- The video features a panel of individuals from Y Combinator, including Kirstie Nathu (CFO), Elizabeth Irons (part-time partner), Kate Courteau (head of nonprofits), Jessica Livingston (architect), Carolyn Levy (partner and general counsel), and Kat Minyalik (director of outreach and partner).
- They discuss what makes a good YC application and interview, emphasizing the importance of articulating ideas concisely and demonstrating expertise in solving a significant problem.
- The panel also addresses the application process and the benefits of being surrounded by other smart and energetic individuals in the YC program.
- They touch on the inclusion of hardware, health, and biotech startups in YC, highlighting the value of the three-month focus and milestones for these companies.
- The panel offers advice for female founders who co-found companies with their spouses, suggesting that it depends on the relationship and recommending setting boundaries.
- The topic of equity splits between founders is also discussed, with the panel advocating for more or less equal splits to avoid potential problems in the future.

- The speaker does not see a specific trend of women founders starting different types of companies or solving problems in new ways.
- The goal is to have more successful female founders to serve as role models for young girls and recent college graduates.
- Being a solo founder is challenging because there is a lot to do in a startup and it is difficult to handle the ups and downs alone.
- The average age of YC founders is around 30, with a wide range of ages represented.
- It is possible for parents to go through YC, but it is challenging to balance work and family life.
- Female founders should take credit for their accomplishments and not be afraid to promote themselves and their companies.
- The favorite part of working at YC is the people and the energy in the room, and the inspiration that comes from working with founders.

- The speaker enjoys being part of YC and interviewing biotech companies
- YC has a major influence in the biotech field, making startups in this field easier
- Working at YC allows the speaker to be on the forefront of making startups more normal
- The speaker loves working with entrepreneurs who are building the future
- YC has startups working on nuclear fusion, fission, hardware, and world-changing software
- The community at YC is helpful and supportive
- The speaker thanks the team for organizing the conference and invites attendees to stay for a cocktail reception

- The video features a panel of individuals from Y Combinator discussing what makes a good YC application and interview.
- They highlight the importance of concise articulation of ideas and expertise in solving significant problems.
- The panel discusses the application process and the benefits of being surrounded by smart and energetic individuals in the YC program.
- They mention the inclusion of hardware, health, and biotech startups in YC and the value of the three-month focus and milestones for these companies.
- Advice is given for female founders who co-found companies with their spouses, including setting boundaries.
- The panel advocates for more or less equal equity splits between founders to avoid potential problems in the future.
- The goal is to have more successful female founders as role models.
- Being a solo founder is challenging, and the average age of YC founders is around 30.
- It is possible for parents to go through YC, but balancing work and family life is challenging.
- Female founders are encouraged to take credit for their accomplishments and promote themselves and their companies.
- The favorite part of working at YC is the people and the energy in the room, and the inspiration from working with founders.
- The speaker enjoys being part of YC and working with biotech companies.
- YC has a major influence in the biotech field and makes startups in this field easier.
- Working at YC allows the speaker to be on the forefront of making startups more normal.
- YC has startups working on nuclear fusion, fission, hardware, and world-changing software.
- The community at YC is helpful and supportive.

YC Panel at Y Combinator Female Founders Conference 2015.

Successful application videos: https://www.ycombinator.com/video/

I'm the CFO at Y Combinator, so I look after all of Y Combinator's monies and help the startups with their money questions.

I'm just a part-time partner at Y Combinator.

I'm the founder of Science Exchange and I help mostly with biotechs and medical device companies.

I'm the head of nonprofits which is a new venture for us at YC.

And our architect, because you were in my presentation, you just haven't seen it yet.

I'm Jessica Livingston, you all met me earlier, and I'm wearing my coat because I feel like we're in the Arctic Circle right now.

I'm Carolyn Levy, I'm a partner and I'm general counsel at Y Combinator.

I started as YC's director of outreach last year and became a full-time partner in June.

So we got, thank you for sending all of your questions to female founders and I aggregated them and we only have time to get through a few.

So, you know, I should shameless plug, the applications for the next YC batch are open.

So the first question that we got that I'm going to ask is, what makes a good YC application and interview?

We talked about this a little bit in the back.

I think really, truly, the thing that makes a really good application is the ability to articulate your idea in a very concise manner.

As you can imagine, we have an enormous amount of applications to look through.

And what do you do is the very first question.

And so it's 1 of the most important questions on the application.

