- Y Combinator's head of marketing programs welcomes YC's partners to the stage
- Questions are encouraged and can be submitted through slido.com with event code FFC
- YC may consider opening a NYC office in the future, but there are no immediate plans
- Spending time in the Bay Area is still beneficial for founders due to the network and resources available
- Building a network of excellent people can be done by working on interesting projects and seeking advice from others in the industry
- Finding a co-founder often happens organically within one's own network
- YC is interested in funding a variety of startups, including female-founded ones, and has a Request for Startups page for specific areas of interest
- YC can be helpful to startups at various stages, from just an idea to series A
- Applicants are encouraged to reapply if they have previously been rejected
- YC puts effort into growing diversity within its founder population, including supporting female founders through events, office hours, and connections with female investors.

- The speaker connects women in their program with female investors for advice before they raise money
- They hope to see an increase in the number of women in their program
- The best time to raise money is when you don't need it, but don't wait until you only have a few months of runway
- The stage of fundraising depends on who you are raising from and what you can show in terms of growth and traction
- It's easy to raise too much money early on, leading to more dilution for founders
- Traction for B2C companies can include user growth and revenue growth, but it varies by business
- Launching before raising money is important to determine if there is demand for the product
- Having children and balancing work goals and ambitions can be challenging but it is possible to find a balance

- The decision to have a child is personal and can be challenging
- The speaker wanted to have a child and it impacted their startup journey
- Women need to consider their biological clock when deciding to have a child
- Science can help extend fertility options
- Being an older mother is considered "geriatric pregnancy"
- Having a startup is similar to having a child
- It is important to accept help and surround oneself with support
- Communication is key when temporarily leaving for maternity leave
- Options should continue to vest during maternity leave and not be suspended
- Doing things that don't scale can be addressed with a product plan and automation
- Each stage of growth requires a different approach and future plans should be explained to investors.

- Y Combinator's head of marketing programs discusses various topics including the possibility of opening a NYC office, the benefits of being in the Bay Area, and finding co-founders within one's network.
- YC is interested in funding a variety of startups, including female-founded ones, and supports diversity within its founder population.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of timing in fundraising and the potential pitfalls of raising too much money early on.
- Launching before raising money, balancing work and family, and communication during maternity leave are also discussed.
- The speaker advises on addressing scalability issues and tailoring growth strategies for different stages.

Recorded live at our Female Founders Conference in New York, an AMA with Kat Manalac, Kirsty Nathoo, Adora Cheung, Holly Liu, Jessica Livingston, and Carolynn Levy.

This panel was hosted by Sharon Pope, Head of Marketing Programs at YC.

We’re also posting the other talks from the Female Founders Conference today. You can see all of them and read the transcripts at https://blog.ycombinator.com

If you’d like to learn more about the Female Founders Conference, head over to https://femalefoundersconference.org

I'm the head of marketing programs at Y Combinator.

It is my pleasure to welcome back to the stage YC's partners.

Kat Mignolich, Kirstie, Matthew, Adora, Holly, Jessica, and Carolyn.

So just as a quick reminder as I unlock my phone, please submit your questions at slido.com and the event code is FFC.

So if you want to kind of try to prioritize what questions get asked, These are your questions, this is your time to ask.

Will YC ever open a New York City office?

I think that we never say never at Y Combinator.

And as somebody mentioned earlier, I can't remember, maybe it was Kat, we experiment a lot.

So it could be that in our future, we have an experimental NYC outpost, or maybe in a different city, but I think that we like to try things and see what works and if it doesn't work, we don't do it again, but it's always worth a try.

Please don't start any rumors or get your hopes up.

This is just, the point is we never say never.

That's true, there are no immediate plans to do that.

1 thing I'll add to that is that I meet a lot of founders all over the world, and at this point in time, I still think it's helpful for any founder from anywhere to spend, you know, 3 months in the Bay Area and get to build that network.

There's such, so many investors there, so many other founders, and then you can stay there for that amount of time, and then theoretically, if this is where, if New York is where your customers are, you move back to New York.

But at this point, it is still so much easier to raise and build that network there.

So even spending a short amount of time I think still helps.

All right, and speaking of building your network, 1 popular question is, I think a few people have talked about finding people who are 10x people, right?

So those people who you hire and the people you surround yourselves with that are just over the top, really great mentors and peers.

So how do you go about building that network?

And how did you find the ones in your lives?

the kind of excellent people that will help push you forward?

I mean, I think I can think back to what we did 13 years ago, because by the way, We didn't know anyone in Silicon Valley.

And we had to meet people and grow our network.

And I think if you're working on something interesting, then people who are really good will themselves be interested in it.

