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Ask HN: Restarting the YC Podcast – who would be most interesting to listen to?

149 points by craigcannon ↗ HN
Hey HN.

I’m Craig. I work at YC. We’re starting the podcast up again and want your input.

Who do you think we should interview?

We’re open to all suggestions but maybe these prompts will help:

- Who has shaped technology and hasn’t done many interviews?

- Who has an interesting take on the future and is building it?

- Who is just really interesting and you’d love to hear more from?

Thanks for your input. Can’t wait to see who this post surfaces :)

190 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] thread
gordon_freeman
I'd like to hear from Founders who have very interesting stories and journeys to share. I do not care if their products got traction,flopped or big hit. All I want to get is how can we as listeners can learn from their success or failures. Thanks for doing this.
craigcannon
Yup! Lmk if anyone is of particular interest to you.
gordon_freeman
So Airbnb founders for their grit and determination -- maxing out all their credit cards and even started selling political branded cereal boxes to keep the lights on.

Dollar Shave Club on their growth strategies -- how they posted a product video which went viral and got started their business.

I know, these are the success ones but would also love to hear from founders whose apps/startups did not work out.

Again, it is great to see someone from HN getting this involved in getting suggestions and feedback. Thanks.

Looking forward to the podcast.

wasd
I really enjoyed the depth that Startup Podcast/Gimlet Media went with Dating Ring. In my opinion, there's a lot of great content you can cover in an hour but it's hard to cover new content given how many other podcasts there are.
craigcannon
So was it tracking a company that made it interesting or the fact that there was more than an hour of conversations with them?
wasd
I think it was a combination of both. By giving them more time, they were able to revisit topics and giving new perspectives. Also, more time meant more time to get comfortable and share more intimate topics.
wwalser
Not the op but: Gimlet is very good at creating well put together and edited stories. That seasons is very human and dives headlong into the painful (and beautiful) parts of slowly grinding and iterating toward failure. Failure from an investor perspective at least, it ends up being a non-scalable, labor intensive lifestyle business that loads of people would be proud to have built.

It was the opposite of the YC podcast: I'm a human that grew up, I went to college X, Applied to YC, Tried X, Y but Z is the one that worked. Company is great we raised money.

wasd
Yes, wwalser articulated this much better than me.
craigcannon
Yup. We definitely will cover more than YC companies and success stories.

Fwiw, I do like the success stories but prefer a longer interview (90 min+) because you get a real sense of the person vs the PR version of them/their company.

severine
It would be great if you got graycat to spill the beans about his website.
tmaly
Craig, I really enjoyed the podcast, I am actually working my way through all of the old episodes during my commute.

I would really like to hear from founders that are still running the business and are still profitable.

Something like how posts on indiehackers.com but with more detail would be interesting.

craigcannon
Yeah, I like those stories as well.

In case it wasn't clear in the post, we aren't going to only interview people affiliated with YC. So feel free to suggest people/projects that come to mind.

nipung
Hey Craig,

I love podcasts, and as a matter of fact host one myself called Veni Vidi VC. Despite the shameless plug, I would love to hear from successful YC founders who have had exits.

The entire process is fascinating to me, including: - building a company - raising funds, and - making it ready to be absorbed as part of a corporation or better yet, becoming a public company

Infact, all founders from every startup in this list is interesting to me - https://mattermark.com/mattermark-startup-index-top-10-y-com....

craigcannon
K. Can you be more specific? Is it the post-exit stuff that's most interesting? Personally, I want to avoid telling stories that have already been widely documented.
nipung
Okay, if you want to focus on completely untold stories I believe every stories from every startup from Seed to Series A is interesting. For example - the process of figuring out a mission, testing out a product market fit, and pivoting to a product that is actually usable by customers would be uber cool to hear about.

