YC Panel at Female Founders Conference 2015

We'll start with Kirsty.

Kirsty: Hi everyone! I'm Kirsty Nathu. I'm the CFO at Y Combinator, so I look after all of Y Combinator's monies and help the startups with their money questions.

Elizabeth: I'm Elizabeth Irans. I'm just a part-time partner at Y Combinator. I'm the founder of Science Exchange, and I help mostly with biotechs and medical device companies.

Kate: And I am Kate Corto. I'm the head of nonprofits, a new venture for us at YC, and our architect.

Jessica: You were in my presentation; you just haven't seen it yet. I'm Jessica Livingston. You all met me earlier, and I'm wearing my coat because I feel like we're in the Arctic Circle right now.

Mik: I'm Mik.

Carolyn: I'm Carolyn Levy. I'm a partner and I'm general counsel at Y Combinator.

Cat: And once again, I'm Cat Manik. I started as YC's Director of Outreach last year and became a full-time partner in June.

Thank you for sending all of your questions to female Founders. I've aggregated them, and we only have time to get through a few, but we will start now. You know, I should shamelessly plug that the applications for the next YC batch are open!

So the first question that we got that I'm going to ask is: what makes a good YC application and interview?

Kate: Sure, I'll go ahead and take that. We talked about this a little bit in the back. I think, really truly, the thing that makes a really good application is the ability to articulate your idea in a very concise manner. As you can imagine, we have an enormous amount of applications to look through, and "What do you do?" is the very first question, and so it's one of the most important questions on the application.

Elizabeth: I totally agree. You'd be surprised how many people can't articulate what they're doing in a few sentences, or they just fill it with all sorts of marketing speak, like "leveraging this platform," and blah blah blah. Our eyes glaze over.

Kate: The other thing in terms of content that we get really excited about is if you're trying to solve a problem that's hugely broken and has just a huge market opportunity and you're a domain expert in that area. We love that!

Elizabeth: We also put out some videos of applicants who gave really good videos in their application form. You should have a look at those to see how they talk about their ideas. We'll share that link after; we'll tweet it out in case you're interested in checking it out.

Here's a question that came that I think I'll direct directly at you, Kate. What are you looking for in nonprofit applications, and what do you think nonprofits can hope to get from going through YC?

Kate: Yeah, so we've been working in the nonprofit space for three batches at this point and I think we've learned a lot in the last year and almost year and a half. Really truly, I think that we look for the exact same things in a nonprofit team that we look for in a for-profit team.

When people talk about what it is that they're working on, one of the things that we found interesting is if you can't really tell if it's a nonprofit. Because this is the startup space, you have a three-month sprint to kind of pull things together. You have to work in the ways that for-profit startups work in order to accomplish a lot during YC.

So we look for good founding teams who have clarity on their idea and have shown the ability to execute—they have some growth. And I think, you know, Grace just got off the stage. I didn't get to listen to her talk, but my guess is that she might have said that being surrounded by a group of for-profit startups who have a lot of energy and momentum and enthusiasm is really the best benefit of coming into YC as a nonprofit.

The nonprofit space doesn't always work that way out there in the world, and so I think we have found from Founders that that is one of the best benefits, just being among all these other really smart people.

The next question is, in the past few years, YC's gotten more hardware companies like the Pebble watch and Bellabeat, which is like a Fitbit for pregnancy. We've also gotten a lot of biotech companies through.

So this question I'll hand over to Elizabeth: how do you deal with hardware, health, and biotech startups since you know their growth timelines are usually much longer than a SaaS startup company?

Elizabeth: I think actually a lot of the answers that Kate gave for the nonprofits are similar for the biotechs as well. So we've definitely seen that biotechs and medical device companies also do well in the program. It's still very early, so there's only been two batches that had really accepted a lot of biotech companies, but we've seen that that three-month period of focus and really working on some key milestones that define the value of the company has really been hugely beneficial for those companies.

I think one of the most exciting spaces at the moment is biotech and the opportunity for young entrepreneurs who actually made those discoveries to actually be funded and be able to take those discoveries forward. I think Y Combinator is playing a huge role in that.

Cool! So we got quite a few questions about Founders who co-found companies with their spouses. The question is that I'll throw it to Jessica first since she did found a company with her spouse. What advice would you give to female Founders who co-found with their husbands?

Jessica: Oh, well, I think I said I was talking last year at this conference, and people were like, "Ooh!" But I said it's totally normal! So many of the people we fund are husbands and wives. And so, you know, it worked out for me. I happen to love working with my husband. We didn't do the same things, so we weren't competitive, and I think that was useful.

We were always sort of trying to make YC better, but because we did different things, we had our own domains, and that was probably good for our marriage. I mean, it just depends on your relationship, though. I mean, try working together for a little while and if you argue and are sniping at each other or anything, don't do that, 'cause obviously your marriage is so much more important than your company.

But a lot of people, I think, find they enjoy working with their spouses. I know I've talked to Trcy, who you saw earlier from PlanGrid. I don't know if she's still around, but she said that she and Ralph have like a set time at night—it’s like 8:30 or 9:00—when they have to stop talking about PlanGrid. So it's interesting to hear how different Founders kind of deal with working with their spouses.

