How Y Combinator Helped 172 Startups Take Off – With Paul Graham
Want to see how much impact Paul Graham can have a startup? Here are 3 examples from past Mixergy interviews. The first is Alexis Ohanian, who told me that his life changed when he headed to snowy Boston over Spring break so he could hear Graham talk about startups. Graham ended up investing in Alexis’s company through what became the seed funding firm Y Combinator, but the amazing part wasn’t the money. It was that Y Combinator helped him move past a bad business idea that he and his partner spent a year on, and discover a better one, which became Reddit, the social news site that was sold to Conde Nast within 2 years of launching.
Then there’s Kevin Hale who told me that when he interviewed with Y Combinator, he and his co-founders had an idea for an elaborate content management system. During the interview, despite initial resistance, they were convinced to create a form builder instead. The business became Wufoo, the startup that reached profitability within 9 months.
Finally, a few weeks ago, I talked to the founders of AirBnb. When they joined Y Combinator, they had a site that gave travelers an affordable alternative to hotels by matching them with locals who had space in their homes. They had a national presence, but they were constantly struggling for cash. Y Combinator gave them some funding to keep going, but they told me it was Graham’s suggestion that they focus on just one city till they got their product right, which changed everything. Within a few months, they had a better product and they were finally profitable.
How does Graham do it? That’s what I wanted to find out in this interview.
Paul Graham is a partner at Y Combinator, which gives startups seed funding and mentorship. He’s known for his work on a new Lisp dialect called “Arc,” his essays, and for founding and administering Hacker News. Previously, he co-founded Viaweb, which was sold in 1998 and became Yahoo! Store.
Andrew: This interview is sponsored by Wufoo, which makes embeddable forms in surveys that you can add to your website right now. Check out Wufoo.com. It’s also sponsored by Shopify.com, where you can create an online store right now, within five minutes, and have all the features that you need to keep selling online. Check out Shopify.com. And it’s sponsored by Grasshopper, the virtual phone system that entrepreneurs love because it has all the features that they need, and can be managed directly online. Here’s the interview.
Hey, everyone, it’s Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart. You guys know what we do here. I interview entrepreneurs about how they build their business to find out what the rest of us can learn from their experiences. And, Paul, I’m going to ask you about that smile in a minute because I’d love your feedback on some of the ways that I do my interviews here.
Today, I’ve...
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