The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator

http://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-social-radar-what-i-did-at-y-combinator

by _pius • 11 years ago

205 151 11 years ago

foundersatwork.posthaven.com

pskittle• 11 years ago

is this her recent conference talk in a blogpost?

dkyc• 11 years ago

Yep, as mentioned at the bottom. "(This post was derived from the talk I gave at Y Combinator's Female Founders Conference in 2015.)"

elmar3• 11 years ago

Jessica is YC secret weapon.

mikeucb• 11 years ago

I agree completely. You can't overvalue the culture at a startup, and that each startup has its own culture.

gailees• 11 years ago

Culture can't be duplicated.

dragonwriter• 11 years ago

Culture is precisely a set of transmitted patterns of behavior; how to engineer a duplication of culture may be a difficult challenge that needs to be solved on a case-by-case basis and which lacks a simple, general solution, but "culture can't be duplicated" is untrue.

brandnewlow• 11 years ago

It can't no, but the things companies do to create culture can be duplicated to create a culture of their own. We borrowed a lot from the typical startup playbook at Perfect Audience and ended up with a place that was a pleasure to work at, but for its own idiosyncratic reasons unique to PA. The general methods, team dinners, relaxed environment, lack of meetings, hiring good friendly people, are the same, the culture that grows out of that is different everywhere.

elmar3• 11 years ago

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

lettergram• 11 years ago

The part I really enjoyed reading was:

"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't do it. YC is not just an investment firm. It's like a family in that we're inviting these people into our place to have dinner every week."

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.

Paul Graham on multiple occasions discusses Sam Altman as someone who can't be stopped. Here is an article[1] from Paul Graham's article titled "Five Founders," the prompt "Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years." Sam Altman made it as #5 up with Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, etc.

"I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be."

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.

“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

[1] http://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

alecco3• 11 years ago

I'm amazed how Ayn Rand is still alive and kicking in the YC crowd.

juliangregorian• 11 years ago

I'm not. Dismayed, but not surprised.

solve• 11 years ago

Just one thing I'm curious about: How do you later find out if you had been correct? Have you tried to estimate how often you've been correct by following up on the people later on?

RE the article: awesome that you have the goal of funding good people and constantly asking yourself what's best for the founders.

bhayden• 11 years ago

It's not like YC gives them money and says "cya" and never talks to them again. They are probably forever involved in the start up until they exit, which doesn't seem to happen often.

paul8• 11 years ago

Exactly. We're painfully aware of our mistakes.

im2w1l• 11 years ago

That will reveal the false positives, but not the false negatives.

paul8• 11 years ago

Culture is one of those factors that is very difficult to quantify, yet incredibly important for success.

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.

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.

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's a much better predictor of happiness and success than trying to follow the social media hype or hotness signals.

Alex3917• 11 years ago

It would be nice to have a coffee table book of startup culture inspiration with a spread for each company with a few office pics and bullet points on what makes their culture unique and successful.

Everyone knows about Zappos and Google, but I feel like there are few enough well-known examples that every time I've ever been involved in white boarding on this at various startups we've always come up mostly empty handed.

n729• 11 years ago

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.

This seems like it could be a chicken or the egg problem though. How do you know that good culture isn't a byproduct of success. If Google stock were tanking, how do you think the culture would look? I honestly don't know.

paul8• 11 years ago

I'm talking about the very early days, so there was no stock to tank, the company was largely unknown and not yet "successful".

Retra• 11 years ago

I would think -- if you had a culture that wasn't obsessed with making the stock go up -- that you could still operate effectively.

jnem2• 11 years ago

Good question, how was Yahoo's culture between 2010-2012?

Cakez0r3• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, do you think that passion alone can carry a crappy idea to success? Is it better to be (truly) passionate with a trashy idea or have a solid idea but only be motivated by financial success?

spcoll3• 11 years ago

I'm genuinely curious here: what if you happen to be frankly ugly? What if you are really awkward around people?

