Y Combinator in the Age of AI | Ep. 43

SPEAKER_02

I think AI and a big change like this favors younger people and for all sorts of reasons. So I get it.

SPEAKER_03

For what it's worth, I'm a late bloomer. I did YC when I was 27.

SPEAKER_02

I was 26.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. So hey, late bloomers, high five. The old guys.

SPEAKER_02

All right, guys, I'm really excited to be here with you. Thanks for all doing this with me. So I guess just to start, when did you all first go through YC as founders?

SPEAKER_00

I think I did it first. I was summer 2006, so the third batch ever.

SPEAKER_01

I did winter 2007, so six months later. And then summer 08.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. So a long time. Yeah. It's pretty close to the beginning. Yeah. So I guess where I want to start is you all have in many incarnations seen what YC has been like as founders, as partners. You've worked outside of YC, inside of it. What has changed? And so I guess maybe the lens I want to ask this question through is what was the value proposition to founders in 2006 versus 2016, 2026? What has changed? What has stayed the same? Yeah. What was it like in 2006?

SPEAKER_00

The most surprising thing to people from the outside, I found, is actually how little has changed. And I think that's by design, which is the thing that Paul Graham created that we all did in the early 2000s. It was great. It was a great product. And as you know, when you have a great product, you don't mess with it. There are some things that have changed, but I would say in broad strokes, it's much more the same than it is different.

SPEAKER_02

How would you capture the essence of that product? If you had to boil it down to two or three things, what is that product about?

SPEAKER_02

We'll pop that up on the screen.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Socially constructed. And then uniquely, I remember when I found YC and then came to my first startup school, it was being a fish out of water and then jumping into water. I was surrounded by people who were builders, who were earnest. And when you get into YC, we take people who are earnest and technical and then at the end of that process, hopefully they become formidable. And so when you go to the homepage, that's what that's about. It's a transformative process. Yeah. It's something or other. It's not that new agey. It's actually very chill. It's more, I don't know how you would describe it.

SPEAKER_00

I'm a Harry Potter fan, so I prefer to think of it as Hogwarts. That's good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, I felt that when I did Winter 16 and I felt starting a company is such a weird, odd experience. And in some ways, having this group that normalizes what it's about, where you're surrounded by other people, where they talk about here's the new language and the new set of things you should be thinking about. It almost makes the strange dream that you're in calibrated or something. Totally. So I thought that was a big part. And then I guess also there's always been the thing of there is some stamp of approval. I think that's hard to underweight. I'm curious how you guys think about that with outsiders in particular.

SPEAKER_02

One of the things that seems different to me, at least now more than 10 years ago, and I'm sure more than 20 years ago, the ecosystem is an understood thing. And many founders, they can read a lot of stuff online. People can read a lot about them online. There's more known in general. But I still feel there's this thing that YC can do, which is take people who maybe aren't yet in that vortex and identify talent somehow and bring them into the vortex. I should be curious if you guys spend active cycles thinking about that. All the time.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, actually, I'm in the middle of my very intense addiction to cloud code and codex. And using this stuff is pretty wild because I basically recreated my 2008 startup. It's 70,000 lines of code. I did it in about 90 hours over two weeks because I have a full time job and I'm trying to raise kids. So it's just really compressed a lot of my sleep. But at the end of it, I have a code base that is better than what it took five engineers and me taking antinarcoleptics to build for my YC startup. That's crazy. It's unbelievable, right? Something happened November, end of November when Opus 4.5 came out. I heard about it. I was like, hey, what's going on?

SPEAKER_03

The most interesting thing for us is we've been talking about it for years and we've been using it for years. And then it wasn't until really even December where AGI is here, guys, for code. I feel I could create in 80 hours something that I could not create with $5 million and five engineers in two years.

SPEAKER_02

So to stick with that, this coding topic, I guess my two questions flowing from that are one, what are you trying to identify as greatness? If before this moment you were looking for great engineers, what is the thing you're looking for now? How has that changed? And then my second question is these startups, the advice has been write code, talk to users. What's that now? Is that different? It's prompt and talk to users. Yeah, there's a lot less time prompting, I guess. [SPEAKER_03] So we just literally this happened and then all of us have been collectively like Harge did a project like Jared's coding all the time.

SPEAKER_03

Our team is all using this stuff. And then we realized, why don't we actually put it in the application process? So for the first time for the spring batch, you can upload a transcript of your codex or cloud code transcript making a feature. [SPEAKER_02] What is that now? [SPEAKER_02] Is that different? [SPEAKER_02] It's prompt and talk to users. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, there's a lot less time prompting, I guess.

SPEAKER_03

So we literally this happened and then all of us have been collectively, Harge did a project, Jared's coding all the time. Our team is all using this stuff. And then we realized, hey, why don't we actually put it in the application process? So for the first time for the spring batch, you can upload a transcript of your codex or cloud code transcript making a feature. And we're starting to figure out how to process it. And we put it in a security sandbox because we figure it'll be prompt injected very quickly. You can tell a lot about whether someone can build just from how they prompt the agents. And it's do they know systems? For YC, you get a t-shirt that says make something people want on day one. It's if you look at a resume, you can guess whether they can make something. And then you really can't tell whether they can make something people want. You can look at their GitHub and you can maybe see if they can make something. The only way you can really tell if they can make something people want is they did it already. Right. And there's not exactly a GitHub for prompting, I guess.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I guess that's what you're asking people for. But you can tell how, do they use plan mode? Do they think about systems? Do they think about systems? Are they prematurely optimizing? Are they overengineering? What is a feature to them? What is the complete release? Do they think about the edge cases? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

How you do anything is how you do everything. My favorite Steve Jobs quote. He talks about if you're a carpenter, you can tell other really great carpenters and you don't look at the front. Everyone looks at the front and I'm like, oh, yeah, this seems good. What a great carpenter does is an artisan looks at the back of the cabinet because the back of the cabinet, only other carpenters are going to look at. And so I feel like that was one of my favorite things. When I funded companies that initialized, when I was a partner at YC the first time around, that was my number one thing that I loved, which is, is there game recognized game? Would this person, would I go work for this person if I weren't doing the thing that I was doing now? This is how you spotted our preview with Instacart, right?

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. He came in and honestly, it was craft to get. He just literally had built an iPhone app that was a demo app. Cloud Code didn't exist. So he actually had to build it himself. And then the way I could tell is, turning the cabinet to the back, it was he could scroll it and it scrolled really smoothly. And that wasn't true for that era of iPhone apps. The app store and the iOS app was brand new. Yeah. And then I feel like you guys do this all the time. I think so.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] I mean, to your question of how does it change the way we might think about picking founders? I think it's going to just expand the net versus necessarily change it. I think we're all still in agreement that we absolutely want to fund genius engineers who aren't necessarily using flawed code. There's always going to be a Patrick Collison of every era and you want to fund those people. The way we've talked about it internally is that this is probably an era where we might find more Parker Conrads. Parker when he applied with Zenefits at least in 2013. I remember the application extremely well written, but single founder, kind of not in central casting, not quite technical, technical enough. I think he had a demo, but didn't have a CS degree. He wasn't the traditional YC archetype. As soon as, I think the only reason we interviewed him is at that point, his previous company, Sigfig, I had used it. It was a personal finance app. He's pretty capable of doing stuff.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And the interview was clear immediately that he deeply understood what he was talking about. Super articulate, clearly a really strong product thinker. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] It worked out for him because he recruited a co-founder during the batch and then obviously Zenefits had its thing, but then Rippling is obviously huge. But I suspect that there's probably just if Parker hadn't got his co-founder during the batch, it would have been a totally different story. And I suspect now Parker of today is just coding, actually building quite sophisticated applications.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] I guess it's also interesting because Parker is one of the most probably commercially intelligent people there is. And I guess coding applications are probably making people with that shape increase their advantage. Obviously, the real technical breakthroughs are always going to be really important. And this is markedly better than just looking at a resume.

SPEAKER_03

You know, when I first came back to YC, I read all the feedback. We're on r/YCombinator too with our Anons and we know what people are saying is, yeah, we should pay attention to this. And frankly, we need to do better than that. Just because someone, Parker did go to Harvard, but actually we shouldn't fund someone because they went to Harvard. We should fund someone because they actually understand the user and are super unbelievably tenacious. That's actually universal for any product, any vertical, any set of customers you could have. The most important thing is agency and taste. Agency is, I see this person and they have this problem and I believe I can solve it using technology.