Carolyn: Yeah, so Y Combinator's other lawyer is my husband, John Levy. So we didn't found a company together, but we worked together at YC, and we talk about Y Combinator all the time to the incredible annoyance of our children, who can now parrot us. They say, "We are partners!"

Anyway, so it's actually a good thing and a bad thing. It’s mostly good, though, because it is really nice to have someone to run everything by. You just constantly get a second opinion on something you want to do or something you've drafted, so I think it's pretty helpful.

So this one's for Kirsty: how do you handle equity splits between Founders?

Kirsty: So splitting equity is kind of a big question in the early days of a company, and it's really an important conversation to have because it drives a lot of other things. Having that conversation can actually open up problems that you didn't necessarily know that you had with the co-founder that you're working with.

We generally say that equity should be split more or less equally between co-founders. That doesn't necessarily mean exactly equally, but we generally find that where there is an equity split that's very mismatched—one founder has 90% and the other founder has 10%—it seems that that causes a lot of problems as you then go through the life cycle of the company.

Both of you are working extremely long hours, thinking about it 24/7, talking about it over dinner, and it can cause problems because the person who only has 10% is thinking, "Well, why am I doing this for such a small percentage of the upside compared to the other person?" So it can really cause problems down the line.

So the key advice is to talk about it very early, be very open about it, and make sure that both parties, or the three founders or however many there are, feel that it is fair and that it is even and representative.

I have one more thing to say about that. I think a mistake that Founders make is that they come to the equity discussion, and they're only looking backwards. They're thinking about who had the idea and who worked the longest on it at the beginning and who has the MBA and who's going to be the CEO. And it doesn't matter; it's what Kirsty said—all the work's ahead of you. So the default is more or less equal because it doesn't really matter what the past was; it's what the future is.

So this question is for everyone, really: do you see women Founders starting different types of companies and solving different types of problems or approaching them in new ways?

Kirsty: I don't really see anything that I'd say, "Oh, more women start this type of company than not." We're seeing more women apply with all different types of ideas.

Elizabeth: Yeah, in the past, you know, batch reading through applications, we saw a lot of women applying with biotech companies and hardware, and you're seeing a pretty diverse range of companies come through, which has been really cool.

Kirsty: And so the second part of that question was: what are you most excited about in getting more female Founders to go through YC?

Elizabeth: Well, I'm going to answer that right now!

Kirsty: Yeah, go for it!

Elizabeth: More successful female Founders! So that when a 15-year-old girl or a recent college graduate looks out there and says, "What do I want to do when I get older?" or "What do I want to do now?" they have more role models of female founding CEOs of tech companies.

So here's a question about being a solo Founder. The question was: "I'm technical enough to start working, you know, build a working prototype and get early customers on my own. Is that enough to succeed as a solo founder? What advice would you give to solo Founders?"

Carolyn: We see a number of solo Founders applying to Y Combinator, and it's tough. We don't accept that many proportionally to the numbers that apply because there's so much to do in a startup. Even if there are two Founders or three Founders, everybody doesn't have enough time in the day to do everything. So when there's only one person, it's really hard because if you're doing one thing, nobody else is doing anything else.

So that's to say that it doesn't necessarily mean that you won't succeed as a single founder, but you've just got to understand that it's much, much harder. And it's also the emotional ups and downs.

You know, Adora was saying that two bad things happen every day on average and then two good things, and that's true. It's like a roller coaster, and if you're all by yourself, it's hard to handle the ups and downs and the swings. So if you have a co-founder, you can say, "Oh, this is so bad! I don't know how I'm going to go forward," and your co-founder can say, "Don't worry; it'll be fine," and then you can do the same the next day.

The fact that this solo founder built a prototype—that's a great start! Can you succeed with just that? I mean, who's to say? That's pretty amazing! But at some point, you know, you're going to have to hire, and that's a whole other question because hiring can be so difficult.

I'm sure people have heard horror stories, but yeah, I mean, that's a great start, but you're going to have to do more than just do it by yourself.

So the next question is about average age. What is the average age of YC Founders? And are there examples of people who've gone through YC as parents with children to take care of?

Jessica: I can answer that! I actually just crunched the numbers on this batch, and the average age of YC Founders in this batch currently is around 30. It looks like the youngest founder that we have is 20, and the oldest is in his late 60s. But it's quite a wide range!

Carolyn: Well, I think the average age of a YC founder—and this is not exact numbers—I think was 26. When we first started, we always had younger people applying for some reason, probably because YC seemed so lame.

I did a couple of years ago look at our top portfolio companies in terms of valuation, and I found that the average age when we funded them was 24 years old. So I don't know if that's useful or not, but I feel like that number is getting higher.

Kirsty: And in terms of the question of whether there are Founders that could go through who are parents—who are moms and dads—Susan Johnson of Women.com, who you saw earlier today, had a baby, and there were quite a few women I remember in the last batch who had infants and small children. So it absolutely can be done!