These characteristics don't necessarily mean you will be unable to build great products or a disruptive business. They don't mean your startup will fail. But they would almost certainly cause you to fail the character test.

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.

So aren't such character filters a bad business decision for YC? Aren't they passing on great startups by paying too much attention to things that ultimately don't impact success that much?

Mz13• 11 years ago

People with good social radar can make a good distinction between things like character and awkward/ugly. It's people who lack such radar who confuse these things.

rwallace2• 11 years ago

Yes, but unfortunately, by that definition, most people think they have good social radar but only a tiny minority actually do. Jessica maybe in that tiny minority, but I'm not and you probably aren't either.

petercooper• 11 years ago

There are lots of successful actors, politicians, business people, sales people, etc. who are subjectively "ugly" to many. It's rarely about looks.

Social skills, on the other hand, are important but, much like physical fitness, can be learned and trained unless you have a serious disability. Someone not willing to invest in their social skills might well deserve to fail a 'character test' for that reason alone.

ulisesrmzroche• 11 years ago

Looks matter a lot, even though it sucks. It's called the Halo Effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

nether• 11 years ago

Too bad attractive people are convicted less often by juries, receive more one-on-one attention by doctors, receive higher grades in school, etc. Read "Looks" by Gordon Patzer.

thom• 11 years ago

You have a depressingly narrow definition of character.

spcoll3• 11 years ago

Let's be realistic here. In a 10 minutes interview with a person, what will have the most impact on your impression: social awkwardness and uncomfortable looks, or abstract "moral qualities"?

Geekette2• 11 years ago

You appear to have a superficial view of character. Looks and awkwardness don't equate to, neither do they correlate with, a person's character (moral qualities). The 3 can occur in any combination and a person can perceive poor character from each combination.

spcoll3• 11 years ago

Having "good character" generally means "being like me" to a lot of people. No abstract moral qualities involved.

As a person who is not particular agreeable to look at, and who can be quite introverted (maybe as a consequence), it is very noticeable that to me that "high-empathy" people are judging me on first impressions, not on my actions.

I don't think I'm a jerk. I always try to be extra nice (mostly because I want to, but also because I have to go the extra mile since I am otherwise socially challenged). Yet I just make others uncomfortable, in particular extroverts and socialites.

Cakez0r3• 11 years ago

Find yourself a partner who is great at winning people over. You can make the best product in the world and it'll be useless to you if you can't even successfully pitch it to somebody. Soft skills are just as important as technical brilliance. That just seems to be the way of the world.

sajid• 11 years ago

To a first approximation, a startup's company culture is simply a reflection of the personality of the founder(s).

nichochar• 11 years ago

This is true in my experience too

jrvarela56• 11 years ago

The difference between 'good' and 'bad' cultures is that a 'good' culture was curated so as to remove founder traits that do not increase the company's chance of success.

dcole29292• 11 years ago

And this imo, is one of the reasons why JL's input has been so valuable to YC over the years. If a company's culture reflect that of it's founders personality focusing on founders who are "good" people goes a long way towards ensuring the companies YC funds act a certain way. Whether that way is good or not is up for debate but from pure anecdotal evidence I'd argue that YC startups tend to comport themselves better than others.

brezina• 11 years ago

ah, i remember those early dinners and fancy cheese plates that weren't orange nor formed into a brick.

i've found that potential employees are getting more and more savvy about evaluating culture.

One thing we do at Sincerely to share our culture and evaluate the candidate'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.

n729• 11 years ago

"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're good people or not."

How do you know you have this ability and it's not just bias? I really don'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've grown older I've come to realize that I'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?

sekasi2• 11 years ago

My job relies on me trying to establish the character of people in a quite limited time as well, and I can totally vouch for this. Human beings are notorious for overestimating their ability to 'judge character'. Myself included. There's been so many scientific studies done on this that I don't think you can make this claim anymore. Personal bias combined with past experience of similar character (or read character) influences your mental state a lot. I don't really like it when people say 'I can work out if they are good people or not', simply because it isn't true. Sorry, but evidence trumps opinions.

lazaroclapp5• 11 years ago

Telling whether someone is a good person is not only hard, it's ill-defined. Good with respect to what ethical standard? Good by which morality? At most, a hypothetical perfect empath could tell you if the person is self-consistent, list which values it shares with you, or maybe predict their actions given an input situation. Even those things seem more within the purview of yet to be proposed ASI than humans.