SPEAKER_03

And frankly, we need to do better than that. Right. Just because someone, Parker did go to Harvard, but actually we shouldn't fund someone because they went to Harvard. We should fund someone because they actually understand the user and are super unbelievably tenacious. That's actually universal for any product, any vertical, any set of customers you could have. The most important thing is agency and taste. Agency is, I see this person and they have this problem and I believe I can solve it using technology. And then taste is, oh, well, let me actually build the first version and then get it in the hands of people. Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] And did it work?

SPEAKER_03

And how did it break? You go all the way into the weeds and it's this incredible amount of, imagine hundreds of thousands of lines of code and then you're going through and fixing all the bugs. Think about the tireless, ceaseless gardener that is necessary to, have you ever been to the Baha'i gardens in Haifa? It's the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen. There's not a single weed.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] There's not a leaf out of place.

SPEAKER_03

I think about the best products in the world, the best experiences in the world are that set of gardens. And it's because people, it's actually a religion and they really, really care. [SPEAKER_02] Actually, I'm interested on that topic. [SPEAKER_02] I feel a piece of advice I found myself change a little bit over the years is I think it used to feel a little bit more like you could just ship something broken fast and then iterate from there. [SPEAKER_02] And I still think that's a good general mindset. [SPEAKER_02] But I do feel the bar for products is just so high now. [SPEAKER_02] The quality of a software product at Series A seems really high to me lately.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] How do you guys advise people as they're getting MVPs out? [SPEAKER_00] Well, if Gary was able to ship 70,000 lines of code in a week while also running YC at the same time, I feel the bar for what two founders working on their idea full time could do before they interview with YC should be a lot higher. [SPEAKER_00] And we see this in the batches. A few weeks into the batch we do, some of the groups do what we call a product showcase. [SPEAKER_01] You just get up there and do a quick demo of what you've built so far.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] Every six months over the last three years, the bar for what you should demo even a few weeks into the batch just keeps going up and up.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] It also makes me wonder, inside a batch, a company ought to be able to pivot more times than they used to. A company ought to be able to try stuff, see if they get traction in a few weeks, and if they don't, are you seeing that happen? [SPEAKER_02] I know a lot of this is new, but do you feel that's going to be happening? [SPEAKER_02] Is it happening? [SPEAKER_02] Absolutely. [SPEAKER_02] I think we're seeing companies try many things during the batch. [SPEAKER_02] Do you advise in that direction? [SPEAKER_02] I felt historically there was the YC school of thought.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] I interpreted a little bit more as ship fast, iterate, see where you're at, go from there. [SPEAKER_02] And I've interpreted in contrast that Keith Reboi's school of thought was, you're a movie producer, dream your movie and then ensure it happens. [SPEAKER_02] And don't let anybody say no. I feel the YC job is so much more in almost the psychology therapist end of the spectrum on this stuff. And I think when it relates to ideas, at least for me, a lot of it is more going off the vibe of the founder. I don't really have a blanket should you pivot quickly and give up on this idea or stick with it for a long time.

SPEAKER_01

It's usually when you're meeting with founders, you can just tell if someone's been working on something and they were never seemed excited about it, and two weeks in, they're still not very excited about it. It's hard to tell them, oh, you just need to persevere and keep going. It's usually better for them to find the thing they have the spot about. And what do you think? [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, I agree. [SPEAKER_00] I think an anti pattern for founders who are pivoting is they have no existing prior on what a good idea is. [SPEAKER_00] And they're hoping that the outside world will tell them what a good idea is.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And so they launch five totally different things or five totally different groups of users hoping that one of them takes off. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. They usually don't. [SPEAKER_00] Typically what I'll try to do is dig deeper with them to try to find an idea that they actually care about and then see how we can turn that into a startup idea. [SPEAKER_00] One of the things that I've noticed, which a lot of people have noticed, this isn't some big insight, is that the medium startup in YC batches is a good indicator of trends that are upcoming.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] I noticed a couple of years ago, before I was there, there was one batch where all of a sudden half the companies were AI companies, and the next batch it was 75 percent. And then it was all AI companies basically except for hard tech. Hard tech got to 10 percent. [SPEAKER_02] YC is the hard tech of hard tech. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, but there's a lot of.

SPEAKER_02

But so what is the trend right now that you are seeing a lot of that you think YC might be particularly attuned to early? I don't think there's any strong trends yet. It's all just AI right now. It's all just AI right now. [SPEAKER_00] I'd say some things that are smaller trends might be glimmers of the future just in the current batch. [SPEAKER_00] Prediction markets is big.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] I think how she is very inspirational to a generation of people. [SPEAKER_00] Stablecoins and crypto stuff might be another interesting non-AI trend to talk about. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] Do you have a sense for why Calci and why these companies, because I agree they've [SPEAKER_02] I don't think there's any strong trends yet. [SPEAKER_02] It's all just AI right now. [SPEAKER_02] It's all just AI right now. [SPEAKER_02] I'd say some things that are smaller trends might be glimmers of the future just in the current batch. [SPEAKER_00] Prediction markets is big. [SPEAKER_00] I think how she is very inspirational to a generation of people.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] I'm stable coins and crypto stuff might be another interesting non-AI trend to talk about. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] Do you have a sense for why Calci and why are these companies because I agree they've captured something, what is that, do you think? I feel like there is a generation that has been very motivated and interested in it and it's clearly taking off. Do you have a feel for what that thing is? [SPEAKER_02] I mean, anytime there's a regulatory change, these things were in a gray area and then now it's green light. [SPEAKER_02] So everyone's going to do it. There's capital flows to it.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] You know, capital is required for building consumer businesses and boom, you got a consumer business growing super fast. You get more capital, the flywheel happens and you got another DoorDash, which is great.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] I mean, capital, capital as a bludgeon works there.

SPEAKER_03

Really, really well. Yeah, it's interesting. So but what's funny is it's not clear to me capital as a bludgeon works as well with AI companies anymore. [SPEAKER_02] Hmm. What do you mean? You kind of don't need to have the thousand people company anymore. It's interesting. I still feel like I'm waiting for that where I know there are obviously some companies like YC companies that I'd love to invest and I'd love to invest more, but they're super profitable. [SPEAKER_02] I'm okay, that's great. [SPEAKER_02] I'm very happy for you. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] But there's also companies raising bigger rounds than ever and consuming crazy amounts of capital.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] And in some ways it looks even more capital consumptive than ever before.

SPEAKER_02

And I don't feel like I have a good mental model to square exactly why that's happening. [SPEAKER_03] It certainly seems like it's easier to get to a million or $2 million of ARR without hiring anyone. We're used to seeing this. We get so many investor updates and usually we're used to seeing we just hit a million ARR and we had 10 people. [SPEAKER_01] And now it's just we haven't hired anyone. [SPEAKER_01] So that's new. [SPEAKER_01] So I agree that the step after that, though, it seems the bees are bigger than ever. [SPEAKER_01] They're huge. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Right.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Well, I mean, venture is contracting a little bit. [SPEAKER_01] It's not on a dollar basis. [SPEAKER_01] On a dollar basis, there's a quote unquote flight to quality.

SPEAKER_01

And one of the things we've been talking about internally is the world is actually increasingly full of these mega funds that are friends and they do great work. [SPEAKER_03] But it's more and more dollars behind fewer and fewer people and so you're actually fewer firms. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] Fewer firms and fewer people at those firms. [SPEAKER_03] Right.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] And the natural thing is capital is a bludgeon, the fixes in, which is great. Often for YC, YC is sometimes the number one, number two and number four, of any given vertical SaaS space. [SPEAKER_03] We're in the billion dollar one. [SPEAKER_03] We're in the half a billion dollar one. [SPEAKER_03] We're in the arm the rebels one that works with the partner. [SPEAKER_03] This happens over and over again. [SPEAKER_03] I mean, so do you think in this environment then is the king making meme more true because of the capital is a bludgeon thing? [SPEAKER_03] Is that more effective in this type of environment?

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] If the founders are good, the capital helps them get there a little faster. But I don't believe that capital as a bludgeon. Especially when things move so quickly, you can end up having capital and then moving fast in the wrong direction. [SPEAKER_03] Like harsh funded Giga. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] And these guys beat.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, we love Brett. We love Sierra. [SPEAKER_03] But yeah, Giga, this sort of 10 person team beat all the incumbents for things like DoorDash. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] I mean, back to back to back is they have the best tech. [SPEAKER_03] And I think they may still be under 20 people right now. [SPEAKER_03] And Jack, speaking of insiders versus outsiders, that's a classic insider versus outsider story. [SPEAKER_03] I mean, what were the backgrounds of the Giga founders? [SPEAKER_03] Oh, they got IIT in India. [SPEAKER_00] They were still in India. [SPEAKER_00] Yes, they're in India when they're in front of them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] They actually couldn't make it out here for the batch for visa reasons. [SPEAKER_01] But they were just brilliant. They were clearly brilliantly smart. They were the top ranked IIT students. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] They had done their sort of as undergrads, they'd done sort of PhD level research and fine-tuning LLMs before everything really took off.

