The social radar: Y Combinator’s secret weapon | Jessica Livingston (co-founder of Y Combinator, author, podcast host)

I wanna start with a a quote by someone you may know, Paul Graham. Much of what's novel about YC Is due to Jessica Livingston. If you don't know her, you don't understand why she's my three co-founders were deeply technical, but I would look at other things about founders. You know, all these little social cues. Your nickname was the social radar. Every interview, everyone always turned to you and they're like, Jessica. What does the social radar say? I would look at Do the co-founders get along? Are these people committed? And if a founder would get defensive, that was always a bad sign. Is there anything else along the Airbnb story that would be interesting to share? He hated their idea and Paul tried to get Brian and Joe and Nate to change it. But I remember specifically, Joe brought out the cereal boxes, the Obama O's and Captain McCain's, and I just thought Oh my god, they're gonna work hard to do whatever they can to make this company succeed. You just talk a bit about this idea of just making shit happen, showing signs of being hustlers. You sort of need that desperation. You have to burn the boat.

Today my guest is Jessica Livingston. Jessica is the co-founder of Y Combinator, the first and most famous startup accelerator, which since 2005 has funded over 5,000 companies. including over two hundred unicorns now worth over a billion dollars. Including companies like Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, Coinbase, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit.

The list goes on. Jessica is also the author of one of the best selling books about startups, founders at work. And hosts the social radars podcast. She lives in England with her husband, who you may know, and her two sons. In our conversation, we dive deep into Jessica's superpower of being the social radar.

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