That said, this part (for example) sounds both realistic and useful: "They'd get excited talking to the applicants about all the things they could do, and afterward think the interview went well, when sometimes all the applicants did was reflect their own ideas back at them. But it was second nature to me to notice these things." and I imagine there are many other insights someone trained to observe people (say a psychologist or anthropologist or someone self-trained in doing just that job) could gather that most engineers would miss by miles.

Edit: Humans also overestimate their understanding of say, software systems (ask anyone who has ever tried to formally verify anything). Yet an experienced programmer can still tell a bad architecture from a good one with far more success than an untrained/novice one. Aesthetics are as hard to define as Ethics, if not more, yet designers do know what they are doing to a far greater extent than your average person. Isn't it likely to be the same for reading people?

bootload2• 11 years ago

"My job relies on me trying to establish the character of people in a quite limited time as well"

@Sekasi, in your opinion, what would be required to test and establish a persons character?

myth_buster• 11 years ago

I'm sure she learns from her mistakes and tweaks her "social radar" model. Hence with more experience/interaction with founders she will be getting better at it. Given that YC has become incredibly successful, there is something right being done there and hence it may be easy for her to determine what works and what doesn't.

paul8• 11 years ago

This is a fair question, but like most things with humans, almost impossible to answer in a definitive way.

There was once an accidental control group though. Jessica missed about half of the interviews and PG, RTM, and Trevor were left to decide on their own. I would estimate that the error rate without her was about 2x-3x as high.

The other thing to remember is that we keep track of the startups that we interview, and for the ones that we accept, we end up working with them for many years. We make a point of studying our mistakes (and successes), so there is a feedback loop, and I believe that we're getting better at it every time. But of course there are about a million other variable in play, so it's very difficult to be certain about anything (which is part of what makes this business so interesting).

negrit• 11 years ago

How accurate it is with foreigners?

The way to communicate from a country to another is really different, same for the culture, ... How do you integrate the 'foreigner' factor in the evaluation?

n729• 11 years ago

This is a fair question, but like most things with humans, almost impossible to answer in a definitive way.

Which is precisely why you have to be very, very, very careful. The matter-of-fact way it was phrased in the blog post didn't give me the impression that there was a whole lot of skepticism regarding her abilities. If one does make such a grandiose claim, it seems like a person conscious that it is a grandiose claim would preface it with a whole lot of qualifiers and such.

There was once an accidental control group though. Jessica missed about half of the interviews and PG, RTM, and Trevor were left to decide on their own. I would estimate that the error rate without her was about 2x-3x as high.

I'm curious what the sample-size is and what error-rate actually means. I realize with the control group question and this question, I risk coming off as awfully pedantic.

davemel377• 11 years ago

If this was only about judging how people interact with each other (i.e. do they get along) I would agree the control and feedback might be helpful.

But having the ability to judge if someone is a good or bad person or has a good or bad character is the part I can't wrap my head around. The inherent bias is overwhelming as this is an entirely subjective barometer) and the ramifications of playing G-d or Santa sends a screaming message that is counter to everything the post wants me to believe about YC Culture.

My definition of a good guy is someone who accepts me for who I am and doesn't pass judgement on me. I suspect most peoples judgement of good or bad character is more a relfection of how they see themselves and how the other person fits into that narrative (i.e. people want to be consistent with their beliefs, so the good/bad evaluation is based on how you perceive yourself and if this person fits into that story), versus any real indication if they are good or not.

I guess I'm saying that I am very suspect of the character and judgement of someone who thinks they are good at judging peoples character.