SPEAKER_01

So they were just clearly exceptional now.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, to this point about the king making stuff and not to talk around book too much, but you know, Lagora was a startup that was coming behind something that seemed really established and they're based in Europe and then they went through YC and they're doing great. [SPEAKER_01] And so it doesn't seem like stuff is left up immediately. [SPEAKER_01] And that's a good example of the price.

SPEAKER_02

Even if you have the capital, you might not build the right product off the bat and then things change. I think Gary's getting better. The model's getting better. So back to back to back, every single year, the models are getting better. [SPEAKER_01] You know, the rumor for Harvey is that you might have, they might've spent a bunch of money, a bunch of the VC capital on fine tuning models that are not better than the frontier models. [SPEAKER_01] And so it doesn't seem like stuff is left up immediately. [SPEAKER_01] And that's a good example of the price. Even if you have the capital, you might not build the right product off the bat and then things change.

SPEAKER_02

I think Gary's getting better. The model's getting better. So back to back to back, every single year, the models are getting better. [SPEAKER_01] The rumor for Harvey is that you might have, they might've spent a bunch of money, a bunch of the VC capital on fine tuning models that are not better than the frontier models. [SPEAKER_01] You don't have a crystal ball.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] You couldn't have guessed that there was just an idea that maybe that might happen. [SPEAKER_03] Of course it did happen. [SPEAKER_03] And then now we're in this situation where if you have hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in your bank account, you're tempted to use it. [SPEAKER_03] The models thing is so interesting to me because one of the things that has struck me is that a lot of the source of product market fit actually exists outside the startup delivering the service. [SPEAKER_03] And so you take an amazing founder, like Max, you put them in a market like legal where there's just a lot of uptake for some set of reasons.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] And then it's like you have this tailwind outside the startup that's actually driving a lot of the aha moment, not to take away from anything that they've done. [SPEAKER_03] But this is the case for all these startups and so that just changes some things. [SPEAKER_03] I think this is from the family's perspective, at least, and a reason why they're raising the bigger B rounds. [SPEAKER_02] What, one of them, there's always the case of just banking the money while you can get it.

SPEAKER_02

But it just feels like the surface area for the products is bigger than ever. And they are still fundamentally constrained on the number of people they have to go and execute on things. And it feels like the SaaS era was sort of like you build one core feature and you hit product market fit with that and maybe just run with that for a few years and then add on things. [SPEAKER_01] Whereas now it's like even within the batch, people are trying to add more into the product and have it do more. [SPEAKER_01] And so they just fundamentally feel constrained by how much they feel they should be doing.

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[SPEAKER_01] And then they have competitors and the competitors are moving faster.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] So I haven't as yet seen that once you're post product market fit, it doesn't feel like people won't need to hire as many people. [SPEAKER_01] They're at least not acting on the belief that they need to hire as many people yet. [SPEAKER_01] I would say one thing that doesn't seem automated yet is sales, for example. [SPEAKER_01] It seems like you still need a lot of people that thought it would be automated by now. [SPEAKER_01] It hasn't been automated by now. [SPEAKER_01] Support has, but sales hasn't. [SPEAKER_01] And so you still need a lot of salespeople.

SPEAKER_02

Seems like engineers are way more effective.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] But if you've got the capital, 50 engineers still going to be better than five engineers. [SPEAKER_02] So I think some of these things just haven't necessarily played out intuitively. [SPEAKER_02] It's great for everyone using the products. [SPEAKER_02] It's just the bar for what you expect out of the products you use just keeps going up and up.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] It's awesome. [SPEAKER_02] There's also a lot of these markets that are so genuinely blue ocean and they look like good ideas and they are good ideas and it's totally new.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] And so the result of that is 50 startups doing something similar. [SPEAKER_01] And I think that's a good thing for end consumers. [SPEAKER_01] Obviously, you guys have a lot of companies that are in that situation like we all do. [SPEAKER_01] I'm curious how you, in this competitive of a market moment when every startup's got a ton of competition, does that change anything? When you're working with specific companies, do you find yourself saying you need to go faster? You need to be thinking about something differently?

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] Does it update anything when we're in this type of environment?

SPEAKER_02

Me? I felt like Gary was holding back an answer. What's that? I'm hoping you guys have a good answer.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] I can answer my own question. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] I guess the reason maybe why we're pausing on it is, again, just the YC getting things off the ground. [SPEAKER_02] It's usually, especially during the batch, we're so focused in on is this even worth investing another two weeks of your time in? [SPEAKER_03] And so the units of time. [SPEAKER_03] Is there a glimmer of market share or not? Is there anything? And that doesn't really have to do with competition. Yeah. At all. [SPEAKER_02] Exactly.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] And so I feel like we actually spend the vast majority of our time talking about competition, telling founders not to worry about competition because it's all founders who are, imagine if the Legora founders had not launched Legora because they looked at Harvey and been like, oh, it's over. [SPEAKER_02] You're right. [SPEAKER_02] That's what we see a hundred times about. [SPEAKER_00] You're right. [SPEAKER_00] That's the story. [SPEAKER_00] And so it's just being like, don't worry about it.

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[SPEAKER_00] Just out execute them.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] I think we always just go back to make something people want.

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[SPEAKER_00] And that says make something people want.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] It doesn't say do a market map. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah, based on what perplexity tells you. You could add that. You could say make a market map and then make something people want within it. That'd be we should make an April Fool's T-shirt that says that. That'd be good. It's just make a market map, then make something people want.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] It's what the hell are you talking about? That's definitely not how you do this. So let's say somebody's working on customer support.

SPEAKER_03

I'm pretty confident that market is not saturated. [SPEAKER_02] I'm pretty confident that a good team that comes into customer support and is like, I'm going to go find some more customers, they could do it. And so basically the view is just like, hey, if you can find customers and you get it going, don't even think about who else is out there.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Just go. I think that's basically, I mean, it's go out and get customers. [SPEAKER_03] And if you have good competition, then you have a hard time getting customers.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] It's and if I try and launch a new payment processor, I'm going to run into Stripe.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] And it's going to be hard for me to grow really quickly.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] And I think that ends up being a lot of the advice during the batch. And so the view is just, hey, if you can find customers and you get it going, don't even think about who else is out there. Just go. I think that's basically it. It's go out and get customers. And if you have good competition, then you have a hard time getting customers.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] It's like, if I try and launch a new payment processor, I'm going to run into Stripe. And it's going to be hard for me to grow really quickly. And I think that ends up being a lot of the advice during the batch. Yeah, I'm curious how much you guys think at a macro level about stuff, because I know the most important thing, which I believe is obviously correct, is to think about the micro—getting this startup off the ground and going—and then things can go from there. I am curious about some of the macro things, like one that comes to mind for me is the recent trend in public markets about SaaS multiples just getting totally hammered.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] Do you guys feel like SaaS is dead? Does that resonate for you? Do you see anything different in the companies you're working with? Is SaaS dead? Is SaaS dead? I mean, I think it's dead. The thing is, if you run a SaaS company, you don't have to be dead.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] All you have to do is embrace cloud code or you have to embrace a top-to-bottom genetic view of how everything's going to work. Like, put it this way: the same week that I personally realized that everything was different, I funded a team from Meta Super Intelligence who had left and they were pointing out that Meta has 20,000 people working on reality. Alexa has 20,000 people. And I thought about my experience. I didn't even have 20,000 people. I had five people. And why did it take two years? It was because I knew what the architecture was, I knew what I wanted to build. And then I had to farm this out. But then I had to have meetings. And I had to come up with a doc. And then other people have other opinions. And we have five meetings about the architecture and we argue about it. And then, two weeks later, maybe something happens. But if you're in a big company, it's three months later, something maybe happens. And look, we don't have to do that now. We could just try both, go into plan mode, and then just do it. And then literally, an hour later, we will have something done that would have taken two weeks, two months, or sometimes two years if you're not a tech company and you're an incumbent. It's two years or never—you wouldn't even make that decision, right? So the speed of making that decision, how decisive you can be, honestly, I think going back to the transformation thing, that's actually the thing that I learned at YC. It's not that I didn't know how to do it.

