Jessica Livingston
@jesslivingston
Cofounder, Y Combinator; Author, Founders at Work; Host, The Social Radars podcast.
Today @cjoneslevy and I are launching our new podcast, The Social Radars! Be a fly on the wall as we get the inside story from successful startup founders. thesocialradars.com
After a break to work on my commencement speech for Bucknell, and enjoy every moment of my son's final weeks of primary school, we just started taping for Season 5 of The Social Radars. I'm pretty jazzed!
YC is better at helping people pivot and find the thing that could be huge than any other investor or program or school or literally anything that exists Helping founders escape the idea maze and find PMF is the reason why YC exists
Alexandr Wang on founding Scale AI and investors telling him the TAM was too small In the middle of Y Combinator’s S16 batch, Alex and his team felt lost after pivoting from their first idea. Then they noticed a bunch of companies were working on chatbots that required a lot of…
I remember reading allegations in 2016 about Trump having sex with underage girls. At the time I dismissed them, but the energy the administration has put into preventing the release of the Epstein files has convinced me there must be some truth in them.
The reaction of a British founder who went to visit YC: "It has a fantastic buzz about it – a huge empowering energy – but also a collaborative and encouraging kindness that could so easily be absent."
Spoiler alert: Christina is a guest on Season 5 of The Social Radars! I loved our convo and especially enjoyed learning more about how she approached problems in the early days.
"All those things we tell founders to do, she actually *does* them." — Jessica on Christina Cacioppo
We're about to see (if we aren't seeing it already) what happens when shamelessness and dementia converge.
All Trump has to do to prove he’s not on the Epstein List is release it. Yet he won’t. Why?
We all deserve to know what’s in the Epstein files, who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes. Americans were promised justice and transparency. We’re introducing a discharge petition to force a vote in the US House of Representatives on releasing the COMPLETE files.
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE EVIDENCE AGAINST EPSTEIN? The FBI's chain of custody for evidence is a meticulously documented process designed to ensure the integrity, authenticity, and admissibility of physical or digital items from the moment they are collected until they are…
Where is Phase 2?
"How could it be done to you and your ancestors, and you turn around and you do it to someone else?"
Watch till the end. Listen to the outrage, despair, and yes, fear, in @PatinkinMandy's voice. That is the sound of a person with a conscious. All our voices should sound like this.
Yes!!! I always preface this advice, "You won't listen to me but..."
Patient: What can I do to be healthier? Doctor: Eat less and exercise more. Patient: Er, is there anything else? Would-be Founder: What should I do if I want to start a startup? Me: Learn to program. Would-be Founder: Er, is there anything else?
Thank you @elonmusk for talking to 2,000 technical college students at YC’s AI Startup School. It’s the biggest event we’ve ever done and the energy has been unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Everyone can feels that we’re living through a unique moment in time right now.
If someone had told me 5 years ago that I'd be saying that, I wouldn't have believed it. "What will have happened to the world?" I'd have asked. So I'm asking: what has happened to the world? Let's not start treating this as normal, because it isn't.
I spoke recently at the entrepreneurship club at a high school. I couldn't quite say it openly, but I wanted to tell them they should all just be in the programming club instead.
This is big news. I've known Dalton and PB for almost 20 years, and they both consistently have new insights about technology and startups. This is going to change Series A.
After 12+ years, 25 batches, and the privilege of advising >1,000+ startups, I’m transitioning to Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator. YC changed my life. I’m grateful to the thousands of founders who trusted me with their journeys, my fellow YC partners and teammates, and to Paul,…
This is so fucked up. A sitting US senator being handcuffed for trying to ask a question at a DHS news conference? No matter what your political party, you can't think this is a good thing.
Despicable. Trump’s goons are roughing up and handcuffing @SenAlexPadilla as he tries to ask a simple question. This is what dictatorship looks like. Watch:
A lot of people seem to be treating this as if it were just a beef. But the underlying allegation is a very serious one. If it's true, Trump is surely going to have to resign.
After our latest Social Radars interview with Ron Conway about Napster: Clevy: Those are tons of stories I've never heard before. It's great. Ron: Yes, we tore up the NDAs for this one.