And if you sort of genuinely want to talk to people and get advice, I mean, most people in Silicon Valley are pretty open to it.

But I think just working on something interesting and being insightful about what you're working on makes for fascinating sort of conversation and people like that.

Maybe you could answer also when it comes to building a company as a founder?

Well, I'll throw out a fun story about a different YC founder, Eric Mikokovsky.

He was the founder of Pebble and he came from Canada and most people don't obviously have a network in Silicon Valley, that's why they joined YC and that's why you should join YC.

But he came down and he was working on basically trying to fit like an entire computer processor in this little tiny little form factor.

And the early, early Apple computer designers were writing this blog, and it was a really nerdy blog, and he followed it, and he sent out a note to the founder, and he's like, yeah, I'll meet with you for coffee.

And I think, as Jessica said, that there's a lot of kind of paying it forward culture, particularly in Silicon Valley, which is another reason why people do like to have you come out there.

And it's weird, investors don't like jumping on a plane.

There's a lot of things they don't really, and they like to meet you face to face still in many ways.

So, but piggybacking off of Jessica in terms of that, definitely start finding people that you look up to that are in the same field.

And I think you can reach out to them in terms of like, hey, you know, I want to ask, if you can ask specific questions, that's actually very helpful.

Because on the other side, in general, I think people are looking to help, but if they're just like, hey, do you want to meet and just have coffee with me?

It's really hard because you don't know on that other side how busy they are.

It would just be much, they'll be more appreciative of it if they're like, hey, these are the questions I'm looking to answer and what your background can give to me.

And then obviously sometimes you'd be surprised, but there are also things that you can give as well.

Like you are the expert in, well Maria was expert in sense.

Like there would be nothing I would be able to tell her around that.

And she could give me some interesting insights into that that might be helpful for what I'm doing in

The 1 thing I'll add is you can always just go work at a startup from someone that you admire and work directly with the founder.

And I think that's a good way to get some meaty time with somebody.

Also a lot of people wondering about tips on how they can find a co-founder.

Adora, while you're talking, do you want to talk a little bit about that?

My co-founder was my brother, so that was easy.

Well, I was going to say, 1 of the things to be careful about is, I get a little nervous when people say how do I find a co-founder?

Because 1 of the things that we stress is that you don't actually go out and find 1.

You probably look within your own network and the founder relationship that you form is probably more of an organic 1.

So college friends and old friends from your prior life, like people that you know pretty well, people that you're close to, tend to make the best founder teams.

Yeah, usually it's someone you spent a lot of time with in college or at work.

I think those are the 2 most common ones.

A question of just generally, are there startups that YC wants to fund more than others?

Are there areas that YC is extra interested in?

There's also the request for startups page, where we list like, hey, we'd love to see startups solve diversity, create a million jobs, voice.

If you don't have 1 in that area, it doesn't mean that we won't accept you.

And even if you, it's just these are things that are interesting and we put a call out for them.

And yeah, I think some of The most interesting ideas we fund are things we wouldn't have thought of ourselves.

I know when Airbnb came through, Jess and Paul thought the idea was crazy.

So we, I think, as Holly was saying, just because your idea is not on that list doesn't mean we're not interested in it.

I think also just no idea is too crazy for us.

We never think an idea is like, oh, that's crazy.

And Christy, could you answer, Is there a level of startup that YC is mostly looking at in terms of stage?

can be helpful to any startup up to series A.

We have companies who come to us with just an idea.

We have companies who come to us who are already generating revenue.

We have companies who are already profitable.

We have companies who've raised maybe a million or 2 in seed funding.

And because we work with each company in a very specific manner to them, we help them with what they need, we can be helpful in all those stages.

And so I think the important thing is let us make the decision about who we want to fund.

If you say, oh, I'm too early for Y Combinator, I'm not going to apply, you're not even giving us the chance to see your company.

And it means that we can see and we can apply our expertise to see what could be amazing about your company.

And if you have applied before, please do apply again.

We have like over 50% of the batch has applied before.

Kat, would you answer just generally what YC is thinking about and what efforts YC puts forward to grow diversity within our founder population?

Yeah, this is something I'm super interested in and you know, we've all had the pleasure of working on at YC For female founders, for example in this batch of YC's a summer 2018 27% of the companies in the batch have a female founder 1 of the 1 of the challenges is only 23% of the companies who applied had a female founder.

So we try to do as much as we can to support female founders even outside of the YC network.

So we do female founders conference hoping to connect with women who are starting companies already or inspire women who haven't started companies to start them.

We also do office hours with black and Latino founders to encourage them to apply.

