23:18Jessica Livingston Speaks at Female Founders Conference 2015
From Y Combinator · Published Jul 23, 2015 · Watch on YouTube
TL;DR
YC funded exactly the same percentage of companies with female founders (23%) as applied, confirming that funded founders reflect the applicant pool. Livingston, as YC's "social radar," filtered for character and built YC's culture of treating founders like family, which she argues is the half of YC that no one has duplicated.
Key insights
- YC's funding of female founders matches the applicant pool proportionally; there was no quota, and the numbers came after interviews.
- Livingston's primary role has been judging character (acting as "social radar"), while her cofounders judged technical ideas; she had effective veto over funding decisions for the first seven years.
- Filtering out bad people early made the alumni network (now over 2000) nurturing and trustworthy, creating a valuable resource for new founders.
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