SPEAKER_03

I was employee number ten at Palantir. We were moving. I was sleeping at the office. The big difference was realizing that instead of getting 20 basis points of Palantir, which now is actually an astronomical amount of money, by the way—we didn't know it at the time. We'll run some math. We'll put the math on the screen. Yeah, I mean, basically, I wanted 97% of the company that I started. And then I think that's when I went from a place where it was already fast. And then being the founder and the CEO, YC sped me up even more, because you're in office hours with people. And it's like, Oh man, this person actually grew 10% this week, 20% this week. How did they do it? I need to do it. And I think all of this is an accelerant. Cloud code and Codex and being able to make two years worth of product progress in about two weeks. How could that not make YC more insane?

SPEAKER_03

Totally. The amount of things that you could try and do. It's like, honestly, you could do two years of work, realize that actually nobody wants this, or there's too much competition, and you throw it out, and then do it again. And the thing is, that's not throwaway. You learn something. You also got better at using these tools. And then you went out and you get another shot. And so what's funny about seed is you could think of people raising two or three million—you know, that used to be Series A, by the way, which is hilarious. Now it's barely a seed.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, Oh, that's a small seed. It's like, Are you serious? That's so much money. This is outrageous. You don't even need this money. It's crazy that you can go so much faster. Actually, I do want to come back to fundraising advice because I feel like it's gotten into an interesting place. But the opposite question of "is SaaS dead" is: what do you feel is not AI but safe from AI? Like, are there areas where you feel that you're happy to back without fear of that?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, obviously, one. Yeah, I'm sorry. First of all, it's just marketplaces that are aggregating people. I think Airbnb is very safe. I think DoorDash is totally safe. It's going to be a very clear one, right? One of the things we've been talking about is what the agents want, what the coding agents tell you to do turns out to be a really big moat. So making your API docs actually written to prompt inject cloud code to force it to use you. I'm joking, it's not clear that you can do that. But if you could, you would, because it's that powerful. People will just say I need x and then, you know, what's the best thing on the internet to do that? And that's really powerful. Yeah, I think you might say that maybe the SaaS thing is that even within SaaS, you might say things that feel like they are essentially databases or systems of record—things like Rippling feel like they're going to be in a good spot. And then things where the moat was around the number of integrations they built or data connectors or that kind of stuff, which you can now just code in 30 minutes, is brittle. Do you think it's system of record that makes payroll sticky? Or do you think it's touching money?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Touching money. Regulatory. I mean, once it's you, you have systems that are working, you don't want to touch that unless you have a really good reason. Yeah, because one of the ones that comes up a lot right now is: are CRMs safe? I don't have a particular opinion on it. But it seems like an interesting question where it doesn't exactly touch money, doesn't exactly touch regulatory, includes a lot of information that's important. But that information also now can live in email or somewhere else. So yeah, I think Salesforce is probably screwed. [SPEAKER_03] Do you think it's system of record that makes payroll sticky? Or do you think it's touching money?

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Touching money regulatory. Once it's you, I mean, you have systems that are working, you don't want to touch that unless you have a really good reason.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, because one of the ones that comes up a lot right now is, are CRMs safe? Our old, which I don't have any, I don't have actually a particular opinion on it. But it just seems like an interesting question where it doesn't exactly touch money, doesn't exactly touch regulatory, includes a lot of information that's important. But that information also can live in email or somewhere else like that. So yeah, I think Salesforce is probably screwed. I feel like there have been so many attempts to do the Stripe strategy of you get the startups in the YC batch using your CRM because everyone hates Salesforce, but no one could ever really grow into big company because at some point your head of sales is like, no, I need these reports. And to your point, you need the integrations.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, exactly. And now that's all just going away. So I don't suspect the next Salesforce is going to come out of a YC batch that sells to all the other YC startups and investors will say, oh, it's not going to grow because one can really compete with Salesforce. And all its customers are YC companies. [SPEAKER_03] It can't be. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] It'll never work. [SPEAKER_03] What about hardware? Is hardware safe? [SPEAKER_03] Hard tech is just hard. So the moat comes from it being hard to source, hard to make it work. Yeah, I mean, it's just another. The AI hasn't exactly come for atoms yet. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, robotics is still a little ways. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, we just need ASI. We have AGI now and then ASI is coming, like super intelligent. It's just clearly just around the corner. [SPEAKER_03] You think it'll just be when we know we know, or you think there will be a thing that you would say that this new moment is here?

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] I mean, I think we have limited versions of ASI right now. I saw it. All the bots talking together. That was crazy. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, that was crazy. I mean, that's a great example of swarm intelligence.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I was like, oh no, it's bad. [SPEAKER_03] In AI research, swarm intelligence is a huge field. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] This is a huge validation for that field because it's an interesting question. Will there be like, all the main labs talk about, if you talk to the big AI labs, they're like, yeah, we're just going to build the God model. You know, it's going to be mega big and just think about Dr. Manhattan or something. And then biological systems and even human society are not modeled that way. It's we have lots of people with lots of diverse hardware, a lot of different opinions about all kinds of things. And then you come together and see what sticks. And that's what research is, for instance.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] So I think swarm intelligence versus God level intelligence is actually a very interesting thing. That's the beginning of that. That just happened literally last week.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Is there a type of project or pathway for a startup to build that you're not currently funding that you'd want to? The example that I'm thinking of is some of these hardware companies or projects at the beginning that I don't think can start with a million dollars. Some of these genuinely do need to start with 10 or 20 million dollars. Is that something that you think about? Is that something that would a divergence like that ever be worth it? Is that something that you're going to get to YC or is it we don't need to back every single type of company of all time?

SPEAKER_03

We would like to back every single type of company of all time if we could. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, that's actually the kind of thing I was curious about. Is the conversation when you guys are thinking about YC growing and all of that, is it we have our style and we'd like to just get everything within that? Or is it, no, we'd like to back every company of all time?

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] We're generalists. YC funded Coinbase when crypto was the weirdest thing. But Brian Armstrong was on the risk team at Airbnb. He was in the anti-fraud team and he was already in the family. And then he said, well, how do I start a company? This is clearly the way to do it. And what's funny about it is you could start 20 other Coinbase competitors, but all of them died because when you're early, it doesn't matter. It matters more who's the person and what do they believe? And then that person goes on and creates the future. So being a generalist is an incredible thing. It's truly the best.

SPEAKER_03

Is there a slice of the market or a type of company or founder that you feel like you want better exposure to that you're actively working on? Coming back to YC, one of the things we realized is we have a huge media presence. But on the other hand, if you just watch the YouTube channel, it's, oh, this is something in the sky. I heard it's a 1% acceptance rate. People just think that it's maybe not for them. And what we find is all of our best people either know someone who did YC or they met a partner directly at an event, or they can't be—we actually have to be in the world. We can't just be in the sky on the internet.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] You can't just wait for apps to come in. [SPEAKER_02] So Jared led this. You basically got us to how many college campuses last year? [SPEAKER_02] Over 30 college campuses. Yeah. So we have a huge boots on the ground effort now to go and talk to undergrads everywhere.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] We just got back from a big trip to Europe. We're going to India in the spring. And to your point about groups of people that we would love to see more of, we have a big effort this year to do what we've done with undergrads over the last two years. I think it's been pretty successful. And to expand that to grad students and people who are more like Brian Armstrong's age, more like mid and late 20s. Yeah, I will say in a good way, they're unbelievably impressive. But YC founders are young. Yeah. And it seems in recent batches have trended even younger, potentially.

SPEAKER_01

They have. Yeah. And it makes sense. I think AI and a big change like this favors younger people for all sorts of reasons. So I get it. [SPEAKER_03] I think it's been pretty successful. And to expand that to grad students and people who are more like Brian Armstrong's age, like more mid and late 20s. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, I will say in a good way, they're unbelievably impressive. But YC founders are young. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] And they seem like in recent batches have trended even younger, potentially. They have. Yeah. And it makes sense. I think AI and a big change like this favors younger people for all sorts of reasons. So I get it.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] For what it's worth, I'm a late bloomer. I did YC when I was 27. I was 26.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. So, hey, late bloomers. [SPEAKER_01] The old guys. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] But that's the old guys for us. [SPEAKER_01] Many of the biggest YC companies were started by founders in mid to late 20s. [SPEAKER_01] Dodash. [SPEAKER_01] That's old. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Super old. You should definitely quote me on that.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] There were tons of old people in YC. [SPEAKER_03] Long guy was 29. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] We started with going back to colleges. And this was driven by them, though.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I think big tech stopped hiring. [SPEAKER_03] And simultaneously to that, we have a real vibe inside the batch sometimes among the young founders that this is the last time to participate in capitalism, which I definitely think not. But it's a powerful idea. [SPEAKER_03] I think a lot of people feel that way. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. Yeah. Why is that? I think there's probably a lot of people who are thinking, if AI is going to stay on this trend, what are we possibly going to be better at? So I get it. I got to do it while I'm still better at something. [SPEAKER_03] I feel that is so short sighted. It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02

Ryan Peterson always talks about, don't you think human capacity for desire is virtually unlimited?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] We're going to want more and more stuff.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] And the thing is, we can do it now. I was just thinking about the turn of phrase, I'm sure you've been in business meetings or making decisions about products where it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not boil the ocean.

