Paul Graham's Blog: Talk About Jessica Livingston

A few months ago, an article about the Y Combinator project appeared in one edition, which stated that in the early stages of its development it was a “one-man show. No matter how sad, but with such things you meet quite often. But the problem with this description is not only that it is unfair. It also misleads readers. What YC is now is largely due to Jessica Livingston. If you do not understand it, then you will not understand YC. So let me tell you about Jessica.

YC had four founders. One fine evening, the two of us and Jessica decided to found it, and the very next day we attracted my friends Robert Morris (Robert Morris) and Trevor Blackwell (Trevor Blackwell). Jessica and I ran YC day after day, and Robert and Trevor read the resumes and did interviews with us.

Jessica and I began dating before the birth of YC. At first we tried to be “professionals” and act accordingly, that is, forget about feelings. But later it seemed funny to us, and we decided not to pretend anymore. Jessica and I together had a tremendous impact on YC - few would dispute this fact. This site has become for us something of a family. The founders of startups at first were mostly young people. We all got together at dinner once a week, for the first couple of years I was preparing a treat for such meetings. Our first office was in the building of a private house, the atmosphere of which was strikingly different from the offices of venture capital firms on Sand Hill Road. And in a sense, it was an advantage. Everyone who came to us felt the sincerity, the authenticity of our motives. And this means that people did not just believe us - this was the remarkable quality that startups need to instill. Authenticity is one of the most important features that YC is looking for in founders, not only because fraudsters and adventurers are annoying, but also because authenticity is one of the main features that highlight successful startups among all others.
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In his early years, YC was a family, and Jessica was his mother. And she created a culture that then became one of the most important innovations of YC. Culture is important for any organization, but at YC, culture determined not only how we behaved while working on a product. At YC, our culture was the product.

Jessica was also a mother and in another sense - the last word was hers. Everything we did as an organization, first went through it - who to finance, what to say to the public, what to do with other companies, who to hire.

Before we had children, YC to some extent became our life. We did not have a clear boundary between work and rest. We talked about YC constantly. And we liked it despite the fact that some areas of business can ruin private life. We founded it because it was interesting to us. And some of the problems that we tried to solve were infinitely complex. How to recognize a good founder? This can be discussed for years. And we discussed - and continue to this day.

I do something better than Jessica, she does something better than me. But one does not surpass her - in the ability to understand people. She is one of the few who with one glance is able to grasp the essence of man. She almost instantly exposes scam. At YC, she was nicknamed “Social Radar,” and this particular quality was critical for YC to become what it is today. The earlier you choose a startup, the more this choice is based on the personality of its founder. At later stages, investors can evaluate products and growth statistics. At the stage at which YC invests in start-ups, there is often no product or any numbers.

Others thought that YC had a special understanding of the future of technology. But basically, our understanding could be expressed in the words once said by Socrates: at least we knew that we did not know anything. What made YC successful is the ability to select good founders. We thought Airbnb was a bad idea. We gave the company funding because we liked its founders.

During the interview, Robert, Trevor and I threw candidates with technical questions. Jessica mostly watched. Many candidates probably thought she was someone like a secretary, especially at first. Because it was she who came out to cause each group, and did not ask many questions. She was not at all against. On the contrary, it was easier for her to observe people if they did not notice her. But after the interview, the three of us turned to Jessica and asked: “What does Social Radar say (see note 1 at the end of the article)?”

And although at first we did it just by indulging ourselves, it turned out that this practice is incredibly valuable for YC. We did not understand this at the beginning, but the people we chose form a network of YC students. And as soon as we chose them, they would always become part of it (with rare exceptions, if they didn’t manage to get something out of the ordinary). Now some people think that the network of YC pupils is its most valuable feature. Personally, I think that counseling YC is also quite good, although the network of graduates, of course, is one of its key features. The level of trust and help is astounding for a group of this size. And basically it's all thanks to Jessica.

(As we learned later, our losses were small when we were denied to people whose personal qualities we doubted, because there is a relationship between how good the founders are and how they cope with their tasks. If bad founders were lucky enough to succeed , they tend to sell the business early. Most successful founders have positive personal qualities.)

If Jessica was so important to YC, why do so few people know about it? Partly because I am a writer, and writers always attract disproportionate attention. The YC brand was originally my brand, and our candidates were people who read my essays. But there is another reason: Jessica hates attention. Chatting with reporters annoys her. The idea of ​​making a report paralyzes her. Even at our wedding, she felt uncomfortable, because the bride is always the center of attention (see note 2 at the end of the article).

