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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Y Combinator's Paul Buchheit on Creating Gmail Version 1.0 & Leadership Lessons from Working With Zuckerberg and Larry Paige

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Paul Buchheit is a Partner @ Y Combinator, the world’s most successful accelerator with portfolio companies including the likes of AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefits, Twitch, the list goes on. Before YC and starting from the beginning, Paul was the 23rd employee at Google where he created Gmail, developed the original prototype for Google AdSense and even suggested the company's former motto, "Don't Be Evil". He then started FriendFeed in 2006 where he created the like button as we know it, the company was later acquired by Facebook where Paul worked until his move to Y Combinator in 2010, where he is a partner. Paul is also a prolific angel having created an immense portfolio with the likes of Gusto, Checkr, Optimizely and many more incredible teams.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Paul made his way from creating Gmail in the early Google days, to founding the like button we know today, to being with Y Combinator currently?

2.) What does Paul believe it is that makes Paul Graham (PG) the special individual that he is? How has Paul seen the scaling of PG and Jessica Livingstone as leaders with the scaling of YC?

3.) Why does Paul believe it is fundamental to attain 100 happy users? How can one stress test levels of customer satisfaction accurately? How can founders determine which users and which advice to incorporate and which to disregard?

4.) Having worked alongside the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Paige, what does Paul believe makes the truly special founders? How does Paul assess the balance between stubbornness and vision? What is the telltale sign of stubbornness beginning?

5.) Question from Justin Kan: How does Paul look to determine the 10% that delivers 90% of the value? Where has Paul made mistakes and seen others make mistakes in trying to implement this level of focus?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Paul’s Fave Book: Eckhart Tolle

Paul’s Most Recent Investment: Greo

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Paul on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

We are back on the 20-minute VC for the second of this re-instormant feature of the world-famous Y Combinator,

0:05.3

the organisation behind the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Dropbox and many more.

0:10.4

On Monday, we were lucky enough to have Ali Raugani, who leads YC's continuity fund on the show.

0:15.0

If you haven't listened to that, then that really is a must.

0:17.1

But today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Ali's colleague and a truly incredible innovator in

0:20.9

our ecosystem, Paul Bookite, partner at YC. And starting from the beginning here, before YC,

0:25.9

Paul was the 23rd employee at Google, where he created, check this out, Google Mail. He also

0:30.6

developed the original prototype for Google AdSense and even suggested the company's former

0:35.1

motto, don't be evil. My word, that is some contributions.

0:38.4

He also then started Friend Feed in 2006, where he created the like button, as we know it today, in social.

0:44.2

The company was later acquired by Facebook, where Paul worked until his move to Y Combinator in 2010, where he's a partner today.

0:50.6

Paul's also a prolific angel, having created an immense portfolio with the lights of gusto, checker, optimizely and many more incredible teams in the portfolio. I do also have to say

0:59.4

a huge thank you to David Lee at Refactor for the introduction to Paul today, without which this

1:03.6

episode would not have been possible. But before we move into the show today, if you're a founder or

1:07.7

operator, your most important job is people operations, whether that be hiring

1:11.7

execs, developing managers, or retaining top talent. And that's why you need lattice. Latus is the number

1:17.3

one performance management solution for growing companies. With lattice, it's easy to launch 360

1:22.0

performance review cycles as often as you want. And you also get an incredible continuous feedback

1:26.8

system with OKR goal tracking,

1:29.0

real-time feedback and one-on-one meetings to ensure employees get feedback between reviews. So find out why

1:34.5

the likes of Coinbase, PlanGrid, Birchbox and WePay, trust Latis as their performance management

1:39.3

solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That's lattice.com, the number one

...

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