- Y Combinator (YC) is open to startups at any stage of development and can provide help and support to any applicant.
- YC has a new program called the fellowship for even earlier stage startups.
- Filling out the application form for YC is a useful exercise for any founder, even if they don't submit it.
- YC looks for determined teams that can work together and get things done.
- YC is not deterred by startups in the "trough of sorrow" and is willing to help them succeed.
- YC invests in startups with big ideas and domain experts.
- Startups that have persevered and stuck with their idea for a long time show determination and dedication.
- Startups that have thought deeply about their problem and can clearly communicate it have an advantage.
- The best growth strategy for an early-stage startup depends on the specific company and its goals.
- YC does fund solo founders and the best way to meet potential co-founders is through networking and building relationships.

- Solo founders can be successful, but it is harder for them to manage all aspects of a startup
- Seeking out a co-founder just to fill a box or compensate for deficiencies is a bad idea
- It is better for founders to try and do it on their own, or at least test out a co-founder relationship before committing
- The damage caused by a bad co-founder relationship can be destructive to a startup
- YC funds solo founders and there are no restrictions based on age, gender, or other factors
- The speaker wants to see more female-founded unicorns in the next 10 years
- Startups, even successful ones, are often more broken than they appear
- YC never expected to fund a thousand startups and have such a successful company
- Thank you to everyone for attending and there is a reception upstairs with a photographer doing portraits of female founders.

Y Combinator partners Jessica Livingston, Kat Manalac, Carolynn Levy, and Kirsty Nathoo answer audience questions at the YC 2016 Female Founders Conference in San Francisco, CA

So the first question that someone asked was, how does a company determine if they're right for YC, if they should apply?

I think a lot of people say, like, oh, I'm too early, or I'm too far along.

There is no right company for Y Combinator.

Apply to Y Combinator if you want help with your startup wherever you happen to be, whether you are just starting your idea or whether you have been around for a year and need to take it to the next level.

I really do feel at this point with all the different partners we have and all the different alumni, we can help pretty much anyone who applies.

Yeah, during the break I had a lot of women come up to me and ask just that question.

And you know, what is too early, what is too late?

And we have actually a new program that we started in the fall of last year called the fellowship, which works with even earlier stage, like, idea and prototype stage companies.

So really, there's there really is nothing, you know, there's no such thing as too early or too late.

And there's nothing to lose by filling out the application as well.

No matter what, just answering the questions on the application form is a useful exercise for any founder.

So even if you do that and don't hit submit, you've probably learned something from it.

Yeah, I was just talking to a woman in the audience who said just that, that it was really helpful for her to go through the questions and it helped her think about her business in a different way and I've heard YC alum say that as well.

It just helps you distill your thoughts into a useful

Another question came up that also comes up a lot when I talk to potential applicants is, what does YC look for in a team?

Is there an ideal kind of makeup of a team?

I guess there's no simple answer to that, except that we look for a team that shows determination, that shows that they can get things done, that shows that they can work together.

And so, but there's so many different ways that that can be presented to us.

So, there isn't this sort of 1 size fits all idea to it, but it's really important that you can get that across to us.

And you've seen from the women presenting today, how much determination and how much not giving up that takes.

And that's what we really, really want and what we look for.

Yeah, I look for founders who have known each other for a while or worked together for a while.

I look for people who are solving a problem that they themselves have.

Not to repeat myself, but you've got to be a domain expert to do a good job, I think.

For people who have built something before, even if it's not their current idea, if they've built something in the past, it sort of shows that they can ship, that they're effective at building something.

And I look for an idea that could be huge.

And Carolyn was actually our lawyer, YC's lawyer, at Wilson-Sincini going back to 2006.

I'm still a little out of breath because it's actually kind of a hike from Bart as some of you may know.

And I will say really quickly, I saw Jerry Brown relaxing on the stairs of 1 of the state buildings when I was walking by.

But I get super excited if I have this great team, domain experts, and working on a really big idea that is super broken, like high schools.

I got all excited just talking to them because there is a lot of broken stuff out there that needs to be fixed.

This leads into a question that someone asked on Twitter.

Why did YC invest in Gobble when other investors saw the trough of sorrow?

I knew Ushma for a couple of years before she finally applied to YC.

We thought she was very thoughtful and approached things well.

But we don't care if someone is in the trough of sorrow.