It's hard—it's tough! Jessica knows; she has two kids, and you guys have it hard! It's hard no matter what you're doing; that's a work-life balance thing, and it's just always hard. But that doesn't mean you can't do it, and people should.

So kind of here's one question: "I struggle with self-promotion and taking responsibility for my talents. How can I get out of my own way?"

Can you repeat it?

Jessica: So basically, the person writes that they're good at networking but they're not good at kind of self-promoting or owning what they are building. Earlier in the very first talk, you said, "I never like to sound braggy." So how do you get past that? What is that line? How do you get past not wanting to be braggy but, you know, being proud of what you've done and talking about it comfortably?

Elizabeth: Well, I've talked to a lot of female VCs—not a lot, but a handful—and the one thing that they say that they notice when female Founders come in to pitch them is that they don't take enough credit for what they do, and I kind of think that could be true.

We had a woman—I probably shouldn't name her—but she had a scientific startup that was doing this really cool technology that she invented in her PhD thesis. She invented this technology that's helping detect cancer, and in her demo day pitch, when we first did rehearsal day with her, she got up and talked about it, but she never said that she invented the technology! We kept saying, "Oh my gosh, just start with that!"

So I think you just have to know that to convince people to join your company or to invest in you or to use your product, you have to take a little bit of credit. It's your company; you should be proud of what you're doing! So just—even if it feels awkward—try it out a little bit and get used to it. I think it does take practice.

When you first start trying to say how amazing you are, you're kind of doing it through gritted teeth, like, "Oh no! I'm so going to get found out because I'm really not!" But actually, as you get more used to explaining, "Here's what I did," and "Here's why it's good," or "I've discovered this," or whatever it might be, then you know, you get more used to saying it, and it becomes more natural.

But you have to push yourself out of that comfort zone and do it because in the startup world, nobody else is going to push you forward; you have to do that yourself.

Okay, so I'm going to kind of wrap it up because we want to get to the reception and meet all of you, and then you can ask us more questions.

I guess I want to ask: what is your favorite part of working at YC, and what inspires you? What makes you happy to wake up every day? And if that's relevant for Science Exchange as well?

Carolyn: I'm starting! So I used to work at a big law firm. I wake up so happy every day that I work at YC because it's such a nice place to work. This sounds a little generic, but it is really the people! I mean, it really is about the people! I work with wonderful people, and they're super smart, so that's another awesome thing too. I just learn something new every day when I'm at YC, and it's just a great place to work.

Kate: Well, I like the people too, but just to be a little bit different, I mean, the main reason I do what I do and have kept doing it is that I love working with Founders. It's so much fun seeing companies succeed and going through the hard times and the good times. Founders are so inspiring to me!

Jessica: I would say the thing that sort of captivated me—because I was sort of always on a bit on the outskirts of working with YC, behind the scenes—not that many people really saw me around or knew me. What captivated me and brought me to almost every single dinner at YC for the last 10 years is the energy of the room! Everybody there so wants to be there—both the founders and all of us. The energy when we have Tuesday night dinners is just contagious; it's just a wonderful environment and inspiring!

Kate: I think I'm not at YC every day, but I’ve just loved taking part in particular, especially for the biotech companies that are coming in. It's so interesting to kind of learn about all of these different fields where people are starting to think about taking a really basic discovery and bringing it to market and seeing that YC could have such a major influence in that particular field that’s historically been a lot more difficult to actually do startups in. It’s really inspiring!

Kirsty: You know, I would echo that—that the people make it so fun! But the other thing that I really love about it is that we're working on the forefront to make startups so much more normal for people to do. Being on the forefront of that and seeing the evidence of that and seeing more applications and more and more people considering startups as an option is just so inspiring.

For me, I used to work at Wired Magazine, and I loved being at the future—at the forefront of things like where people are building the future. I love working with all these entrepreneurs who are working on building the future every day. We have new nuclear fusion and vision startups in YC and people working on the next hardware and world-changing software that we don't even know where it's going yet.

So, to me, that is some of the most exciting piece. And of course, the people! When I started working at YC, everyone was going to be smart and that goes without saying, but what I found was that the community—now there's, you know, Jessica was saying over 2,000 Founders—and everyone is so willing to help! You shoot an email to an alumnus or any of the partners, and within minutes, you get tons of responses!

So that, to me, you know, the community and being where the future is being built is why I work here.

Jessica: Should I wrap up?

Carolyn: Yeah, because we have to vacate the stage in like one minute—literally.

Kirsty: I hope you all enjoyed today! I really do. I know I did. The talks were really amazing. I'm inspired!

I want to again thank Tara and the team at YC for putting this whole conference together; it was flawless! Thank you all for traveling, many of you from so far away to come and for sticking with us through the whole afternoon.

Here, we're going to have a cocktail reception with food out there for an hour. I hope you'll stick around and join us, and I hope you'll keep in touch after this conference. I know a lot of you have been getting to know each other, and I think it's wonderful, so keep doing that and keep founding your companies and hang in there if you've already started one!

[Applause] Thanks!