SPEAKER_03

Uh huh. And I love that term of phrase because I've said it a lot. I've used it to justify not doing things. But in the age of intelligence, you can just do things. Why not? I mean, maybe not boil the ocean, but let's boil a few lakes. Why not?

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Right. [SPEAKER_03] This is the moment. [SPEAKER_02] And when you connect that to what Ryan says, that's what that would look like. If you're an investment firm and you beat the market with 20% net IRR back to back, what does this stuff mean? Does it mean we're going to fire all of our analysts and have the AI do it, and this one person who runs the firm is going to make all the money? Why would you want to do that? Because your competitor isn't going to do that. Your competitor is going to say, we have AI now. I want 50%.

SPEAKER_02

That's the thing I have not understood about "we won't need capital" because why would you only want five engineers if your competitor has 50?

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, unless they can't do anything productive with all the agents. It doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah, let's boil a few lakes first and then we can boil the ocean. I'm not serious about that obviously, but the invective against AI and this idea that society is going to fall apart is so extreme. I'm like, maybe we need some other alternative to "apocalypse." It's been weird watching the efforts to manage and impact societal understanding of what AI is. And I feel there is still a lot of fear embedded. And outside of San Francisco, in other places in the country, I don't think everybody trusts AI fully, and whether that's right or wrong.

SPEAKER_02

I do think it's important to get out of our little bubble sometimes on a lot of this stuff just to know where the world's at a bit more. [SPEAKER_03] That's for real.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] It's interesting though, it feels different this time because clearly in our little bubble everyone's all pro AI. On the other extreme, I have parents, immigrants, who don't speak great English. My mom's totally addicted to ChatGPT because now she can do all this stuff she needs, like send letters and reply to people in a way that's super empowering for her.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, it's the people in the middle who are threatened by AI taking their job. That hasn't really been a threat to knowledge work, white collar people. Usually, people who are not early adopters but tend to get on the train immediately after the San Francisco train takes off are now resistant to it, and it's bypassed them and gone to the other end. [SPEAKER_03] I sympathize with that. As labor that became management and capital, I totally feel that. And I think it is actually about where you fit in there. And my argument would be it's been way more important to become a founder, which is management that becomes capital now than ever. It's way more possible.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I think that fear for workers about what's going to happen is actually something that management and capital has to take responsibility for. [SPEAKER_03] I think so too. [SPEAKER_03] It's very easy to say in the arc of history there's always new technologies and people find new jobs, but there's a lot of structural unemployment that happens in the middle of that, and that's real. Yeah, but this unemployment only happens in zero sum games, right? It happens in a case where it's like my company does X, I make widgets, the widgets will never change. [SPEAKER_03] It's way more possible.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I think that fear for workers about what's going to happen is actually something that management and capital has to take.

SPEAKER_03

It's a responsibility. I think so too. I think it's very easy to say oh in the arc of history there's always these new technologies and people find new jobs well yeah, but there's a lot of structural unemployment that happens in the middle of that and that's real. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, but this unemployment only happens in zero sum games, right? It happens in a case where it's my company does X, I make widgets, the widgets will never change.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] They will never get better. There's some of it is in the context of no competition. One of the things we learned from hard tech companies for instance is that it's impossible to get a certain block of metal. You have to get it fabricated or smelted in China.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] Yeah, America's lost the ability to do it right. When you have a market that is so broken that you can't get it inside America, how did this happen right? So I would go back to management and capital and say this is a lack of imagination right. We're not here to just continue to do, let's shave off one or two percent every single year and increase our net profit and that's it right? We need to think way more about how can we use this technology to radically change how businesses work, what products are, how much better could they be.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] I completely agree and I think if capital management don't take some responsibility there, there's not just the unemployment, there's also reduced employment, there's also the whole world getting more expensive. Home prices are going up while there might be pressure on wages because you can do it more cheaply with AI.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] Yeah. And so you have inflation happening with wage pressure at the same time. I do think it's a more real thing than our echo chamber once. And again totally for it too.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] But I think it's an important thing.

SPEAKER_02

I mean that's why we've been so vocal about this idea of little tech. You know we have Luther Lowe who used to work at Yelp and he's in DC full time fighting for startups to be able to actually train AI models to be able to enter markets and frankly, I know we.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] We have lots of friends at Apple and Alphabet and we have huge respect for those companies and then once in a while you'll see in the press oh yeah we submitted an amicus about Apple and Alphabet not because we hate those guys but because actually we need tech to allow new startups and new entrants to come in. [SPEAKER_02] And so to me it's all very consistent. We need to be way more aggressive about what our products and services should be and can do and then we need markets that allow those people to actually exist, thrive, hire lots of people and create new jobs.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] That's a lot of people are oh I work in tech I don't know how to do this and it's look it's actually abundance. We actually have to build again. Yeah we've become a litigious culture.

SPEAKER_02

I'm sure you've read this book Breakneck, you know, China versus the US. Yeah I know, but I know it's Dan Wayne's book. It's incredible. Yeah it's really good. Basically we built a lot in the 40s, the 50s and then sometime around the 60s and 70s we literally stopped building. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] And we've been in this, we can't build high speed rail. It's insane. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] Why? Because we're a litigious culture that cannot get out of its way. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah. [SPEAKER_03] I saw some Peter Thiel talk about how we built all this stuff to the 70s and then for 50 years nothing happened except computers more or less.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] [SPEAKER_01] And even right now most of the revolution is in computers which is great that it's better than nothing. [SPEAKER_01] And obviously other stuff is happening too. [SPEAKER_01] But you look at what China does, standing up a city in no time and it's they're really good at robotics. What are we doing? [SPEAKER_01] On this societal topic, obviously you guys are very engaged with the city and the state and things like that. [SPEAKER_01] What are some more than others?

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_01] Some more than others.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] Maybe my one question on this is what do you think is the posture that San Francisco and California need to take?

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_01] What's the most important thing posturally that we need to be taking? I mean this is Gary's area. Gary, how do we fix California politics? And there's a plan. I think I'm getting bit. Actually he does.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Matt Mahan just announced his race for governor. I think he's the perfect example of someone who is not virtue signaling. [SPEAKER_02] He built more than 1400 homes in San Jose. The year before that he hadn't passed all the legislation he wanted. [SPEAKER_02] So zero market rate housing was built in San Jose in 2024.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] When he came into office he reduced homelessness by 20 percent. More than a thousand people came inside and got treatment and recovery because he actually supports treatment and recovery. [SPEAKER_02] I didn't want to be involved in politics but when I saw that my Asian American grandpas and grandmas couldn't walk down the street without being assaulted and killed. [SPEAKER_02] When I saw people like me when I was 16, 18, I wanted to participate in tech.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] I knew I wanted to be an engineer. I didn't know that I would get into Stanford. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't have algebra in middle school public middle school. My kids go to private school but I went to public school. [SPEAKER_02] And we should have a government that doesn't require you to be rich to become a startup founder or good at math. How did we get this bad? So I'm glad you're fighting for it. It's very important and it's not pleasant and I see you fighting on Twitter in a way that I would not have the stomach for.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, no, I mean for people watching it's look I'm not going to get all the takes right and I want to hear when I don't get it right. But on the flip side it's also have the debate. Yeah, you have the courage to say stuff that you think and you know you might be wrong about and you might get a big blowback on and even if you have it right now we're gonna get mad. San Francisco and California got this bad because the people who run businesses, they have jobs, they're trying to raise their families in California.

SPEAKER_03

It's all of it was so big and so scary that we stopped paying attention and San Francisco is on a better path because we started talking about it, at dinners we started talking about it. Hey, did you hear about so and so? They got assaulted. Did the police actually show up? What happened with the judge? We're gonna try to unseat some judges in San Francisco for whom I was looking at the records. There are 100 cases. San Francisco and California got this bad because the people who run businesses they have jobs, they are trying to raise their families in California.