That is our job to help you get out of the trough of sorrow.

And not to take anything away from Ushma.

I'm not saying we were responsible for that.

And we knew there was something in this prepared food thing.

A lot of times, startup ideas, it's like you could be digging for a buried treasure.

And you might be digging right here, and the treasure's over here.

And you just need to adjust things a little bit but we knew in the general vicinity of like prepared food delivery she was on to something.

I've been a gobble user for a long time it helps my family a lot so I think you know Ushma is great but also the idea was very appealing.

I you know I think about this like we don't pretend to know what ideas are gonna hit it big.

Cause I'm sure when you met the Airbnb founders, that sounded bananas.

In fact, Sometimes I wonder if we funded them because I was so impressed by the fact that they like hand glue gunned their cereals the Obama owes and the cap Skills I was like, whoa, these guys are scrappy They're selling cereal online and glue gunning the cereal like we had no idea they'd be as big as they are today.

They didn't know they would be as big as they are today.

I think the only thing we can predict from the amount of years we have been doing this is that great startups are founded by great founders.

So are there kind of tells that, you know, when founders come in or in applications that you look for, for like, this is how a founder can show, you know, perseverance or determination that they're going to be cockroaches and, you know, make it through hard times.

You're like, I think the fact that they've stuck to an idea for a long time, I mean, sometimes, you know, pivots and being flexible and changing your idea, none of that is bad.

But when you talk about, you know, cockroaching and dedication, when you see someone who has been working on the same thing or just working on a startup for a really long time, you know that they've got perseverance, because this is not an easy life.

So if they can, and again, even if there's a pivot, it's, you know, If they can do this startup thing for a long time, that's very impressive.

And I think also, as Jessica was saying, if they're a domain expert that's solving something that they realized was a problem and had a solution to it, it shows that If you're passionate about it and you're wanting to do it, then you're going to have that drive to follow it through.

Whereas if we get applications from people who are doing things because it's the latest cool thing, or because whatever, and you can kind of tell that this is not something they're going to spend the next 10 years building a company around, because it's more of a fad.

I love our question, what do you understand that your competitors are overlooking?

Because that really shows you've thought deeply about a problem.

And just in our interviews, even though they're 10 minutes long, you really can get a feeling for if someone has thought deeply about their problem, and if they're sort of flexible-minded about things.

And just in a conversation, you can kind of tell if they really understand what they're doing or not.

Usually, usually that shows by being able to explain what they're doing clearly and succinctly.

And if we get through an interview and we still don't really understand it, then it shows that the founder has not thought it through enough to be able to distill it down.

We have had interviews where we've said like we are 5 minutes into this interview and we still do not understand what you're doing.

And I don't mean to make a joke out of it, but it's really important to be able to clearly communicate what you're doing.

You don't have to say everything you're doing, but just the high points, so people can sort of hook their brain into it, and then you can have a conversation.

Yeah, the answer to what do you do should really be, you should be able to answer that in 1 sentence.

And it should be a sentence that, you know, your grandparents could understand.

I think that's important for any company who wants to, you know, some of the best companies, they grow by word of mouth.

It is impossible to grow by word of mouth if no 1 understands what you are doing.

Another question that came in was what is the best growth strategy an early stage startup can adopt?

Or maybe the question should be framed as what should early-stage companies focus on?

It's going to be different for every startup.

You know, you got to focus on getting more users.

I don't know the answer to that for every company.

I think it's probably easier to answer that question in the negative, which is what do startups wrongly focus on?

Maybe it's not what they wrongly focus on, but what do they get distracted by?

another question that came in a couple from a couple people was does YC fund solo founders and how what's the best way to meet potential cofounders?

I will give the answer first that, yes, we do fund solo founders, but startups are hard.

Even if there is a team of multiple cofounders, there is far more than a human can do in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

And so if there's a solo founder, if that founder is out selling, then they're not building.

If they're out fundraising, they're not selling.

And so the bar, it's just so much harder for a solo founder to make a success of it.

But you know, you've seen solo founders on the stage today.

There's plenty of examples that it does work.

my mind just because I happened to talk to a couple people about this at office hours yesterday which is that my, so yes of course you know solo being a solo founder is super hard, but I my personal opinion is that the worst thing to do is to go out and seek out a co-founder just because you don't think you can do it alone.

Because you think it can tick a box for the YC application.

