in freight forwarding 49:23 - Jason Yannos asks - If you weren't operating Flexport and had to source a new idea to work on, where would you start? 53:23 - Derisking product ideas 56:53 - Biggest lessons learned at Flexport

  • Aug 22, 2018 · 57 min

    #91 - David Zeevi

    David Zeevi is a James S. McDonnell independent fellow at the Rockefeller University Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. He focuses on developing computational methods for studying microbial ecology in the human gut and in the marine environment, and its contribution to human and environmental health. He was one of the authors on the paper Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. Apply for $120K in funding from YC. *** Topics 01:15 - Why did David start working on personalized nutrition? 4:45 - How did the measure the effects of food in their study? 11:55 - How was the study standardized across people? 15:55 - How they measured an individual’s gut microbiome. 17:30 - What is the gut microbiome? 22:05 - Is there an ideal gut microbiome? 23:20 - How do you manipulate your gut microbiome? 24:50 - Fecal transplants. 26:55 - Elizabeth Iorns asks - Does post prandial glucose response regulation track with weight regulation? I.e. can they use their test to determine what individual people should eat or not eat to lose weight? 28:35 - Has this research been turned into a product? 29:35 - Who else worked on this research? 30:35 - How was their predictive algorithm made? 35:15 - Did they end up with any dietary suggestions? 36:15 - David’s bread study. 38:55 - Has David changed his own diet? 39:25 - Why fat was vilified. 43:15 - David’s ocean microbiome and other research. 51:05 - Traveling and your microbiome. 56:35 - Trying this out yourself.

  • Aug 16, 2018 · 58 min

    #90 - Jessica Brillhart

    Jessica Brillhart is the founder of Vrai Pictures. They’re an independent immersive content studio. Before founding Vrai, Jessica was the Principal Filmmaker for VR at Google. The YC Podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Questions 00:23 - Starting VRAI 10:23 - Story in film vs. VR 12:38 - Gaming 19:53 - Conditions at Omaha - The Weather Channel in VR 22:38 - Jessica's upcoming projects 27:48 - Andrew Peterman asks - How long until we'll be able to create 3D 360° video from cell phone hardware+amazing software? 30:13 - Matt asks - Where do you see VR in 10 years? 30:28 - Michael Hodapp asks - Does VR still have long term mass adoption potential, or will the market shift to AR? 32:23 - Will people be in VR for a significant percentage of their time in the future? 40:58 - Virginia Pigato asks - How can a traditional storyteller adapt to vr? 50:13 - Can Olcer asks - What key but non-obvious thing is missing for VR to become mainstream? 52:08 - Matt MacVey asks - What are some of the most exciting or scariest parts of social VR and what is the storytelling potential of social VR? 55:38 - Tony Cassara asks - What kind of dog do you have?

  • Aug 7, 2018 · 26 min

    #89 - Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung Discuss Startup School

    Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung are both partners at YC. This episode is about Startup School. It’s a free, online course we’re offering that starts on August 28th. We’re also offering equity-free grants of $10,000 to 100 companies that participate in the course. Anyone can sign up for the course at StartupSchool.org. Read the transcript here. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 0:40 - What is Startup School? 3:40 - Who are the speakers this year? 5:00 - What are the different paths in Startup School? 7:00 - Success stories from last year’s Startup School. 8:55 - Why offer $10,000 grants? 10:00 - What deals are offered to the startups in Startup School? 11:00 - When does the course start? 12:45 - What are the requirements to complete the course? 15:15 - What are the topics that will be covered? 18:00 - What happens during office hours sessions? 22:30 - Who else is working on this course at YC?