During the batch, we connect the women in our batches to female investors prior to going out and raising money just so they can get advice from women who've seen a lot of founders come to them, seen a lot of female founders, can give them advice.

And yeah, so I think hopefully over the course of the next few years we'll see that number increase of women in YC and I think on Jessica's slide I think it's a totally funded, how many, it's like 358 women so far.

Fundraising question, so maybe Kirstie grabbed the mic, but anyone else to chime in.

Like how do you know when to raise, whether it's seed funding and then also maybe thinking about that series A?

Like that's the best time to, but don't wait until you only have like 3 months runway.

We have, believe it or not, a lot of startups that come to us and like, we're running out of money, we have you know 4 months in the bank and we're like, what you're going out to raise money with only 4 months of runway?

So sorry, I've been thinking about that lately, so I wanted to put that in.

So I think it depends who you're raising from as well.

Usually the the first money that a company will raise will be from individuals who are investors.

And at that stage when you're talking to those people then it's usually because they're either super interested in the space that you're in or you already know the people and they know how amazing you are as a founder and so at that stage it's easier, fundraising is never easy, but it's easier to raise on an idea that doesn't necessarily have traction and growth.

As you then progress and you're talking to institutional investors, so VCs, some of the largest seed funds.

That's the point where you need to be able to show that people want what you're making.

And by the way that you do that is that you show that there is growth in users, that there's growth in revenue, that your churn is at a manageable level, and that's how you start to then paint the story of this is how this company becomes a billion-dollar company, And so depending on the stage that you're at, will depend on who you talk to, how you talk about your company, and the types of money that you raise.

It's also very easy to fall into the trap of raising too much money if you're 1 of the lucky people that have a relatively easy time fundraising.

So also think about how much money do you actually need to get to that next milestone because when you get to that next milestone and you're raising the next amount of money it's going to be it's a higher valuation in theory and so you know the dilution that you're taking as a founder will be less because the the investors putting money in as a higher valuation, whereas if you raise a bunch of money really early on, that's likely to be at a much lower valuation, so more dilution to you as a founder.

So Adora and Holly maybe for this 1, so speaking of traction, what are some examples of what counts as traction for a B2C company?

And the acknowledgement that it varies by business, just kind of some principles that you might gauge this by.

I guess we both thought consumer companies.

So mine is a gaming company and it might be a little unique in terms of traction because it's usually very much like hits driven.

So it's either a hit or it's not and needs to get into the top 10.

But in terms of early on when we were just starting out, in terms of traction, It's really weird because it's a little bit of an art and a science.

I can't really say like this is the exact number, but for sure, just like Maria had with Scentbird, you're like 105 orders, we are onto something.

So the first little seed of traction is almost to prove to yourself that you are onto something.

And then the next seed is about proving it to others.

Once you're in YC, we usually kind of push you to say, if you're growing 10% week over week, that's really good.

Because that means that you have the traction and then exponential growth, it's very hard to do in your head but pretty much by the end of the batch you'll have grown 10x if you do 10% week over week.

So that's usually something that is like, okay we'll keep on pushing that and if you can get to that thing and you're like, oh yeah, and for other investors, they'll be like, well, if you want to go more, that's really good.

But 10% is pretty good in terms of within the batch.

So if you're almost getting into that inflection point, it might be a good time to really figure out how to focus and get to those, that growth and that product market fit, which we can help at YC.

Yeah, for consumer companies, I think there's 2, there's various types of metrics in terms of growth that you can focus on.

1 is just user growth, another 1 is revenue growth, just depending on what you're doing.

So if you're building a social app, you'd probably focus on users versus if you're building an e-commerce app, you would obviously focus on revenue more.

The thing to watch for while you're growing, if you're growing really fast, is to pair it with by observing something like retention and engagement to making sure that you're growing the right types of users or the right types of revenue.

Because if you're bringing on what I call bad customers or bad users, if they turn right away or they're just not good for the product and you have to just fire them.

It's like a waste of time almost and that growth is kind of just fake growth at the end of the day.

So as an engineer slash designer building a product between prototype and beta, what are the pros and cons of launching before trying to raise money?

You should always launch before you raise money.

think you can launch as soon as possible.

In our industry, we always say, you never know if you're polishing a turd because you get me sitting there and you can be like oh my god This is the most beautiful thing And then you launch it and you realize nobody can find the signup button Nobody even wants to click on your signup button Nobody even wants to open up your email and then you realize you have much bigger problems than what you thought you were solving.

So I'm a huge fan of trying to launch as early as possible.

And even, let's say it's gonna take a while to build, there's certain things you can do even before that.

You can start building a wait list of things.

You can start doing, there's always things you can be doing but the most important thing is to launch as early and as often.