That, and also because you think you have deficiencies and you want to go fill them with someone that you barely know.

I mean, I think it's such a better idea for founders to just try and if they don't have a co-founder to just do it themselves.

It will be very hard, but it is the damage that can be done by tacking on a co-founder that you haven't worked with, that you don't know very well, that you don't think that you are not completely sure shares your same vision and your same goals for the company.

That damage is very, very destructive to a startup company.

So my advice is to try to do it on your own.

If you don't have someone in your friend group or you haven't found a co-founder that you have sort of a more organic relationship with.

Or at least test it out for a month with no commitment.

Say we're gonna work as a, you can work as a contractor for a month.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the 3 of us sitting here equal the world's biggest expert on cofounder decisions.

All the knowledge is between the 3 of us, between our experiences.

Yeah, we have mediated a lot of founder breakups.

And they look like they're just, it's heartbreaking a lot of the times.

Because you can see the death spiral that results in this relationship breaking.

And it has nothing to do with the business or the idea or the traction or anything.

It's just about these 2 or 3 people who can't make it work and the company dies.

You know, I'm just gonna ask myself a question actually.

You bring up like do we fund solo founders?

Yes, we fund solo founders, like, tons of them every batch.

And there's a lot of, like, misperceptions out there that exist.

I was talking to a woman yesterday, and I said, oh, did you apply to YC?

Because I love the idea she was working on.

She said, I did, but I thought I was too old.

I want to be clear to everyone in this room.

There is no 1 we don't fund if they are good and effective and solving a real problem.

You can be 20, you can be 60, male, female, gay, whatever.

It is not ‑‑ there is no 1 type of person we fund other than determined and working on a big problem.

But we will be around after at the reception if you have other questions.

I have 1 more question for you, Jessica, since you are leaving us for a year.

You have been really YC's heart since day 1.

Where would you like to see female founders 10 years from now?

I want there to be tons of female-founded unicorns.

I want me, instead of during my talks, when I reference Facebook and Google as like the canonical successful startups, I want to reference someone with women.

And this is totally possible in the next decade.

I mean I started Y Combinator 11 years ago so a decade ago and I can't even tell you how different the world looked back then.

I mean you were you were there basically.

So in 10 years we can have just tons of unicorns with female-founded companies.

We have this joke between us, like, you can't make this up.

What is surprising about this is a couple of things.

Even the ones you read about that are successful in the press and hugely successful companies, they are often more broken than you would ever really know.

And so that's sort of inspirational, because we all have days where we're feeling like our company is not doing that well or whatever.

To be honest, even though we had aspirations for Y Combinator to really help the world, when Paul and I started it, funding people with $12,000 to help their idea, Never in a million years did we think we'd be funding a thousand startups, which have then gone on, many of which have gone on to be super successful.

We never thought we'd have a company with all these wonderful partners who I love going to work with every single day.

And it just makes me think like all of you, like most of you raised your hands that you had started something.

Like just keep moving forward, keep growing, keep working, get through all of the obstacles.

And like I want you all to be successful and I want you all to be sitting up on stage saying I never thought that We'd be here in 10, you know 10 years ago

I just wanted to throw out some thank yous.

A huge thank you to our director of events, Susan Hobbs.

And thank you to all the speakers and everyone who, you know, did the Q&As.

And thank you to our team, our software team is awesome, our ops team who you met up front, to Kevin Hale, 1 of our partners who is running the slides backstage.

And thank you to Stylebee who did a lot of the makeup for their YC-funded company with a female founder.

And also, most of all, thanks to you for coming, because we do this for you, and it's a huge pleasure to meet all the women who are here today.

So yes, we're in the green room upstairs on the balcony level.

And so 1 thing I wanted to note is that we have a photographer who's up there named Ari.

And so if you'd like your portrait taken, She's doing a kind of portrait series on female founders.

And so, yes, so if you see her up there and want yours done, she's happy to do it.


Speaker 0: Okay. So the first question that someone asked was, how does a company determine if they're right for YC, if they should apply?

Speaker 1: Well, every startup's right for Y. I think a lot of people say, like, oh, I'm too early, or I'm too far along. There is no right company for Y Combinator. Apply to Y Combinator if you want help with your startup wherever you happen to be, whether you are just starting your idea or whether you have been around for a year and need to take it to the next level. I really do feel at this point with all the different partners we have and all the different alumni, we can help pretty much anyone who applies.