You'd be surprised how many people can't articulate what they're doing in a few sentences, where they just fill it with all sorts of marketing speak, like leveraging this platform and blah blah blah and like our eyes glaze over.

The other thing in terms of content that we get really excited about is if you're trying to solve a problem that's hugely broken and has just a huge market opportunity, and you're a domain expert in that area.

And we also put out some videos recently, or videos of applicants who gave really good videos in their application form.

So you should have a look at those to see how those show how they talk about their ideas.

We'll share that link after it, we'll tweet it out in case you're interested in checking it out.

Here's a question that came that I think I'll direct directly at you, Kate.

What are you looking for in nonprofit applications and what do you think nonprofits can hope to get from going through YC?

Yeah, so we've been working in the nonprofit space for 3 batches at this point, and I think we've learned a lot in the last year and almost year and a half.

Really truly, I think that We look for the exact same things in a nonprofit team that we look for in a for-profit team and when people talk about what it is that they're working on 1 of the things that we found interesting is if you can't really tell if it's a non-profit.

You have a three-month sprint to kind of pull things together.

You have to work in the ways that for-profit startups work in order to accomplish a lot during YC.

So we look for good founding teams who have clarity on their idea and have shown the ability to execute.

And I think, you know, Grace just got off the stage.

I didn't get to listen to her talk, but my guess is that she might have said that being surrounded by a group of for-profit startups who have a lot of energy and momentum and enthusiasm is really the best benefit of coming into YC as a nonprofit.

The nonprofit space doesn't always work that way out there in the world.

And so I think we have found from founders that that is 1 of the best benefits, is just being among all these other really smart people.

So the next question is, so In the past few years, YC's gotten more hardware companies like the Pebble Watch and Bellabeat, which is like a Fitbit for pregnancy.

And we've also gotten a lot of biotech companies through.

So this question I'll hand over to Elizabeth is how do you deal with hardware, health, and biotech startups since their growth timelines are usually much longer than a SaaS startup company?

Yeah, I think actually a lot of the answers that Kate gave for the not-for-profits are similar for the biotechs as well.

So we've definitely seen that biotechs and medical device companies also do well in the program and it's still very early, so there's only been 2 batches that had really accepted a lot of biotech companies.

But we've seen that that three-month period of focus and really working on some key milestones that define the value of the company has really been hugely beneficial for those companies.

And so I think 1 of the most exciting spaces at the moment is biotech and is the opportunity for young entrepreneurs who actually made those discoveries to actually be funded and be able to take those discoveries forward.

And I think Y Combinator is playing a huge role in that.

So we got quite a few questions about founders who co-found companies with their spouses.

So the question is that I'll throw to Jessica first, since she did found a company with her spouse.

What advice would you give to female founders who co-founded with their husbands?

Oh, well, I think I said, I was talking last year at this conference, and people were like, ooh, But I said, it's totally normal.

So many of the people we fund are husbands and wives.

I happen to love working with my husband.

We didn't do the same things, So we weren't competitive.

We were always sort of trying to make YC better.

But because we did different things, we had our own domains.

And that was probably good for our marriage.

I mean, it just depends on your relationship, though.

I mean, try working together for a little while, and if you argue and are sniping at each other or anything, don't do that, because obviously your marriage is so much more important than your company.

But a lot of people, I think, find they enjoy working with their spouses.

I know I've talked to Tracy, who you saw earlier from PlanGrid.

But she said that she and Ralph have a set time at night.

It's like 8.30 or 9 when they have to stop talking about PlanGrid.

So it's interesting to hear how different founders kind of deal with working with their spouses.

We never had any, we never stopped talking about it.

We were so boring, we talked about YC during dinner and everything.

But set guidelines if that works for you.

Yeah, so Y Combinator's other lawyer is my husband John Levy.

So we didn't found a company together but we worked together at YC and we talk about Y Combinator all the time to the incredible annoyance of our children who can now parrot us and they say, wow, that partner this part.

Anyway, so it's actually a good thing and a bad thing.

It's mostly good though because it is really nice to have someone to run everything by.

You just constantly get a second opinion on something you want to do or something you've drafted.

How do you handle equity splits between founders?

So splitting equity is kind of a big question in the early days of a company.

And it's a really important conversation to have because it drives a lot of other things and having that conversation can actually open up problems that you didn't necessarily know that you had with the co-founder that you're working with.