She hates increased attention to herself, not only because she is shy, but because it interferes with her role as Social Radar. She can't be herself. And you can never watch people if everyone is watching you.

In addition, there is another reason why people’s attention is for her - she doesn’t like showing off. When she does something open to public view, her biggest fear (besides the obvious fear of doing her job badly) is that her undertakings will seem ostentatious. She argues that excessive modesty is a common problem for most women. But in her case it is something more. Deep in her sits the fear of ostentatious luxury, almost turned into a phobia.

She also hates the showdown. She can not fend off - it just paralyzes her. And unfortunately, being the public face of the organization, it is often necessary to take a punch.

Thus, despite the fact that YC owes its uniqueness to Jessica to a greater degree, those qualities that helped her to do this are responsible for the fact that Jessica would not like to appear in YC history. Everyone believes in stories about how Paul Graham founded YC, and his wife helped him in this. Even YC haters accept it. When a couple of years ago we were accused of not investing in more women entrepreneurs, people considered YC as something identical to Paul Graham. Recognizing Jessica’s key role in the YC would spoil the stories of our accusers.

Jessica was seething with indignation at the thought that people accuse her company of sexism. I have never seen her so mad. But she did not contradict them. Not publicly. Between us she scolded them great. She wrote three essays on the issue of women entrepreneurs, but did not dare to publish them. She saw how much bile in this debate, and did not dare to join them.

And this is not only because she does not like to quarrel. She is such a vulnerable person that she dislikes even clarifying relations with dishonest personalities. The idea of ​​clashing with journalists of the yellow publications or trolls on Twitter would have seemed to her not only frightening, but also disgusting.

But Jessica understood that her example of a successful female founder would encourage more women to establish their own companies. Therefore, last year she did something that YC had not seen in its entire history - she hired a PR agency to do a series of interviews. In one of the first interviews with Jessica, the reporter threw aside all of her knowledge about startups and concocted a sensational story about how some guy tried to flirt with her near the bar where their meeting was scheduled. Jessica was struck partly because the boy had not done anything wrong, but in the story she was made a victim, which is important because she is a woman, rather than one of the most knowledgeable investors in the entire Valley.

After that, she decided to stop working with this PR-agency.

You will not hear in the press about what Jessica has achieved. So let me tell you about her achievements. Y Combinator is basically a community of people - like a university, for example. He does not create a product. People are his essence. Jessica more than anyone has put her hand to the selection of these people and contributed to their further development. In this regard, she created YC.

Jessica knows more about the personal qualities of startup founders than anyone. Her vast experience and ability to understand people are the perfect combination for our business. The personal qualities of the founders will best describe the success a startup can achieve. And startups, in turn, are the most important source of growth in developed countries.

Jessica Livingston is the person who knows the most important factor in economic growth in developed countries. Do not you think that such a person should be more famous?

Notes

[1] Harj Taggar reminded me that despite the fact that Jessica didn't ask a lot of questions, they were mostly important:

“Jessica could always smell if there was something wrong with the team or the intentions of the founders, and asked disarming questions that usually revealed much more than the founders themselves suspected.

[2] Or more precisely: while she likes to attract attention in the sense of receiving well-deserved approval for her work, she does not like another kind of attention — constant close observation. Unfortunately, not only for her, but for a large number of people, the first depends largely on the second.

If you happen to see Jessica at a social event, you will never assume that she hates attention to herself because: (a) she is very polite, (b) when she is nervous, she smiles more.

[3] About the existence of people like Jessica should learn not only the media, but also feminists. There are successful women who do not like battle. And this means that they will not participate in public fights over women and their rights, if the conversations are imbued with negative.

I have developed my own Graham's Law for talking. When passions run high to a certain level, going beyond the boundaries of politeness, more intelligent people would rather leave. No one understands women entrepreneurs better than Jessica. But it is unlikely that someday she will publicly state her thoughts on this topic. She had once tried to enter this river and decided that she would never repeat such a thing again.

Thanks:

Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Daniel Gackle, Carolynn Levy, John Levy, Kirsty Morris (Robert Morris), Jeff Ralston (Geoff Ralston) and Harj Tagger (Harj Taggar) for reading a draft of this article. And also thanks to Jessica Livingston, who made me cut this essay by just a little (which is surprising).