Speaker 0: Yeah, during the break I had a lot of women come up to me and ask just that question. And you know, what is too early, what is too late? And we have actually a new program that we started in the fall of last year called the fellowship, which works with even earlier stage, like, idea and prototype stage companies. So really, there's there really is nothing, you know, there's no such thing as too early or too late.

Speaker 2: And there's nothing to lose by filling out the application as well. No matter what, just answering the questions on the application form is a useful exercise for any founder. So even if you do that and don't hit submit, you've probably learned something from it.

Speaker 0: Yeah, I was just talking to a woman in the audience who said just that, that it was really helpful for her to go through the questions and it helped her think about her business in a different way and I've heard YC alum say that as well.

Speaker 1: It just helps you distill your thoughts into a useful

Speaker 0: format. Another question came up that also comes up a lot when I talk to potential applicants is, what does YC look for in a team? Is there an ideal kind of makeup of a team?

Speaker 2: I guess there's no simple answer to that, except that we look for a team that shows determination, that shows that they can get things done, that shows that they can work together. And so, but there's so many different ways that that can be presented to us. So, there isn't this sort of 1 size fits all idea to it, but it's really important that you can get that across to us. And you've seen from the women presenting today, how much determination and how much not giving up that takes. And that's what we really, really want and what we look for.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I look for founders who have known each other for a while or worked together for a while. I look for people who are solving a problem that they themselves have. Not to repeat myself, but you've got to be a domain expert to do a good job, I think. For people who have built something before, even if it's not their current idea, if they've built something in the past, it sort of shows that they can ship, that they're effective at building something. And I look for an idea that could be huge.

And again, the idea, oh, Carolyn's here! Carolyn! Come on out! This is Carolyn Levy. She's a partner at Y Combinator.

She's our in-house counsel. And Carolyn was actually our lawyer, YC's lawyer, at Wilson-Sincini going back to 2006. So we go way back.

Speaker 3: I'm still a little out of breath because it's actually kind of a hike from Bart as some of you may know.

Speaker 1: Just relax. I'm talking about what we look for.

Speaker 3: And I will say really quickly, I saw Jerry Brown relaxing on the stairs of 1 of the state buildings when I was walking by. It was so random. Jerry Brown.

Speaker 1: But now I forget where I was before. Those are sort

Speaker 0: of, no,

Speaker 1: oh, the big idea. Ideas can always change. But I get super excited if I have this great team, domain experts, and working on a really big idea that is super broken, like high schools. I got all excited just talking to them because there is a lot of broken stuff out there that needs to be fixed.

Speaker 0: This leads into a question that someone asked on Twitter. Why did YC invest in Gobble when other investors saw the trough of sorrow? What did we see

Speaker 1: in Ushma? I loved Ushma. I knew Ushma for a couple of years before she finally applied to YC. We really liked her. We thought she was very thoughtful and approached things well.

She was in the trough of sorrow. I'm not going to disagree with that. But we don't care if someone is in the trough of sorrow. That is our job to help you get out of the trough of sorrow. We've done it before.

We'll continue to do it. There are ways out. And not to take anything away from Ushma. Ushma has done so much work. I'm not saying we were responsible for that.

But we don't get frightened off by that. We just basically funded it for her. And we knew there was something in this prepared food thing. A lot of times, startup ideas, it's like you could be digging for a buried treasure. And you might be digging right here, and the treasure's over here.

And you just need to adjust things a little bit but we knew in the general vicinity of like prepared food delivery she was on to something.

Speaker 3: I've been a gobble user for a long time it helps my family a lot so I think you know Ushma is great but also the idea was very appealing.

Speaker 0: I you know I think about this like we don't pretend to know what ideas are gonna hit it big. Cause I'm sure when you met the Airbnb founders, that sounded bananas. Totally bananas.

Speaker 1: In fact, Sometimes I wonder if we funded them because I was so impressed by the fact that they like hand glue gunned their cereals the Obama owes and the cap Skills I was like, whoa, these guys are scrappy They're selling cereal online and glue gunning the cereal like we had no idea they'd be as big as they are today. They didn't know they would be as big as they are today.

