
Ask HN: How did Y Combinator become so successful? - ace_of_spades
Fellow Hackers,<p>I am interested in the history of YC and started to look around for more stories and insights about how YC started and became what it is today.<p>There are some resources on the web [1,2] but I couldn&#x27;t find too much.<p>As there are some alumni and employees from YC lurking around here, I just thought to ask you to share your stories!<p>1: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20140824071024&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.ycombinator.com&#x2F;start.html
2: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ycombinator.com&#x2F;principles&#x2F;
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benjaminjosephw
PG has a few essays that talk through some thoughts about YC like this one[1]:

> Early YC was a family, and Jessica was its mom. And the culture she defined
> was one of YC's most important innovations. Culture is important in any
> organization, but at YC culture wasn't just how we behaved when we built the
> product. At YC, the culture was the product.

Jessica Livingston shares some of her stories of the early days of YC here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d-cApFHjeY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d-cApFHjeY)

1: [http://paulgraham.com/jessica.html](http://paulgraham.com/jessica.html)