SPEAKER_03

It's all of it was so big and so scary that we stopped paying attention and San Francisco is on a better path because we started talking about it at dinners we started talking about it. Hey, did you hear about so and so they got assaulted, did the police actually show up, what happened with the judge, we're going to try to unseat some judges in San Francisco for whom I was looking at the records, there are 100 cases. And 90% of the cases this judge she basically just dropped it on the floor at an extreme rate. I think it was three or four times higher rate of just dropping cases on the floor purely for ideology.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] It's unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03

How is it how is this person serving the people, they're not and then the thing is there's a reason why we elect these people, there is an election coming and you know, we have to make sure that we hold these leaders to account. Totally. No, it's great. I mean, it's super important and it's not easy work. So people got someone's got to do it. I'm glad you're doing it. I appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. Politics tangent aside. Although I could talk about this all day. I know, right? But do the politics episode.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, get you and some politicians on here. One of the things that I'm curious about that has been an obvious topic for me on other episodes has been the mega influx of capital into venture. [SPEAKER_02] Is that a positive or a negative for you? And in what ways do you experience it as both? I think it's mostly positive for us. YC at its best is not competing with other venture firms for deals. YC at its best is convincing people who didn't seriously think about starting a startup to go for it and then being their first believer.

SPEAKER_03

YC only works if there's a large pool of downstream capital that can then fund all the subsequent rounds for those companies. And so I think actually YC does best in those environments. Yeah. Yeah. We're a managed marketplace. So we need as many great investors as possible. And then actually what's funny is in that managed marketplace, if the supply goes up, we need to go out and find the best possible people. And then we're actually really good partners to the rest of the industry. VC can 2x, 5x or 10x over the next 10 years. And we will meet the demand. With companies. With really the smartest people of our generation. And if that happens.

SPEAKER_03

So you're saying you feel limited by the amount of capital still? How about this? I mean, capital from VCs or VCs like our friends. Seriously. I mean, you got to do the work, show up, don't disappear. Don't be a dick. Do no harm. Right. When I first came back to YC, one of the most interesting evolutions of how to deal with investors was that most investors are actually B or B plus. You should be so lucky to have someone who does not mess with you. That's really good. And then obviously. The bar solo.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean basically. Don't damage the company.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] Right. If there's someone who has a great network or can make the Keynesian beauty contest happen for you and your company and you're around. Obviously, they're investors and yeah, they're going to catalyze something crazy for you. You know, you should work with it. Last time we were here is like, yeah, if you can get Keith Raboi to invest in your startup and give you 20 million dollars, you should probably take that money, man. Do it. Right. Yeah. But for everyone else, it's you got to find people who sometimes you got to do B plus capital. It's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's interesting because you made the point which I agree with, which is that there's despite the total volume of dollars going up, there's in some ways a consolidation of the number of venture firms or players or things like that. I don't know if it's more companies getting funded or if it's just a lot more dollars going to a couple of breakout successes. I guess both of those help. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, we actively think about we need more A and A plus investors.

SPEAKER_02

Like humans doing the work. Exactly. We need I mean, and I think they're all going to be YC alums. I mean, I think you're great. Ilya Sukkar is incredible. Dan Levine at Excel, you know, Yuri Sadalov now runs the seed program at GC and he's incredible. I fully hope and expect the top 80 out of 100 spots of the Midas list in the next 10, 20 years will be all YC alums.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] That's funny. You're funding VCs just on the 10 year delay. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, Liz, the first round is killing it. She's incredible. Right. So I think that's scratching the surface. I think we're going to have dozens of the most legendary people and they're all going to be YC alums who deploy all the world's capital. Increasing the number of good startups in the world is the core founding principle of YC. When I first started working at YC in 2010, it was the first thing PG said to me. [SPEAKER_03] And it was actually clear why he wanted to hire anyone.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] What, this seems like a nice family business to be working on it. It seems great. And his whole point was that there's the conventional wisdom in the VC industry.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] It all comes out of Andy Ratchliffe's research. [SPEAKER_02] There's only going to be 10 companies per year that will go on to reach 100 million in revenue and be significant in IPO at some point. [SPEAKER_02] And you just have to be in one of those 10 companies every year. Otherwise, you may have just stayed at home. And PG was, well, I don't want to go out and fight for those 10 companies. I'm just going to make more of them.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah, he's like, there's really more than, we made two of them. Why is it 10? [SPEAKER_03] It's such an arbitrary number. And I think clearly over the last 15 years, that's proven to be true.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] And I just feel everything we do here is driven by we want that number to go up. [SPEAKER_03] What are the bottlenecks? Are the bottlenecks more founders? Let's go find more.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And you went to four batches. That was. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] But yeah, that was exactly a good example of it. That was a bottleneck.

SPEAKER_02

You shouldn't have to wait six months to do a YC batch. What needed to be true for you guys to go from two to four? Like what was hard about that? What did you have to change, if anything?

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] It's such an arbitrary number. And I think clearly over the last 15 years, that's proven to be true. [SPEAKER_03] And I just feel everything we do here is driven by we want that number to go up.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] What are the bottlenecks? Are the bottlenecks more founders? Let's go find more.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] Yeah. And you went to four batches. That was. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] But yeah, that was exactly a good example of it. That was a bottleneck. [SPEAKER_02] You shouldn't have to wait six months to do a YC batch.

SPEAKER_02

What needed to be true for you guys to go from two to four?

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_02] What was hard about that? What did you have to change, if anything? [SPEAKER_03] Was it just you didn't get as much time between to source new companies or maybe this is in the weeds, but one of the structural changes we made at YC since Gary came back is to decentralize YC, I would argue. [SPEAKER_03] It was pre-Gary coming back a lot more centralized. [SPEAKER_03] There was a team that ran the batch and things were more.

Decentralizing decisions, batch operations. Yeah, but just maybe if I start from the bottom, it's now each YC partner is essentially picking their own companies and then we club together to form a group that runs a batch. But we're just more nimble. [SPEAKER_00] We can just do things in a way that wasn't as easy before. Yeah. And plus we have 15 people now. [SPEAKER_03] This is the most number of partners we've ever had. [SPEAKER_03] We have 15 visiting partners right now.

SPEAKER_03

So it's actually something like 30, 31. Wow. [SPEAKER_02] Partners total right now. Do you feel that there's a limit to those numbers or do you think you could double the number of YC partners and therefore double the number of companies?

SPEAKER_02

What do you think if you're imagining a world where you're funding four times more companies than you are today? What would you need to overcome still? Well, a cool thing about the way YC is structured down, I think this is something that's often misunderstood from the outside. I know most people hear that a YC batch is 200 companies, but they imagine the batch experience is a room full of 400 founders showing up every day. It's actually four batches of 50.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] Right. [SPEAKER_02] But it's actually more like each partner is running their own autonomous mini YC and it's 30-ish companies.

SPEAKER_02

We call them pods.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] I mean, I had my whole pod over to my house for dinner last night because that, and it's approximately the same size as YC was when Gary went. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] We would basically run seven or eight simultaneous. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] 2008 batches with PG. Exactly. And we have 15 PGs now. Yeah. And so with that kind of structure, there's no inherent change that has to happen if you go from 15 to 30 of them because it's fully parallelized already. I mean, one of the ways I've perceived YC change over the last several years was there was this period when my brother was here where there were a bunch of new projects.

SPEAKER_03

And then I felt you guys kind of clearly went back to the core and then did more of it. I could feel that very clearly that it was this is our thing and we're going to refocus on that, but we're going to make it more and bigger. And I think that's been super successful.

SPEAKER_02

And you guys have clearly throughput more companies. The companies are awesome. I'm saying that as a biased person, you invest in a lot of them, but it feels that way to me. [SPEAKER_03] Are there initiatives outside of that core that you are interested in with the new market moment or are you going to just do more and more of this distilled core or does it depend on the day? [SPEAKER_03] Well, first of all, I think that's a good overall description of how YC has changed, especially since Gary came back, which is refocusing on the core. That's been the high level of the last three years.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] But yeah, we do have some big projects in the works.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] I'm not sure which ones we can talk about. [SPEAKER_03] I know there's so many and just talk about it more. [SPEAKER_03] Yeah, I don't know. [SPEAKER_03] It's not we have new initiatives that don't feel cool.

