Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Joan Lasenby is a University Reader in the Signal Processing and Communications Group of the Cambridge University Engineering Department, and is a College Lecturer and Director of Studies in Engineering at Trinity College. Here's a list of her published work . In this episode we talk about Joan’s research into 3D reconstruction from multiple cameras and her interest in geometric algebra. The YC po...

Peter Reinhardt is cofounder and CEO of Segment .    Segment helps companies capture data from every customer touchpoint and send it to the tools where it can be used most effectively. They were part of the YC Summer 2011 batch. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . *** Topics 00:26 - What is Segment? 1:56 - Segment’s first customers 3:31 - Their YC application 4:26 - Going through...

Ryan Petersen is the founder and CEO of Flexport . Flexport is a global freight forwarder powered by software and analytics. They are making international trade easier for over 10,000 companies in 70 countries. They were part of the YC Winter 2014 batch. *** Topics 0:23 - What is a freight forwarder? 3:08 - Selling electric scooters on eBay 15 years ago 5:53 - Ryan’s business school experience 10:...

David Zeevi is a James S. McDonnell independent fellow at the Rockefeller University Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. He focuses on developing computational methods for studying microbial ecology in the human gut and in the marine environment, and its contribution to human and environmental health. He was one of the authors on the paper Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Re...

Jessica Brillhart is the founder of Vrai Pictures . They’re an independent immersive content studio. Before founding Vrai, Jessica was the Principal Filmmaker for VR at Google. The YC Podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . *** Questions   00:23 - Starting VRAI 10:23 - Story in film vs. VR 12:38 - Gaming 19:53 - Conditions at Omaha - The Weather Channel in VR 22:38 - Jessica's upcoming projects 2...

Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung are both partners at YC. This episode is about Startup School . It’s a free, online course we’re offering that starts on August 28th. We’re also offering equity-free grants of $10,000 to 100 companies that participate in the course. Anyone can sign up for the course at StartupSchool.org . Read the transcript here . The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . *** Topic...

Michael Seibel is a Partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the Winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the Winter 2012 batch. For this episode we took questions from the internet. If you have questions for a future office hours episode, just tweet them our way. Read the transcript here . The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon . We're accepting applications fro...

Elad Gil is an entrepreneur, operator, and investor. He cofounded Color Genomics and Mixer Labs. Worked at Google and Twitter. And has invested in companies including Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe. He just released the High Growth Handbook , which is a guide to scaling startups published by Stripe Press . It contains tactical advice on key issues for post product-market fit companies such as the ro...

Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille served together as Navy SEALs and now work together at Echelon Front , a company Jocko cofounded. We met up to talk about a new initiative they’ve set up called Overwatch . Overwatch is a talent acquisition firm that matches employers with veterans from special operations forces and combat aviation. You can learn more about Overwatch at EFOverwatch.com . They’re al...

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 blog.ycombinator.com If you’d...

João Batalha and Luís Batalha are cofounders of Fermat’s Library . Fermat’s Library is a platform for annotating papers. Each week they send out a paper annotated by their community. Some recent papers were Birds and Frogs by Freeman Dyson and Von Neumann's First Computer Program by Donald Knuth. They’ve also built a Chrome Extension call Librarian for the arXiv which allows you to get direct link...

Scott Aaronson is the David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin, and director of its Quantum Information Center. Before teaching at UT, he taught Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and computational complexity theory more generally. I...

Henrique Dubugras  is the cofounder of Brex , which provides corporate cards for startups. Anu Hariharan is a Partner at YC. Brex went through YC in the Winter 2017 batch and just closed their Series B, which was led by  YC Continuity . In addition to discussing how the Brex team built out their service, Anu and Henrique also cover the specifics of what it takes to build a fintech startu...

Jared Friedman is a partner at YC and before that cofounded Scribd (YC S06). Matt Long a software engineer at YC and before that cofounded Crocodoc (YC W10). Today we’re talking about a project Jared, Matt, and several other people at YC have been working on. It’s called Work at a Startup and it’s like a common application for engineers to apply to many YC companies simultaneously. We’re also...

Adora Cheung is a partner at YC and she also cofounded Homejoy, which went through YC in the Summer 2010 batch. For this episode we took questions from the internet. If you have questions for a future office hours episode, just tweet them our way. Questions 0:41 - topherPedersen asks - How many users did you have when you applied to YC? Also, how much revenue had you generated? 2:55 - Hatlii asks...

Liz Wessel is the cofounder and CEO of WayUp . WayUp is a job and internship platform for college students and recent graduates. They were part of the Winter 2015 YC batch. Read the transcript here . The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .

Simon Benjamin is a Professor of Quantum Technologies at Oxford. He is also the Principle Investigator for Oxford’s project on Quantum Optimisation and Machine Learning . This episode is more technical than last week’s episode with John Preskill . We start by covering some fundamentals then go into different approaches for constructing and scaling a quantum computer. Read the transcript here . The...

John Preskill is a theoretical physicist and the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. He once won a bet with Steven Hawking , which as he writes made him “briefly almost famous.” John and Kip Thorne  bet that singularities could exist outside of black holes and after six years Hawking conceded that they were possible in very special, “nongeneric” conditions. In this...

Carola Schönlieb is an applied mathematician at the University of Cambridge. She’s also a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute and the head of the Image Analysis group at Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics . In this episode we cover mathematical approaches to image processing. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .

Sean Mitchell  is the cofounder and CEO of Rezi . REZI helps landlords find high quality, long-term tenants in 48 hours. They were part of the Winter 2017 batch. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .

Linda Xie is the cofounder of Scalar Capital , a cryptoasset fund. Before that she was a Product Manager at Coinbase  (YC S12). Avichal Garg  is a Managing Partner at Electric Capital , a value fund for digital assets. He’s also an Expert at YC. Prior to that he was the Director of Product Management at Facebook. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .

Patrick Moberg is the cofounder of Playdots , which is a mobile game studio in New York. They make Dots , Two Dots , and Dots and Co . Holly Liu is is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before that she cofounded the gaming company Kabam . The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .

Miles Brundage is an AI Policy Research Fellow with the Strategic AI Research Center at the Future of Humanity Institute . He is also a PhD candidate in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology at Arizona State University. Miles recently co-authored The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation . Tim Hwang is the Director of the Harvard-MIT Ethi...

Claire McDonnell is cofounder and COO of True Link Financial (YC S13). True Link is a financial services firm that offers money management, investment, and insurance products, primarily for retirees. Jennifer Kim is currently advising startups. Prior to that she was the Head of Employee Experience and Development at Lever . Lever makes recruiting software and they were part of the Summer 2012 batc...

Andy Bromberg is the cofounder and CEO of CoinList . Coinlist provides financial infrastructure for token creators and investors. Ramon Recuero is an engineer at YC. He's the author of the Decentralized Future Series, which you can read here . If you'd like to listen to more podcasts about crypto, here are episodes with Juan Benet (IPFS) and Dalton Caldwell (YC) and Olaf Carlson-Wee (Polychain Cap...