How I fell in love with the startup world

The best events in my life happened by chance.



Most people do not know that I got hooked on startups when I was preparing my book Founders at Work ^★ . Writing the book inspired me to help startups at an early stage - and ultimately prompted the creation of Y Combinator ^★ .



Eleven years ago, I was vice president of marketing at an investment bank. The work was incredibly boring, and I was tired of doing any kind of press releases that I didn’t care about at all. Once I was at a party surrounded by strangers to me. I went there to meet a friend, and upon arrival I learned that he was participating in the Wesley Clark presidential campaign in Arkansas ^★ . I really wanted to turn around and leave. But at the last moment, I decided to hang a little.

')

Looking for a vent, I found myself in the company of Paul Graham ^★ , the party owner. He was a programmer - he developed Viaweb ^★ , a company that allowed users to create their own online stores. This was the very first web application. We got along and began to meet.



Paul and his friends introduced me to the world of startups. At first, I didn’t affect them at all, and, of course, I didn’t understand the ideas behind the startups, as well as the one that leads them to success. But it intrigued me so much that I started my own side project - I decided to write a book about this crazy world. I wanted to help people figure out how the founders of startups come to success. In the image and likeness of the Writers at Work ^★ series (Paris Review), I decided to name my work Founders at Work, and began to interview company founders about how they started their work.



In the end, this led me to people like Steve Wozniak ^★ (Apple), Craig Newmark ^★ (Craigslist), Max Levichin ^★ (PayPal). While working on a book, I learned a lot. For example:

1. That besides the understanding of the business world that I brought from Wall Street, there is a completely different way of doing business, a practically parallel universe.
2. That this new world is not only fascinating, but also encourages to develop intellectually.
3. Everyone knows that Apple started in the garage before turning into a huge successful company, but people have no idea how much everything went wrong at first. But now we know that these events were critical to the success of the company.
4. And finally, the fact that most startups are born by chance, without a big thought out idea and without substantial funding.

The information I dug up in these interviews was so interesting and amazing. Soon I realized that all this was leading me to something more. Initially, with my book, I just wanted to inspire people to launch startups, and give them an understanding of the first steps for this.



I did not assume that these stories would affect me so much that I would decide to start something like a startup myself. Then I did not understand how much sense the opportunity to support the ideas of the founders would bring in my life, and that some of these ideas would be very successful. Paul and I launched Y Combinator with Trevor ^★ and Robert ^★ for fun, to give start-up founders some typical way to get initial funding. We were not at all sure that this would work at all.



On our way there were a lot of "accidents". For example, when we launched Y Combinator in 2005, we had a Summer Founders Program ^★ with eight startups. We decided to finance several startups at once, because neither Paul nor I knew anything about angel investing, we thought that this was the best way to figure it out. Initially, we intended to devote autumn to walking around the funds, selecting them one by one for each startup. But soon we realized that it was much more useful to finance startups in groups, to gather all these people in one place. Otherwise, the process could be delayed, become painful and boring. It turned out that it is very important to form a community of like-minded people who are able to support each other. Since then, we have been selecting funds for a whole group of startups at once.



Everyone, from Bill Gates to Larry Page and Sergey Brin, started off small. At first, no one believed in their ideas, they were faced with denial, they had to push through obstacles. But they had enough determination to keep going when many others would have already given up. In my book, The Founders at Work, I wanted to help those people whom the world of ordinary business rejected. I wanted to give hope to those who are faced with constant resistance, and teach them how to start up startups. By helping them, I can bring something completely new to the world.



In between times, Paul and I got married. What a blessing that I went to that party.



Recorded from dictation: Adrian Day

Gifka for attracting attention: Peter McCollou using Samsung Galaxy S6 edge

Illustrations: Toka Maer ∎

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About the author: Jessica Livingston is one of the founders of the Y Combinator venture capital fund.