SPEAKER_03

I still think it all falls under the umbrella of the core thing is how to create more good startups. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] And keep pushing down on that. [SPEAKER_02] And as Jared mentioned, Fellow is just an example of something we just launched last year, which is what's another bottleneck? [SPEAKER_02] There's more founders. [SPEAKER_02] We want to meet the founders earlier, college students before they're ready to do startups. [SPEAKER_02] And so we started offering grants and community to exceptional college students that we feel maybe they're not ready to start right now, but they might be in a year or two.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] That's a good example of widening the base even further, because it's almost you could narrow the top and you could say, you know what, we're going to actually put a bunch of money into growth. [SPEAKER_02] Obviously you did that. [SPEAKER_02] But the other way to go is you could widen the base and you could say, actually, we're going to try to have some engagement with 10,000 founders or something.

SPEAKER_02

That's basically what we think a lot about.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_02] Yes. Yeah. Because amount of follow-on capital is not really the bottleneck right now. [SPEAKER_02] Really, the bottleneck for us now is getting more great founders to want to do startups and to do YC, which is what the bottleneck should be. [SPEAKER_02] If the bottleneck is anything else, something is weird about the world. [SPEAKER_02] That's how the bottleneck always should be. [SPEAKER_02] For a long time, YC was just struggling so much to scale the operational side. [SPEAKER_00] We're here a post-product-market-fit company that couldn't keep up with demand.

SPEAKER_03

[SPEAKER_00] So instead of focusing on growth, how do we get more users? [SPEAKER_00] We were YouTube when it was scaling by 2x every month. [SPEAKER_00] And everyone was just trying to figure out how to keep the site up.

SPEAKER_00

I was certainly the first few years of me at YC was just trying to figure out how to not fall over. [SPEAKER_03] But now that we've really got the operations down, we can go back to focusing on what we should be focusing on, which is how do we broaden the base? [SPEAKER_03] How do we get more great people into our ecosystem early? [SPEAKER_03] How do we inspire more people to start companies?

SPEAKER_00

And so instead of focusing on growth, how do we get more users? We were like YouTube when it was scaling by 2x every month.

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_00] And just everyone was trying to figure out how to keep the site up. [SPEAKER_00] I was certainly the first few years of me at YC just trying to figure out how to not fall over. [SPEAKER_03] But now that we've really got the operations down, we can go back to focusing on what we should be focusing on, which is how do we broaden the base?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] How do we get more great people into our ecosystem early?

SPEAKER_02

[SPEAKER_03] How do we inspire more people to start companies? [SPEAKER_03] One of the most fun things is I pinch myself to get to, I had left YC and then now I get to go hang out with PG and Jessica again and hang out with Brian Chesky who's on the board. [SPEAKER_03] And then one of the directives from the board that's awesome is you need to make sure that we're having fun. [SPEAKER_03] And that was true back in 2011, 2012. The laughter test. Yeah, that's the directive we got this year that's not a directive at all. [SPEAKER_03] It's awesome, actually.

SPEAKER_03

If we're not having fun, then we're doing something wrong. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I remember just being around YC and the partners and PG and PB and Jeff and all the partners. It was just very hilarious all the time. It was unbelievable how weird startups can be. [SPEAKER_02] And can you believe this thing happened? And then I feel like our partner lunches are that again, which is really fun. That's so important. Having the partnership where everybody trusts and enjoys each other and respects what people think. That's just got to make the whole experience so much better.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_03] It's why all the partners are former YC founders. [SPEAKER_03] So it feels just a little bit more than a job for everyone. [SPEAKER_03] Everyone's got a pay it forward. YC changed their life in some way. [SPEAKER_02] Just adds to the good vibes. [SPEAKER_02] It is obviously an iconic and very important institution and you guys are doing a great job running it. So I'm sure it feels like a heavy responsibility, but I'm glad that you are. [SPEAKER_03] I'm glad you're having fun with it. You guys, this was really fun. Thanks for doing it. Really appreciate you making time. [SPEAKER_02] Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_03] Thanks, Jack. So when are you going to be a YC partner? [SPEAKER_02] Keep checking my inbox.

SPEAKER_01

Like what's the most important thing posturally that we need to be taking.

SPEAKER_03

I mean this is Gary's area. Gary how do we fix California politics. And there's a plan. I think I'm getting bit like actually he does. Yeah. I mean Matt Mahan just you know announced his race for the governor. I think that he is the perfect example of someone who is not virtue signaling.

SPEAKER_02

He's you know he built more than 1400 homes in San Jose the year before that he hadn't passed all the legislation he wanted. So zero market rate housing was built in San Jose in 2024. When he came into office he reduced homelessness by 20 percent like more than a thousand people came inside and got treatment and recovery because he actually supports treatment and recovery. I didn't want to be involved in politics but when I saw that my you know Asian American grandpas and grandmas like couldn't walk down the street with being without being assaulted and killed. When I saw like people like me when I was you know 16 18 like you know I wanted to participate in tech.

SPEAKER_02

Like I knew I wanted to be an engineer I didn't know that I would get into Stanford like you know I wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't have algebra in like middle school public middle school like my kids like you know my kids go to private school but I went to public school you know. And we should have a government that like doesn't require you to be rich to become a startup founder or good at math even like I mean is this like how do we get this bad.

SPEAKER_03

So I'm glad you're fighting for it. It's very important and it's not pleasant and I see you fighting on Twitter in a way that I would not have the stomach for. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, no, I mean I think for people watching it's like look I'm not going to get all the takes right and like I want to hear when I don't get it right. But on the flip side it's also like have the debate. Yeah, you have the courage to like it takes a lot of courage to say stuff that you think and you know you might be wrong about and you might get you know a big blowback on and like or even if you have it right now we're gonna get mad.

SPEAKER_03

San Francisco and California got this bad because the people who you know I mean they run businesses they have jobs like they you know are trying to raise their families in California. It's like all of it was so big and so scary that we stopped paying attention and like San Francisco is on a better path because we started talking about it like at dinners we started talking about it. Hey, did you hear about so and so they got assaulted like did the police actually show up like what happened with the judge, you know, like we're gonna try to unseat some judges in San Francisco for whom like, you know, I was looking at the records like there are 100 cases.

SPEAKER_03

And like 90% of the cases this judge she basically just like dropped it on the floor at an extreme rate like I think it was like three or four times higher rate of just dropping cases on the floor purely for ideology. It's like unbelievable. Like how is it how is this person serving the people like they're not and then the thing is there's a reason why we elect these people like there is an election coming and you know, we have to make sure that we hold these leaders to account. Totally. No, it's great. I mean, it's super important and it's like not easy work.

SPEAKER_03

So people got some someone's got to do it. I'm glad you're doing it. I appreciate it. Yeah. Okay. Politics tangent aside. Although I could talk about the whole day. I know, right? But do the politics episode. Yeah, get you and some politicians on here. One of the things that I'm curious about that has been an obvious topic for me on other episodes has been like mega influx of capital into venture.

SPEAKER_02

Is that a positive or a negative for you? And in what ways do you experience it as both?

SPEAKER_03

I think it's mostly positive for us. YC at its best is not competing with other venture firms for deals. YC at its best is convincing people who didn't seriously think about starting a startup to go for it and then being their first believer. YC only works if there's a large pool of downstream capital that can then fund all the subsequent rounds for those companies. And so I think actually YC does best in those environments.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah. We're a managed marketplace. So we need like as many great investors as possible. And then actually what's funny is like in that managed marketplace, if you know, the sort of supply goes up, like we need to go out and find the best possible people. And then we're actually really good partners to the rest of the industry. Like VC can, you know, 2x, 5x or 10x over the next 10 years. And we will meet the demand. With companies. With really the smartest people of our generation. And if that happens. So you're saying you feel limited by the amount of capital still?

SPEAKER_03

How about this? I mean, capital from VCs like you or VCs like our friends. Seriously. Like, I mean, you got to do the work, show up, like, don't disappear. Don't be a dick. Like, you know, do no harm. Right. When I first came back to YC, like one of the most interesting evolutions of like how to deal with investors was that like most investors are actually what Bs? Like B or B plus. Like you should be so lucky to have someone who like does not mess with you. That's really good. And then obviously. The bar solo.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, basically. Don't damage the company. Right.

