
Jessica Livingston on the Accidental Origin of Y Combinator - jameshk
http://macro.ycombinator.com/articles/2015/11/jessica-livingston-startup-school-radio/
======
Amorymeltzer
Great to hear Jessica's voice (literally) on this. Listening to her story,
it's wild to think she and pg had such success with what really must have felt
very experimental. "Learn quickly by funding a bunch of startups at once"
feels like a very startup-y way to go about your business.

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lloydde
I just love to hear Jessica's excitement for each of the Y Combinator
startups. It's more than that. These founders are her people.

I did find myself giggling hearing her pronounce some of the fun company names
like "WuFoo".

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c0707
Is there a full transcript somewhere?

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lifeisstillgood
A little meta, but I am noticing more "startups stories as content" out there.
(It maybe the red car syndrome, you drive a red car and so see them
everywhere) but more and more podcasts, news items are about the real honest
it's not all rocket ships to the top stories.

It's good to hear, despite the angst, uncertainty, stress

~~~
vonklaus
I find these stories helpful on a lot of levels, and they provide great
insight into problem solving, technology, and you end up learning a large
amount about why things are the way they are when people recount how they got
started. E.g Anthony Casalena is young by non-tech standards and I still find
it totally foreign that when he started squarespace he bought 2 physical
dedicated servers and hooked them up in New York at pier 1 hosting, he needed
to own the physical boxes and have 2 for redundancy.

I am not doing a startup but have found these talks particular insightful
generally. I am looking for some more Inspirational ones if anyone knows any
great founders or leaders with inspirational stories, or particularly good
interviews. Here are some I have found particularly good:

[0]Ashton Kutcher, Startup School

=====================

I listed this first because it is most likely to get dismissed. Give it a
chance. He starts off shaky and it is really a great Meta look at how people
are out of their element, but really come back, win the crowd and provide
insight when it is unexpected.

[1]Kevin Rose, Foundation

=================

He has done 43 interviews with very prominent tech leaders for his foundation
series. Some of them are Elon Musk, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey, Ben Horowitz, etc.

[2]Paul Graham, Pycon 08'

==================

This is one of the most interesting things I have seen in a long time. He
makes predictions, and talks about technology climate and infrastructure. To
reiterate, it is 7 years old but just brilliant in terms of his foresight.

[3]Steve Wozniak, HAAS B-School

=========================

Steve Wozniak is just an amazing person.

[4]Elon Musk, interview by Sal Kahn

=========================

Guy is a great entrepreneur and will likely add a lot of value to the world.
Talks about how he got started and future predictions. It is 3 years old, so
interesting to re-eval now.

[5]Patrick Collison, Startup School Europe

=========================

The history of stripe.

[8 _]Jessica Livingston, PG: Y-Combinator

============================

This was done after Sam Altman had taken over as president. They both talk
about their roles in founding the company and what the early days were like.
At the time, one of the few interviews with Jessica that was publicly
available.

===========================

    
    
      Instructional Series
    

===========================

[6]Sam Altman How to Start A Startup

=======================================

One of the best resources explaining how startups work and the important parts
of both the product and the business aspects. Interesting class by Adora Chung
of the now defunct Homejoy, which is insightful both because she is super
smart, and you can retroactively post-mortem the company and apply her own
advice to the company.

[7]Stanford/GreyLock CS183C Blitzscaling

===================================

Similar to Altman's how to start a startup. Interviews great founders and
provides a more instructional look at how to think about startups, technology
and the key components of products and businesses.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxF-
mxuv4uI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxF-mxuv4uI)

[1][http://www.foundation.biz](http://www.foundation.biz)

[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI)

[3][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WBX6SACViI)

[4][https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/khan-
academ...](https://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/khan-academy-
living-room-chats/v/elon-musk)

[5][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG3ppXsfzqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG3ppXsfzqU)

[6][http://startupclass.samaltman.com](http://startupclass.samaltman.com)

[7][https://medium.com/notes-essays-cs183c-technology-enabled-
bl...](https://medium.com/notes-essays-cs183c-technology-enabled-blitzscalin)

[8][http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2014-10-10/paul-
graham-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2014-10-10/paul-graham-
jessica-livingston-studio-10-1009)

_ Numbering system deviates as new editions added.

~~~
sparkzilla
You may be interested in newslines I made of Paul Graham, Sam Altman and
Jessica Livingston. [http://newslines.org/paul-
graham/](http://newslines.org/paul-graham/) [http://newslines.org/jessica-
livingston/](http://newslines.org/jessica-livingston/)
[http://newslines.org/sam-altman/](http://newslines.org/sam-altman/)

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pygy_
I first parsed the title as _[Jessica Livingston ... Accident...]_ and was
briefly worried.