Edit: Just to be clear, everything I have ever heard about JL has been wonderful...but this comment about being able to judge character really rubs me the wrong way.

Edit2: Grammar, and some elaboration in ().

Mz13• 11 years ago

If you are good at this, over the years, you collect evidence, often of a sort that you cannot in good conscience share.

As one example I can share:

When I worked at a Fortune 500 company, I once got myself moved to a different team very, very quietly because the individual taking it over was going to be trouble for me. He had not yet done anything worthy of bringing it to the attention of HR, but I wanted nothing to do with him as my new boss. A bit over 2 years later, he was quietly fired. The rumor mill had it that he was either having an illicit affair or was engaging in sexual harassment. I believe either or both as plausible stories. A former team member (a woman) and I then talked about how terribly he had treated her, something she had been unable to effectively address while she worked for him. I felt terrible for not telling her sooner why I had been quietly moved.

If you earnestly want a more in-depth write up, I would be willing to put one on my blog sometime.

Edit: Maybe "quietly fired" isn't a good descriptor. More like "disappeared" overnight. One day, he was his usual jovial self. The next, we came in see a manager cleaning out his desk. The many people who bought his smarmy bullshit and adored him were in shock. I spent the week trying to hide my desire to pass out kazoos and party hats amidst a funerary atmosphere at work. Lots of people were completely taken in by this creep.

abdullahkhalids• 11 years ago

The research shows these results for typical human beings. If you did a survey, a typical human being would be terrible at and will overestimate their ability to discriminate good startup ideas from bad ones. But PG does have this ability. Similarly, she is probably a atypical human being with an excellent 'social radar'.

Also, she gets feedback so she gets to improve.

belorn• 11 years ago

the reasons as posted:

"I've always been a good judge of character–even as a little kid"

"In fact my cofounders respected my opinions about character"

"I can tell things like when people are BSing, how tough they are, if they get along, .. whether they're good people or not."

"Paul, Robert and Trevor are really good at technical stuff, but it's precisely because they're so good that they often misjudged founders as people. " while "I didn't always understand the details of the questions they'd been asked"

"I just have a very intense reaction to people I think have bad characters. "

At this point my reaction is as it always is when someone belive they were born with special abilities, but the article does end on a better note:

"I now have experience dealing with literally hundreds of startups. So now when I see a problem I've usually seen the same problem ten times before."

Born ability? I would call it earned experience, while I strongly suspect she was as bad as anyone else at being a judge of character before that.

Mz13• 11 years ago

Let me ask you this: Why are you harshing on her explanation of her role in YC? Do you call PG out and assume he is full of shit and doesn't know what he is talking about?

She is one of four people who founded YC. YC is wildly successful. Paul Graham's writing is practically worshiped here on HN.

I am rather appalled at the reception this is getting.

I don't know her, but I will suggest that the substantial success of YC suggests she isn't just fucking self-deluded. Perhaps she isn't explaining it in a way that appeals to the data-oriented mindset of the majority of people here, but the degree to which she is being outright dismissed as utterly full of shit smacks of, among other things, sexism.

n729• 11 years ago

Do you call PG out and assume he is full of shit and doesn't know what he is talking about?

Absolutely. I think Paul Graham said silly things about hacking and painting. I think Paul Graham is utterly wrong about philosophy being just a confusion over meaning. I think Paul Graham at time tends to riff on things he just doesn't know much about.

outright dismissed as utterly full of shit smacks of, among other things, sexism.

Please show me where she's being "outright dismissed."

Please show me how I could make the argument I made without it being interpreted by you as sexist. Or is the mere fact that I made it about a woman proof of its sexist nature?

DanBC5• 11 years ago

There are a bunch of places where one human has to guage whether another human is "good" or "bad". EG airport security spotting terrorist or customs officials looking for smugglers or juries hearing witness evidence (or police) or employers interviewing candidates.

All the research I've seen shows that people are lousy at these.

To me her comments are a bit worrying: it sounds about as bad as any other stupid interview technique and it seems like it leaves a big risk for subconcious biases.