Speaker 0: I think the only thing we can predict from the amount of years we have been doing this is that great startups are founded by great founders. So are there kind of tells that, you know, when founders come in or in applications that you look for, for like, this is how a founder can show, you know, perseverance or determination that they're going to be cockroaches and, you know, make it through hard times. Well.

Speaker 3: You're like, I think the fact that they've stuck to an idea for a long time, I mean, sometimes, you know, pivots and being flexible and changing your idea, none of that is bad. But when you talk about, you know, cockroaching and dedication, when you see someone who has been working on the same thing or just working on a startup for a really long time, you know that they've got perseverance, because this is not an easy life. So if they can, and again, even if there's a pivot, it's, you know, If they can do this startup thing for a long time, that's very impressive.

Speaker 2: And I think also, as Jessica was saying, if they're a domain expert that's solving something that they realized was a problem and had a solution to it, it shows that If you're passionate about it and you're wanting to do it, then you're going to have that drive to follow it through. Whereas if we get applications from people who are doing things because it's the latest cool thing, or because whatever, and you can kind of tell that this is not something they're going to spend the next 10 years building a company around, because it's more of a fad.

Speaker 1: I love our question, what do you understand that your competitors are overlooking? Because that really shows you've thought deeply about a problem. So I love that. And just in our interviews, even though they're 10 minutes long, you really can get a feeling for if someone has thought deeply about their problem, and if they're sort of flexible-minded about things. And just in a conversation, you can kind of tell if they really understand what they're doing or not.

Speaker 2: Usually, usually that shows by being able to explain what they're doing clearly and succinctly.

Speaker 1: Oh, God.

Speaker 2: And if we get through an interview and we still don't really understand it, then it shows that the founder has not thought it through enough to be able to distill it down.

Speaker 1: We have had interviews where we've said like we are 5 minutes into this interview and we still do not understand what you're doing. Please tell us what you do. And I don't mean to make a joke out of it, but it's really important to be able to clearly communicate what you're doing. You don't have to say everything you're doing, but just the high points, so people can sort of hook their brain into it, and then you can have a conversation.

Speaker 0: Yeah, the answer to what do you do should really be, you should be able to answer that in 1 sentence. And it should be a sentence that, you know, your grandparents could understand. I think that's important for any company who wants to, you know, some of the best companies, they grow by word of mouth. It is impossible to grow by word of mouth if no 1 understands what you are doing. Another question that came in was what is the best growth strategy an early stage startup can adopt?

Or maybe the question should be framed as what should early-stage companies focus on? How do you decide what to focus on?

Speaker 1: Building things and talking to users? It's going to be different for every startup. You know, you got to focus on getting more users. So what's going to get you more users? I don't know the answer to that for every company.

Speaker 3: I think it's probably easier to answer that question in the negative, which is what do startups wrongly focus on? Maybe it's not what they wrongly focus on, but what do they get distracted by?

Speaker 1: I talked about that earlier. So

Speaker 0: another question that came in a couple from a couple people was does YC fund solo founders and how what's the best way to meet potential cofounders?

Speaker 3: I have a lot to say about that.

Speaker 2: I will give the answer first that, yes, we do fund solo founders, but startups are hard. Even if there is a team of multiple cofounders, there is far more than a human can do in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And so if there's a solo founder, if that founder is out selling, then they're not building. If they're out fundraising, they're not selling. And so the bar, it's just so much harder for a solo founder to make a success of it.

But you know, you've seen solo founders on the stage today. There's plenty of examples that it does work.

Speaker 3: Did you cover tacking on co-founders?

Speaker 1: No. Okay. This is on

Speaker 3: my mind just because I happened to talk to a couple people about this at office hours yesterday which is that my, so yes of course you know solo being a solo founder is super hard, but I my personal opinion is that the worst thing to do is to go out and seek out a co-founder just because you don't think you can do it alone.

Speaker 2: Because you think it can tick a box for the YC application.

Speaker 3: That, and also because you think you have deficiencies and you want to go fill them with someone that you barely know. Terrible idea. I mean, I think it's such a better idea for founders to just try and if they don't have a co-founder to just do it themselves. It will be very hard, but it is the damage that can be done by tacking on a co-founder that you haven't worked with, that you don't know very well, that you don't think that you are not completely sure shares your same vision and your same goals for the company. That damage is very, very destructive to a startup company.

So my advice is to try to do it on your own. If you don't have someone in your friend group or you haven't found a co-founder that you have sort of a more organic relationship with.