We generally say that equity should be split more or less equally between co-founders.

That doesn't necessarily mean exactly equally, but we generally find that where there is an equity split that's very mismatched, you know, 1 founder has 90% and the other founder has 10%, it actually seems that that causes a lot of problems as you're then going through the life cycle of the company, where You're both working extremely long hours, you're thinking about it 24-7, talking about it over dinner, and it can cause problems because the person who only has 10% is thinking, well, why am I doing this for such a small percentage of the upside compared to the other person.

So it can really cause problems down the line.

So the key advice is to talk about it very early, be very open about it and make sure that both parties or the 3 founders or however many there are feel that it is fair and that it is even and representative.

I think a mistake that founders make is that they come to the equity discussion and they're only looking backwards.

They're thinking about who had the idea and who worked the longest on it at the beginning and who has the MBA and who's gonna be CEO and it doesn't matter.

It's what Kirstie said, all the work's ahead of you.

So the default is more or less equal because it doesn't really matter what the past was.

So this question is for everyone, really.

Do you see women founders starting different types of companies and solving different types of problems or approaching them in new ways?

There's nothing that I'd say, oh, more women start this type of company than not.

We're seeing more women apply with all different types of ideas.

Yeah, we've in the past, you know, batch reading through applications, we saw a lot of women applying with biotech companies and hardware and you're seeing a pretty diverse range of companies come through, which has been really cool.

And so the second part of that question was, what are you most excited about in getting more female founders to go through YC?

In getting more women to apply, more women to go through YC?

More successful female founders, like so that when a 15-year-old girl or a recent college graduate looks out there and says, what do I want to do when I get older or what do I want to do now, they have more role models of female founding CEOs of tech companies.

So here's a question about being a solo founder.

So the question was, I'm technical enough to start working, you know, build a working prototype and get early customers on my own.

Is that enough to succeed as a solo founder?

And what advice would you give to solo founders?

We see a number of solo founders applying to Y Combinator.

We don't accept that many proportionally to the numbers that apply, because there's so much to do in a startup.

Even if there's 2 founders or 3 founders, everybody doesn't have enough time in the day to do everything.

So when there's only 1 person, it's really hard because you constantly, if you're doing 1 thing, nobody else is doing anything else.

So that's to say that it doesn't necessarily mean that you won't succeed as a single founder, but you've just got to understand that it's much, much harder.

And it's also the emotional ups and downs.

You know, Adora was saying that 2 bad things happen every day on average and 2 good things.

And if you're all by yourself, it's hard to handle the ups and downs and the swings.

So if you have a co-founder, you can say, oh, this is so bad.

I don't know how I'm going to go forward.

And your co-founder can say, don't worry, it'll be fine.

And then you can do the same the next day.

You know, though, the fact that this solo founder built a prototype, I mean, that's a great start.

But at some point, you're going to have to hire.

And that's a whole other question, because hiring can be so difficult.

I'm sure people have heard horror stories.

But you're going to have to do more than, you know, just do it by yourself.

So the next question is about average age.

So what is the average age of YC founders?

And you know, are there examples of people who've gone through YC as parents, with children to take care of.

So I can answer the, I actually just crunched the numbers on this batch, and the average age of YC founders in this batch currently is around 30.

And so it looks like the youngest founder that we have is 20 and the oldest is in his late 60s But it's a quite, you know quite a wide range But Jessica might have a little bit more on that as well

Well, I think the average age of the YC founder and this is not exact numbers.

I think was 26 We always when we first started we always had younger people applying for some reason, probably because YC seemed so lame.

But I did a couple years ago look at our top portfolio companies in terms of valuation, and maybe I used like 10, and I found that the average age of when we funded them was 24 years old.

But I feel like that number is getting higher.

And in terms of the question of are there founders that could go through who are parents, who are moms and dads, Susan Johnson of women.com, who you saw earlier today, had a baby and there were quite a few women, I remember in the last batch, who had infants and small children.

That's a work-life balance thing, and it's just always hard.

But that doesn't mean you can't do it, and people should.

I struggle with self-promotion and taking responsibility for my talents.

So basically, the person writes that they're good at networking, but they're not good at kind of self-promoting or, you know, kind of owning what you are building.

So earlier in the very first talk, Jessica, you said, I never like to sound braggy.

So how do you get past, what is that line?

How do you get past not wanting to be braggy, but taking full, being proud of what you've done, and talking about it comfortably?