Yeah, there's 2 ways to think about this.

1 is If you don't launch, then you don't know if you have a product anyone wants and why raise money for that?

If you launch, then you'll have some confidence around that.

And also, there's a big difference in terms of how much you can raise in evaluation you can get if you have users and revenue versus if you have absolutely nothing.

And so I think launch now, even if you're an engineer, like if Shopify is going to be the fastest way to do it, then just do it.

I know some engineers are just like They're just embarrassed that they have to use Shopify to get it out there the fastest, but that's the thing to do.

Question, a mother-related question, which falls under the category of things that would never be at a male-oriented conference, if there are those, But how do you, for the folks who have kids, how do you factor in decisions to have children with some of your work goals and your ambitions and your own careers?

And it was a popular question, so I figured we'd ask it even though, you know, it can be a tough 1.

I just worked on YC, then Paul and I got married and had our son right away, and we just plowed right through it.

I never sort of planned, I wasn't very planful at all, which in hindsight is, I wish, sometimes I wish things were different because like as YC was growing and I was working so hard to make it succeed and it was so time consuming, that's when I was having babies.

And like, I barely took any maternity leave, I just worked through the whole thing and maybe I should have been a little bit more planful, but it's hard, you know?

Don't put it off for too long, would be my other advice.

So I came from a law firm before I was at Y Combinator, and I have nothing but sad stories of colleagues who didn't have children because they wanted to make partner, and I just don't have any happy stories from that era.

I'm kind of like Jessica, I just thought life goes on and I'm having children.

So I had children while I was at a big law firm.

I do want to mention, we have a lot of great anecdotes about parents at YC, And 1 of my favorites is that we had a female founder apply, and she was at Y Combinator for her interview, and she ran out to go breastfeed her newborn in the car.

And we accepted her, of course, and she's great.

So anyway, yeah, we have lots of stories like that and I guess just I mean this kind of sounds cliche but I kind of think like you got to live your life and there's tons of examples out there of Women who are having children and having a startup and a startup is like a baby.

Yeah, so when I got married like 5 months later, I told my husband, I'm like, basically, I'm leaving to start this startup.

And I think it's always, It's a very personal and tough decision as to whether or not you want to have a kid.

Some people know right away and some people don't.

And I knew this was something that I had wanted and now I can't take it back.

Sadly, I will be honest, I do think women have to also think about a biological clock.

For me personally, it took longer than we had expected.

And we had like there were just a lot more extra things we had to do at the same time trying to do this startup.

Luckily, my startup was probably pre-series, like probably series A, series B, but it definitely by the time my kid came around we were we're doing quite well series C, but the whole impact of even thinking about having a kid, honestly it impacts you almost when you turn 7, 8, this is just so young, this kind of thinking about this thing.

I don't think guys think about this as much as women.

And there is the reality of a biological clock.

But there is also a lot of great things in science.

We have some wonderful, like, we have carrot fertility that can help you, you know, extend some of that.

And I think like, maybe me and Jessica would, and maybe even Carol, we might have been, I was definitely considered a, what is it called, geriatric pregnancy?

you're over 35, you're advanced maternal age.

My second 1, they were like, they gave me like this pen or something.

But it is very much as for all the parents out there, it is, a startup is like having a kid.

It's so cool that you did it with your husband.

I feel like I had a kid without my husband so it feels like I was having an affair all the time.

So that but if you can surround yourself don't refuse help.

I mean it can be done And there's many YC founders who have done it at various stages, all the way from interview, all the way to when it's a lot larger.

There's definitely some more tactical things.

If you do end up hitting at that point, think about a plan when you leave for temporarily, definitely have the communication.

I'm a huge fan of keeping the communication lines open.

And I'm only gonna say this because this came up within the YC community, your options should vest on maternity leave.

I was just shocked but it was there was a whole discussion around that.

Somebody's option vesting suspended during pregnancy?

They didn't suspend it but the other founders had suggested that.

They're like since you're going on maternity leave we'd like to like would you consider suspending your options?

We've talked about doing things that don't scale.

If you're doing things that don't scale early on, how do you convince an investor or someone else that it eventually will scale?

Well, you just need to have a product plan in place.

And so anything that's, any investor should know at this point, especially if they're a tech investor, should know that something repetitive, software can most likely replace.

And so I think it's usually good to have a little bit of software to have automated some piece of what it is that is not scaling.

And also at every stage of growth, there's a new way of, a different way of doing things.

And so as long as you're able to explain, well, in this stage, I'm doing X, in this next stage, I'll be doing Y, and then in the future, this is my plan for the future, but at least I have the next few steps in place.

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YC Partner AMA at the Female Founders Conference