Speaker 1: Or at least test it out for a month with no commitment. Say we're gonna work as a, you can work as a contractor for a month. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the 3 of us sitting here equal the world's biggest expert on cofounder decisions. All the knowledge is between the 3 of us, between our experiences.

Speaker 3: Yeah, we have mediated a lot of founder breakups. And they look like they're just, it's heartbreaking a lot of the times. Because you can see the death spiral that results in this relationship breaking. And it has nothing to do with the business or the idea or the traction or anything. It's just about these 2 or 3 people who can't make it work and the company dies.

Speaker 1: You know, I'm just gonna ask myself a question actually. Yeah, yeah, go

Speaker 0: for it.

Speaker 1: You bring up like do we fund solo founders? Yes, we fund solo founders, like, tons of them every batch. And there's a lot of, like, misperceptions out there that exist. I was talking to a woman yesterday, and I said, oh, did you apply to YC? Because I love the idea she was working on.

She said, I did, but I thought I was too old. She was 35. I was like, hang on. You are not too old. I want to be clear to everyone in this room.

There is no 1 we don't fund if they are good and effective and solving a real problem. You can be 20, you can be 60, male, female, gay, whatever. It is not ‑‑ there is no 1 type of person we fund other than determined and working on a big problem.

Speaker 0: We are coming up against a hard stop. But we will be around after at the reception if you have other questions. I have 1 more question for you, Jessica, since you are leaving us for a year. You have been really YC's heart since day 1. What has surprised you most about YC?

Where would you like to see female founders 10 years from now?

Speaker 1: Well, I'll answer the second 1 first. 10 years from now, I've told you this. I want there to be tons of female-founded unicorns. I want me, instead of during my talks, when I reference Facebook and Google as like the canonical successful startups, I want to reference someone with women. That's what I want.

And this is totally possible in the next decade. I mean I started Y Combinator 11 years ago so a decade ago and I can't even tell you how different the world looked back then. I mean you were you were there basically. It was just a different place. So in 10 years we can have just tons of unicorns with female-founded companies.

So what was the question about YC?

Speaker 0: What has surprised you most? About YC? Oh gosh,

Speaker 1: there's so many surprising things.

Speaker 2: There's a surprising thing every day.

Speaker 1: We have this joke between us, like, you can't make this up.

Speaker 3: We have a file.

Speaker 1: A file. You can't make this up. You can't make this up file. What is surprising about this is a couple of things. 1, how broken startups are.

Even the ones you read about that are successful in the press and hugely successful companies, they are often more broken than you would ever really know. And so that's sort of inspirational, because we all have days where we're feeling like our company is not doing that well or whatever. To be honest, even though we had aspirations for Y Combinator to really help the world, when Paul and I started it, funding people with $12,000 to help their idea, Never in a million years did we think we'd be funding a thousand startups, which have then gone on, many of which have gone on to be super successful. We never thought we'd have a company with all these wonderful partners who I love going to work with every single day. And it just makes me think like all of you, like most of you raised your hands that you had started something.

Like just keep moving forward, keep growing, keep working, get through all of the obstacles. And like I want you all to be successful and I want you all to be sitting up on stage saying I never thought that We'd be here in 10, you know 10 years ago

Speaker 0: Awesome. Thank you so much

Speaker 1: And now we have the reception

Speaker 0: yeah, so Really quick. I just wanted to throw out some thank yous. A huge thank you to our director of events, Susan Hobbs. And thank you to all the speakers and everyone who, you know, did the Q&As. And thank you to our team, our software team is awesome, our ops team who you met up front, to Kevin Hale, 1 of our partners who is running the slides backstage.

And thank you to Stylebee who did a lot of the makeup for their YC-funded company with a female founder. And also, most of all, thanks to you for coming, because we do this for you, and it's a huge pleasure to meet all the women who are here today.

Speaker 1: And so we'll see you upstairs.

Speaker 0: So yes, we're in the green room upstairs on the balcony level. And so 1 thing I wanted to note is that we have a photographer who's up there named Ari. And she's doing portraits. And so if you'd like your portrait taken, She's doing a kind of portrait series on female founders. She'll send you your portrait for free.

And so, yes, so if you see her up there and want yours done, she's happy to do it. And so also, so we'll see you up there.

Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Q&A with YC at the Female Founders Conference 2016