Take something as simple as a suit jacket. In one country you leave it on while you're working. Taking it off is sloppy and unprofessional. In another country you take it off and roll your sleeves up. You're working hard, you get hot. Keeping your jacket on means you're having an easy day. These are mostly uncociois and if you're not aware of ot and correct for it you risk calling someone sloppy or lazy eventhough neither is true.

HN frequently talks about bad interview practice; HN sees this as either an example of bad practice or of good practice poorly explained, and so they talk about it.

throwawaymaroon2• 11 years ago

Lots of people, myself included, have spent time calling YC and PG out. If anything, I think she's getting some flak just for being high up in YC.

It's odd that you think Paul Graham's writing is only worshipped here. There's criticism, too.

The halo effect around YC is a form of delusion. Person making important gut-based decisions about people's lives gets criticized for publicly announcing her own competence. Why is that appalling?

brudgers• 11 years ago

One of the features of the Y-Combinator context is that the interviews are designed to filter out false positives. So the process is focused on consistently selecting good character rather than correctly identifying both good and bad character. As YC often points out, plenty of good people don't get funded.

The emphasis on avoiding false positives means that errors are more easily identified: bad character stands out in the small pool of YC founders, whereas good character may be common in the pool of unselected applicants. In other words, it's more of a bloom filter than a dictionary.

hooande• 11 years ago

With these criteria, how does anyone make any statement about their own abilities? If you went to a job interview and they asked "What is your biggest strength?" would you say "Well, humans are prone to overestimate their abilities. I couldn't answer that question without doing a double blind research study"?

Think about it: The only way that you could change your view of your own abilities is by comparing your predictions about people's character to their actual behavior over time. Jessica did the same thing, but she found that her predictions were accurate.

JL has the opportunity to make judgements about people, and then spend months or more with them as a part of YCombinator. She can say "I don't think the members of this startup will work well together" or "I don't like the looks of this guy", and then see if she was right or not. She has the opportunity to do this dozens of times per year, every year. That's how she knows.

throwaway41597• 11 years ago

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).

What are the most common types of "startup shitshows" that YC sees besides cofounder disputes? Which are unrecoverable?

n729• 11 years ago

""Softer" stuff like values, culture and community is often ignored by the press, and more dangerously it's also sometimes ignored by founders."

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.

[Edited to remove a comment which just wasn't necessary and was a bit ad hominem.]

dcole29292• 11 years ago

Ping pong tables and nap times do not equate to values, culture or community. Sure they can be tangentially related but that's about it. These are surface level features that do very little to describe the "Softer" stuff that actually matters.

davemel377• 11 years ago

I wonder how many good people never apply because of reading posts like this.

I am not saying any of this weeding out is a problem. It'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't buy that being confident and secure is a requirement for success.)

general_failure• 11 years ago

People who apply for YC let themselves be 'judged' because that's what the interview process is all about. This post gives you more insight into this judgement process. So, I would say this post is valuable for people who will apply or intend to apply for YC.

davemel377• 11 years ago

If it was about judging if a team can execute and if an idea has merits, that's one thing. If its about judging if they fit into a culture you are cultivating that is fine too.

But if its about judging character...This filters out the humble people and curates the narcissistic.

I guess I am saying that most good people don't go around thinking how good they are...and the better a person is the more likely they will take responsibility for everything in their lives, which may lead them to think less of themselves.

Whereas, someone who is narcissistic thinks he is a good guy, and is actually really bad.

I still think they should filter for culture fit and even ethical fit, but they should not publicize it, and definitely should not proclaim they are gifted at it and very accurate in their assessments.

I can think of lots of good guys who would never want to be judged on their character in 10 minutes by someone the valley looks up to and who proclaims they almost always accurate when reading people.