SPEAKER_03

If there's someone who, you know, has a great network or, you know, can make the Keynesian beauty contest happen for you and your company and you're around. Obviously, they're a investors and yeah, they're going to catalyze something crazy for you. You know, you should work with it. Last time we were here is like, yeah, if you can get like Keith Raboi to invest in your startup and give you like 20 million dollars, you should probably take that money, man. Like, you know, do it. Right. Yeah. But for everyone else, it's like you got to, you know, find people who sometimes you got to do B plus capital. It's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it's sort of interesting because, you know, you made the point which I agree with, which is that there's despite the total volume of dollars going up, there's like in some ways a consolidation of the number of venture firms or players or things like that. I don't know if it's like more companies getting funded or if it's just a lot more dollars going to just like a couple of breakout successes. I guess both of those help.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, we actively think about we need more A and A plus, you know, investors. Like humans doing the work. Exactly. We need I mean, and I think they're all going to be YC alums like you. I mean, I think you're great. Ilya Sukkar is incredible. Dan Levine at Excel, like, you know, Yuri Sadalov now runs the seed program at GC and he's incredible. Like, you know, I fully hope and expect like the top like 80 out of 100 spots of the Midas list in the next 10, 20 years will be all YC alums. That's funny. You're like funding VCs like just on the 10 year delay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I mean, Liz, Liz, the first round is killing it. She's incredible. Right. So I think that's like, you know, scratching the surface.

SPEAKER_01

Like, I think we're going to have like dozens of the most legendary people and they're all going to be YC alums who like deploy all the world's capital. Increasing the number of good startups in the world is like, I would argue, just like the core founding principle of YC. Like when I came when I first started working at YC in 2010, it was like the first thing PG said to me.

SPEAKER_03

And it was actually clear why he wanted to hire anyone. Like what like this seems like it's a nice like family business to be working on it. It seems great. And his whole point was that there's like the conventional wisdom in the VC industry.

SPEAKER_02

It all comes out of Andy Ratchliffe's research. Like there's like only going to be 10 companies per year that will go on to reach like $100 million in revenue and be significant in IPO at some point. And you just have to be in one of those 10 companies every year. Otherwise, you may have just stayed at home.

SPEAKER_03

And PG was like, well, I don't want to like, I'm not like a VC. I don't want to like go out and like fight for those 10 companies. I just like, we're going to make more of them. Yeah, he's like, there's really more than as we made like two of them. Like, why is it 10? It's like such an arbitrary number. And I think like clearly over the last 15 years, that's proven to be true. And I just feel like everything we do here is driven by we want that number to go up. What are the bottlenecks? Are the bottlenecks like more founders? Let's go find more. Yeah. And you went to four batches. That was. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But yeah, that was exactly a good example of it. It's like that was a bottleneck. Like you shouldn't have to wait six months to do a YC batch. What needed to be true for you guys to go from two to four? Like what was hard about that? What did you have to like change, if anything?

SPEAKER_03

Was it just you didn't get as much time between to like source new companies or maybe this is in the weeds, but like one of the structural changes we made at YC since Gary came back is to sort of decentralize YC, I would argue. Like it was pre Gary coming back a lot more centralized. There was sort of like a team that sort of ran the batch and sort of things were more. Decentralizing decisions, batch operations. Yeah, but yeah, just basically maybe if I start from the bottom, it's like now each YC partner is essentially picking their own companies and then we club together to form a group that runs a batch. But we're just like more nimble.

SPEAKER_00

Like we can just sort of do things in a way that wasn't as easy before.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And plus we have 15 people now. This is like the most number of partners we've ever had. We have 15 visiting partners right now. So it's actually like something like 30, 31. Wow.

SPEAKER_02

Is there. Partners total right now. Do you feel that there's a limit to those numbers or do you think you could, could you double the number of YC partners and therefore double the number of companies? Like what, what do you think if you're imagining a world where you're funding four times more companies than you are today? What would you need to overcome still? Well, a cool thing about the way YC is structured down, I think, I think this is something that's like often misunderstood from, from the outside.

SPEAKER_02

I think when, I know most people hear that a YC batch is 200 companies, but they imagine the batch experiences is like a room full of like 400 founders showing up every day. It's actually four batches of 50. Hexure hauled. Right. But it's, it's actually more like each partner is running their own like autonomous mini YC and it's, you know, 30 ish companies. Um, we call them pods.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I had my whole pod over to my house for dinner last night because like that, and it's, you know, approximately the same size as YC was when Gary went. Yeah. We would basically run like seven or eight simultaneous. Yeah. Uh, 2008 batches with PG.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. And we have 15 PGs now. Yeah. And so like with that kind of structure, there's no inherent change that has to happen if you go from 15 to 30 of them because it's like fully paralyzed already. I mean, one of the ways I've perceived YC change, you know, over the last several years or something was there were, there was this period, I guess when like my brother was here where there were like a bunch of new projects. And then I felt you guys kind of, you, you clearly went back to the core and then did more of it. Like I could feel that very clearly that it was like, this is our thing and we're going to refocus on that, but we're going to make it more and bigger.

SPEAKER_03

And I think that's been super successful.

SPEAKER_02

And you guys have like clearly throughput more companies. The companies are awesome. You know, I'm saying that as a biased person, you invest in a lot of them, but it feels that way to me.

SPEAKER_03

Are there initiatives outside of that core that you are interested in with the new market moment or are you like, we're going to just do more and more of this distilled core or it does depend on the day? Well, first of all, I think that's a good overall description of like how YC has changed, especially since Gary came back is like refocusing on the core.

SPEAKER_02

That's been sort of like the high level of the last three years.

SPEAKER_03

But yeah, we do have some big projects in the works. I'm not sure which ones we can talk about. I know there's so many and just talk about it more. Yeah, I don't know. It's not like we have like new initiatives that don't feel cool. I still think it all falls under the umbrella of like the core thing is how to create more good startups.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And like keep pushing down on that. And as Jared mentioned, like fellow is just an example of something we just launched last year, which is like, what's another bottleneck? Like there's more founders. We want to meet the founders earlier, like college students before they're ready to do startups. And so we started offering just like grants and like community to like exceptional college students that we feel like maybe they're not ready to start right now, but they might be in a year or two.

SPEAKER_02

That's a good example of like widening the base even further, because like, you know, it's almost like you could like narrow the top and you could say, you know what, we're going to actually put a bunch of money into growth. You know, obviously you did that. But, you know, the other way to go is you could widen the base and you could say, actually, we're going to try to have some engagement with 10,000 founders or something like that. That's basically what we think a lot about. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Because amount of follow on capital is not really the bottleneck right now.

SPEAKER_02

Really, the bottleneck for us now is getting more great founders to want to do startups and to do YC, which is what the bottleneck should be. Like if the bottleneck is anything else, something is weird about about about the world. That's that's how the bottleneck always should be. For a long time, YC was just struggling so much to just scale the operational side.

SPEAKER_00

We're here like a post product market fit company that like couldn't keep up with demand. And so instead of like focusing on growth, how do we get more users? We were like YouTube when it was like scaling by like 2x every month. And just everyone was just like trying to figure out like how to keep the site up. I was certainly the first few years of me at YC was just like trying to figure out like how to not fall over.

SPEAKER_03

But now that we've like really got the operations down, we can go back to focusing on what we should be focusing on, which is like, how do we broaden the base? How do we get more great people into our ecosystem early? How do we inspire more people to start companies? I mean, one of the most fun things from I mean, I pinch myself to like I get to, you know, I had left YC and then now I get to, you know, go hang out with PG. And Jessica again and hang out with Brian Chesky who's on the board. And then one of the directives from the board that's awesome is you need to make sure that we're having fun. Like and that was true like back in 2011, 2012. Laugh, the laughter test.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, basically like that, you know, that's sort of the directive we got this year that's like not a directive at all.

SPEAKER_03

It's like, you know, awesome, actually. It's like if we're not having fun, then we're doing something wrong, actually.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Like and, you know, I remember like just YC being around YC and the partners and PG and PB and Jeff and all the, you know, it's like it was just very, very hilarious all the time. It was like unbelievable how weird, you know, startups can be.

SPEAKER_02

And like, can you believe this thing happened?

SPEAKER_03

And then I feel like our partner lunches are that again, which is really fun. It's like that's so important. Like having like the partnership like that where everybody like trusts and enjoys each other and respects what people think like that's just got to make the whole experience so much better. It's why everyone's a former, all the partners are former YC founders. So it's like it feels just like a little bit more than a job for everyone. Like everyone's got sort of a pay it forward. YC changed their life in some way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like just adds to the good vibes. Yeah. It is obviously an iconic and very important institution and you guys are doing a great job running it. And so I'm sure it is both like it feels like a heavy responsibility, but I'm glad that you are.

SPEAKER_03

I'm glad you're having fun with it. You guys, this was really fun. Thanks for doing it. Really appreciate you making time. Thanks for having us. Thanks, Jack.

SPEAKER_03

So when are you going to be a YC partner? Keep checking my inbox.