95: What Makes or Breaks a Startup with Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 662 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2016

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dubbed "the world's most powerful startup incubator" by Fast Company, Y Combinator (YC) has been plucking startups from garages, dorm rooms, coffee shops, and assorted founder hangouts for over a decade. With a combined valuation of more than $65 billion among its alumni, a list that reads like a who’s who of startup fame—think AirBNB, Reddit, Dropbox, Instacart, Scribd, Weebly—YC has become a Silicon Valley institution. It is described as an elite founders boot camp, a place where ideas are incubated, annihilated, refined, and polished for a period of three months, ready to be served up to a bevy of hungry investors. As co-founder of this entrepreneurial playground, Jessica Livingston has seen it all: the tears, the tantrums, and the triumphs, while getting a bird’s eye view of some of the startup world’s biggest success stories. In this interview you will learn: How to close the gap between a failed startup and a wildly successful one What Y Combinator is looking for when they take on new startups The exact process that Y Combinator puts startups through in order to ensure success The key traits and qualities shared by every successful founder What signs to look out for that your startup may be doomed & much more!

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is episode number 95 with Jessica Livingston of the Founder Podcast.
0:06.3	Discover exactly what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur and what's possible through entrepreneurship from the greatest minds in business today.
0:15.2	Welcome to the founder podcast. Here's your host, Nathan Chan.
0:25.8	Thank you. Here's your host, Nathan Chan. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Founder Podcast.
0:31.1	My name is Nathan Chan.
0:32.4	I am your host coming to you live from cold, windy, rainy, Melbourne, Australia.
0:39.8	Get me out of here.
0:41.1	Not really enjoying the Melbourne winter.
0:44.4	So that's why I'm actually going to the States, which is really, really exciting.
0:48.9	Looking forward to enjoying the American summer.
0:53.4	So that's what's happening in my world, just trying to wrap everything.
0:56.8	I'm actually going for at least a month, so I'm just bulk recording all these podcast episodes.
1:02.4	It's all about batching, hey?
1:04.4	I just wanted to share with you guys a little lesson that I've learnt recently along my journey, which you might find interesting, and I
1:14.0	try not to ramble too much. But one thing that I'm learning is as an entrepreneur, as a founder,
1:22.7	you just can't win all the time. And we've been having a lot of wins with the business. And at the moment,
1:31.1	you know what, to be honest with you, we're not having as many wins. And I'm used to winning.
1:37.0	And that's a problem. I think, you know, sometimes you can get so caught up drinking your own
1:43.2	Kool-Aid and you just think you can do anything.
1:47.1	You think you're unbeatable.
1:49.0	And the truth is you're not.
1:51.8	And, you know, I think it's just an interesting journey, part of the journey that we all have to go through.
	...

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