I know my own shortcomings. I am afraid Jessica will see right through me and see how rotten to the core I know I am. But who knows... maybe I am just hard on myself and I really am a great guy. I guess I would rather not find out for sure :)

eaxitect3• 11 years ago

JL somehow implies that, rejected applicants of YC might have a "character" problem. So why to sound it so loud? YC might invest or not, but saying "some" applicants were rejected because they were bad persons is different than saying YC is not investing for not specific reasons (as PG said that couple of times). The judgement is not objective, so keep it to yourself, otherwise, you might raise a flag about others rejected.

staunch• 11 years ago

It is hard to imagine something more demeaning than having your goodness as a human judged in 10 minutes.

Not many would subject themselves to it, but for the fact that YC is one of the few gatekeepers in Silicon Valley who will even talk to outsiders.

1123581321• 11 years ago

I personally find it encouraging. I learned to speak carefully from my engineer father and the rapid-fire sounds intimidating. I like knowing YC keeps people in the room to look past that (presumably, each interviewing team has its own Jessica.)

Fomite• 11 years ago

Ironically, this post made me a little sad that my career track doesn't point toward making a YC attempt.

alecco3• 11 years ago

SV is in big part a lottery. The glossy articles with survivor bias showcase are a tiny fraction of a brutal environment. Suicide rates are underreported.

Don't get me wrong, I like how it has a lot of capital to invest in long shots and how that creates an environment where it's easier to reach critical mass. But it's certainly not the magic happy land often portrayed.

brayton• 11 years ago

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?

clay_to_n2• 11 years ago

Because the benefits of more founders presumably outweigh the loss of intimacy. I also think she mentioned "do things that don't scale" in the article (if she didn't someone did in the comments) - if you build an incubator where you treat 20 founders like family, when you get to 1000 founders you will still be trying to do that.

natural219• 11 years ago

First of all: Excellent piece. Every time I read about Jessica Livingston I inexplicably feel totally inadequate (in an inspiring way, don't worry :D).

Secondly, about Culture. The problem with talking about culture is that it'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 "culture = ping pong tables", or office naps, or not wearing suits or something. They're not wrong -- the word "culture" can feasibly refer to those things, but (I think) that's typically not what we talk about when we talk about how important Culture is to startups.

I would like to read and hear about lower-level models of "Culture" that really drive success. Here are some really bad examples of what I mean: Clarity in speech, clear division of responsibility, product delivery / QA process norms, onboarding processes, personal respect, etc.

You might not mean any of these things when you say "culture". 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 only be made by tackling this problem on the low-level.

bootload2• 11 years ago

"... 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're good people or not. ..."

That's a difficult task. Was it the comfort/discomfort paradigm used here? (cf: Navarro: http://www.jnforensics.com) From experience, you only really grasp the mettle of ones character in adversity.

You can ask questions and see if the response is causing a person discomfort, but that'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.

"We continue to filter for character"

Who are the worst offenders? Does the adage, 'want to get an honest answer by avoiding management and ask an engineer' apply?

eaxitect3• 11 years ago

My own two cents: it's a very unfortunate blog post.

1) As mentioned few times here, "cultural variations" can not be handled as such, unless you have a special training on this -which I don't read so -.

2) It's totally a back pusher on applicants, if someone says "I see through you, and tell if you're evil", I say, "no thanks, have a nice day with your corporate culture". Indeed, I'm not considering to apply YC with this attitude. (Therefore, I'm not good, possibly caught by JL-radar)

3) Regarding 2, I think YC became too picky, so they're starting to sound these -nonsense- ideas to cutoff pouring applications.

I miss PG's guidance.

pickwick• 11 years ago

"Culture matters for startups. For a startup to succeed, it must have a culture that reflects what it wants to achieve."

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.

This emphasis on "culture" and "culture fit," 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't racists, sexists, or bigots of some other stripe.

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

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 "culture" is not the way to get them.

lutorm• 11 years ago

Like what? There is no well-defined figure of merit for "a startup that is likely to succeed".

leelin• 11 years ago

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!

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'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/embarrassment that I'm not working hard or fast enough.

Even today, we still get introductions and advice from YC and when I reach out, I've never waited more than 24 hours for a response.

