

Welcome Geoff - pg
http://ycombinator.posterous.com/welcome-geoff

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socratic
Is there anywhere to read more about Geoff's Rocketmail experience?

In _Founders_ _at_ _Work_ , Sabeer Bhatia (who co-founded Hotmail) paints a
pretty awkward picture of Four11. According to the interview, Rocketmail
started out as a directory service (I guess, hence "Four11"). They were
Hotmail's partner, providing them with a searchable directory of other users.
But then through the partnership Four11 found out how many users Hotmail was
getting and decided to compete directly by making Rocketmail. Things were
apparently especially awkward because both Hotmail and Four11 were funded by
DFJ!

Anyway, it would be really interesting to hear the other version of events.
(Hotmail and Rocketmail were competitors after all.) Obviously, being in
webmail rather than directory services was the right call, but how did Four11
decide to switch and what were the interpersonal and business dynamics really
like?

~~~
pg
I don't know the details myself, but I would take that interview with a grain
of salt: [http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about-
sa...](http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2009/02/a-note-about-sabeer-
bhatias-interview.html)

~~~
badclient
Agree. Knowing all that I have heard about Sabeer Bhatia _beside_ the link you
shared, I would take a random guy's word over Sabeer's any day. And I form
this opinion after talking with some people who know the guy first hand.

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twakefield
This is great news, congrats Geoff!

Having had the pleasure of working with Geoff, I really appreciate his ability
to quickly address the flaws in your product, strategy, presentations, etc.

He groks things almost instantly and gives really constructive criticism that
might sting a bit at first but adds a lot of value. Most valuable advice isn't
what you wanted/expected to hear, but you come away in a better position after
hearing it. He's really good at giving it.

He'll be a great addition to the team.

------
earbitscom
Geoff Ralston is the man. He was one of our YC mentors and is now an investor
in Earbits. He took the time to meet with us long before any formal YC
meeting, simply because he knew we were involved in music. His insights were
amazing and he doesn't bullshit you about anything. He's fun to work with and
brings a wide array of experiences to the startups he works with. YC just got
better - _is that possible?!_

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olivercameron
Geoff was one of my favorite partners at YC, so awesome to see him come on
full time. He has this intensity that really gets to the root of a problem, I
learnt a lot from him.

Congrats Geoff and YC!

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west1737
I've only known Geoff for a short while now, but this will be a huge benefit
to YC. Geoff has a great eye for product development and can really strip an
idea down to its core elements.

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krmboya
Ycombinator must really be an wonderful place to be in, with all these smart
people around.

I wish I knew how to get there from halfway around the world.

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jayzee
Geoff was great during office hours. Very high-energy and he would give really
valuable actionable feedback. Once when we complained about the volume of
suport email and time spent on customer support he strongly recommended that
we invest some time in building out a _great FAQ_. For some reason or the
other up to that point we had kept pushing it off, but his advice motivated us
to tackle the problem head on.

He would constantly make quick small suggestions like this, possibly even
obvious things, but his enthusiasm and excitement when he made the
suggestions, encouraged us to carry them out and it definitely helped us out.

Congrats Geoff and YC!

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Gaussian
Hey Geoff -- that's awesome!

Our company dwells in a weird business that sometimes defies logic. But Geoff
had two golden pieces of advice for us after listening to our story for only
two minutes in an office hours session. He's a stalwart sounding board. Big
addition.

------
zeratul
<http://ycombinator.com/people.html> needs updating. There are at least 3
people missing.

I would like to know if YC has data mining/analytics specialist that reviews
YC applications and helps people.

~~~
pg
Several YC partners (Robert Morris, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, and Aaron
Iba) know something about data mining. Geoff might too; I'm not sure. Aaron in
particular has been working on statistical analyses of YC applications
themselves.

------
wuster
Congrats to Geoff! We're looking forward to working with him at ImagineK12 to
build out our edu product. In two offices hours so far, he's given us some
hard hitting feedback about our customer development progress, so we've taken
that to heart and "left the building" to talk to our potential users, not just
relying on phone/email/social media like we were before.

I hope YC doesn't steal away -too- much of his attention ... =)

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tedkalaw
Congratulations Geoff!

Geoff is an incredible product guy, and an even more incredible person. Every
office hours we had with him during ImagineK12 he gave us a good old-fashioned
hustling...prepare yourselves, YC.

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aravindc
Welcome Geoff, I have nostalgic memories of RocketMail!

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ivankirigin
Can a startup do YC and Imagine K12 in parallel?

~~~
pg
One is now. It's an experiment.

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channelmeter
I was huge fan of Rocketmail as it had a much cleaner interface than Hotmail
or Juno. Congrats to Geoff!

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dmragone
Wow, you guys are on a roll with bringing in new folk! Congrats to everyone

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Karhan
My name is Geoff and I've found this to be a strange thread.

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PStamatiou
Grats Geoff!