Well, I've talked to a lot of female VCs, not a lot, but a handful, and the 1 thing that they say that they notice when female founders come in to pitch them is that they don't take enough credit for what they do.

And I kind of think that that could be true.

We had a woman, I probably shouldn't name her, but she had a scientific startup that was doing this really cool technology that she invented in her PhD thesis.

But she invented this cool technology that's like helping detect cancer.

And in her demo day pitch when we first did rehearsal day with her, she got up and she talked about it and everything, but she never said that she invented the technology.

And we kept being like, oh, my gosh, just start with that.

So I think you just have to know that to convince people to join your company or to invest in you or use your product, you have to take a little bit of credit.

You should be proud of what you're doing.

So just even if it feels awkward, maybe try it out a little bit and get used to it.

You know, when you first start trying to say how amazing you are, you're kind of doing it through gritted teeth.

And you're like, oh, no, I'm so going to get found out because I'm really not.

And actually, as you get more used to explaining, here's what I did, and here's why it's good, or, you know, I've discovered this science or whatever it might be, then, you know, you get more used to saying it and it becomes more natural But the more you know You have to push yourself out of that comfort zone and do it because in in the startup world Nobody else is going to push you forward you have to do that yourself Okay,

so I'm gonna to kind of wrap it up because we we want to get to the reception and meet all of you and then you can ask us more questions.

I guess I want to ask what is your favorite part of working at YC and you know what inspires you Like what makes you happy to wake up every day?

And you know, and if that, you know, is relevant for Science Exchange as well.

So I wake up so happy every day that I work at YC because it's such a nice place to work.

This sounds a little generic, but it is really the people.

I work with wonderful people and they're super smart.

I just learn something new every day when I'm at YC and it's just a great place to work.

Well, I like the people too, but just to be a little bit different.

I mean, The main reason I do what I do and have kept doing it is that I love working with founders.

And it's just so much fun seeing companies succeed and going through the hard times and the good times.

It's just, founders are so inspiring to me.

And I would say the thing that sort of captivated me, because I was sort of always on a bit on the outskirts of working with YC, I was like behind the scenes, not that many people really saw me around or knew me.

But what captivated me and brought me to almost every single dinner at YC for the last 10 years is the energy of the room.

Like, everybody there so wants to be there.

And the energy when we have Tuesday night dinners is just contagious.

It's just a wonderful environment and inspiring.

Yeah, I think I'm not at YC every day, but I've just loved taking part with being able to interview in particular for the biotech companies that are coming in to YC because it's so interesting to kind of learn about all of these different fields where people are starting to think about taking a really basic discovery and bring it to market and sort of seeing that YC could have such a major influence in that particular field that's historically been a lot more difficult to actually do startups in is really inspiring.

I think, you know, I would echo that the people make it so fun.

But the other thing that I really love about it is that, you know, we're working on the forefront to make startups so much more normal for people to do.

And being on the forefront of that and seeing the evidence of that and seeing more applications and more and more people considering startups as an option is just so inspiring.

And for me, I used to work at Wired Magazine And I loved being at the future, at the forefront of things, like where people are building the future.

And so I love working with all these entrepreneurs who are working on building the future every day.

We have nuclear fusion and fission startups in NYC and people working on the next hardware and world-changing software that you know, basically like we don't even know where it's going yet.

And so that to me is some of the most exciting, you know, the most exciting piece.

And of course, the people, like when I started working at YC, you know everyone's going to be smart, and that goes without saying.

But what I found was that the community, now there's, you know, Jessica was saying, over 2,000 founders, and everyone is so willing to help.

You know, you send a, shoot an email to an alum or any of the partners and you know within minutes you get tons Of responses so that to me, you know the community and being you know where the future is being built Why I work here

Yeah, because we have to vacate the stage in like 1 minute Literally, so I hope you all enjoyed today.

I really do I Know I did The talks were really amazing I'm inspired I want to again thank Tara and the team at YC for putting this whole conference together.

Thank you all for traveling, many of you from so far away to come and for sticking with us through the whole afternoon here.

We're going to have a cocktail reception with food out there for an hour.

And I hope you'll keep in touch after this conference.

I know a lot of you have been getting to know each other, and I think it's wonderful.

So keep doing that, and keep founding your companies, and hang in there if you've already started 1.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

YC Panel at Female Founders Conference 2015