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'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!

jnem2• 11 years ago

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

beamatronic2• 11 years ago

Is that a homemade Segway clone? I'd like to know more about that!

TheMakeA• 11 years ago

http://tlb.org/#scooter2

beamatronic2• 11 years ago

Thanks! This is really cool!

tomasien• 11 years ago

I expected some backlash as Jessica made here "hey guess what, I'm a co-founder of YC and I was as important as anyone" tour complete with this post. Glad to see it wasn't that bad.

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'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's critical the record reflect that.

untilHellbanned• 11 years ago

This is a quite braggy post by someone who claims to dislike bragging. Lots of "I did this".

Before Y Combinator, character had not traditionally been an important factor for investors.

Really, before 2005 social factors had nothing to do with people giving each other money?...Really?

Comical generalizations and an absurdly ironic level of grandiosity on display here.

emcarey• 11 years ago

THIS IS NOT A BRAGGY POST.

gargarplex3• 11 years ago

Nothing wrong with taking credit.. but from my dealings with YC founders, not all are ethical, polite, and honest.

codecondo• 11 years ago

I got the same impression, it felt like Jessica was trying to account for more than necessary. Either way, it's her World and she has done a lot for the company, if nobody else is giving her the credit where it's due; she does it herself.

onion2k2• 11 years ago

Really, before 2005 social factors had nothing to do with people giving each other money?...Really?

Yes.

I was a developer for companies that raised money in the late 90s/early 2000s, and I can absolutely assure you that the decision to invest was driven by slidedecks and financial models far more than personalities and the social abilities of founders. If you could write a good business plan with all the right keywords you could raise an early round even if you were a total sociopath with no clue what you were doing.

That's not to suggest there was anything actually wrong with that. People hadn't invested in SaaS businesses before because they didn't exist. No one really knew what was necessary for success. The personality of the founder or their ability to sell wasn't considered important. People thought that "Build it, they will come" was a viable route to market. The shift to investing in companies that have a good culture driven by interesting, exciting founders is something that investors learned relatively slowly.

rokhayakebe• 11 years ago

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

projectileboy• 11 years ago

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.

Fede_V• 11 years ago

Given that the dataset of YC companies is starting to be somewhat sizable, I'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.

The dataset is not quite big enough to train a very complex deep net, but even some simple linear regressions would be fascinating.

thomaspun• 11 years ago

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.

aceperry• 11 years ago

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

rwallace2• 11 years ago

This is an excellent and inspiring post, but I'm worried people might try to use it as a model.

Neurotypical people think they can tell all sorts of things about someone's character from a short face-to-face meeting, but it turns out this is all noise; people's impressions of character obtained this way are not significantly more accurate than random chance.

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.

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 you are not 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.

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.

elmar3• 11 years ago

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

herdrick2• 11 years ago

Good question, but that's the culture that's she's talking about having created. Although no one else has such good radar, everyone is at least paying attention to these matters.

soneca• 11 years ago

I think she is completely right at the importance of culture and the value of "soft" skills on building a company. But I don't know about how judgemental they are about character. All sounds very much like a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" 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't even care to try to understand it, they just assume she has this superpower and we all shall trust it.

My point is not being a good person doesn't matter on building companies. I too firmly believe it does. A "fraternity of good people" 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't judge them on character so quickly and so often.

A recurrent topic here in HN is how language limit and direct thought. In english the verb "to be" 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 "to be". We use "ser" and "estar". "Ser" is for something more permanent. "Estar" is for something more transitory.

So when in english you say "Your friend is ugly", you can tell is you judge the people as ugly for life, I mean, he just isn'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't as astonishing as he use to be. To mean that you must add a time stamp, like "Your friend is ugly today". So this phrasing and using of the verb "to be" in english nudge you to a very binary way of thinking. And people'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's superpowers as "being bad people".

All great arguments for culture and atmosphere were lost to me because of this judgemental stand.

herdrick2• 11 years ago

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

wellboy• 11 years ago

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

The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator

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