Also would love to hear about YC projects that are not that famous - OpenAI, Smart Cities project, etc.

philip1209
I'd love to hear "office hour"-style stuff. Somebody who's having a problem, you work on solving it together, then maybe in a month you do a retro on how it worked. Might be cool to wait enough time that the episode has a "before and after" in the same episode.
craigcannon
Cool. We can definitely do that. Any particular size or type of company that interests you?
philip1209
I think the thing I'm looking for is relatability. There are many podcasts that idolize startups and founder life. The Dating Ring's podcast did the opposite and showed vulnerability. To me, that's why it was an interesting learning experience.

But to be specific - I think that small companies in make-or-break times would be most interesting. Also, everything looks easier in retrospect, but understanding the thought process and how they are balancing different options would be interesting to me.

kartikkumar
This. As great as it is to hear about sensational founders that have turned the world upside down, it is at times hard to relate to. It would be great to show the ground truth of what small companies have to go through, and having office-hours that help elucidate the thought processes to follow to make steps forward would be invaluable. The best podcast episodes I've heard (and I specifically say episodes because I don't think any show that I've heard has consistently achieved it) on this subject have just been really good at being down-to-Earth and relatable.
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vdnkh
Like NPR's car talk?
craigcannon
Haha. Yeah, sort of. Just hours and hours about setting up development environments :)
ejsilva
Agree, this is a fantastic idea.
qwertyuiop924
So... Car Talk?

You'ld need really good hosts, but it could be fun.

monk_e_boy
A company I worked for hired some expert dude who came in and shaped the company into something that could be purchased. That was very interesting.

That process that takes raw talent and startup chaos and turns it into something that will get acquired.

It'd be great to hear about that process from both sides. There must be some sort of mentor approach, of giving advice that will work for that company.

natdempk
What was the background of the expert? I am curious what skills and experience he had that led him to this line of work.
monk_e_boy
I'm not sure. It was a long time ago and I wasn't really involved in the process, I am a coder.

I think he had tried to sell his business and failed, but the company that wanted to buy his told him where he was going wrong. Then once his business was restructured and sold he got a job buying and chopping up businesses, restructuring them and selling them on.

He told us that we had a weird hierarchy and gave us some ballpark figures for new hires. So we needed 5 plebs to one middle manager, 4 or 5 middle managers to one senior manager and then a good board of directors. So we hired middle managers. Split the workforce between them. Hired some people to fill the board of directors, some were there in name only (people with PHDs) (cheap) and some with a lot of experience who actually advised and were more expensive to run. I seem to remember they were on the board of directors of a few local companies, so although they were expensive hires they did generate a lot of extra work. Like, good contracts with good margins.

At the end of it they had a company that ticked the right boxes for an acquisition, n coders, n/5 middle managers, etc etc, shove all that in a fancy powerpoint... what happened next was a mystery to me. But they did get purchased and made the owner multi-millionaires. The rest of us? Not so much. We had the choice to move 200 miles to our new offices or quit. :(

wwalser
I listened to all of the previous episodes and enjoyed the podcast. I'm glad you're getting it started back up. My only negative feedback would be that by the end it felt similar to what investors say about demo day. All of the companies stores were packaged up with a bow on them to the point that basically every story was the same by the end of the episode.

I get it, this is VC content marketing after all, you need people to believe that applying to YC, taking funding and going the VC route is the smart move for their company. However, if you can't find a way to break the monotony I can't imagine lots of people sticking with it.

General ideas: - If you want to tell stories, I like the idea that someone else mentioned, going multi-episode deep with a single company.

- If you want to be useful, things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzvmyMJEK4 are super valuable. YC would be nice, but I was going to start a company regardless. Learning what YC could or would do for me if I got in isn't valuable. Learning stuff that I can and probably should do with or without YC is super useful (which engenders me to like your brand).

- Have founders talk about tactics which helped them or consider a tactical episode once every N weeks? Amongst startup podcasts there's a lot of theory (platitudes?), "build something people want", "work harder", "software is eating the world" which is good and has it's place but there's a glut of it in the podcast/startup world. While chatting with YC partners after Startup School this year, the tactical advice was the stuff that stuck with me. I heard multiple tactical ideas repeated several times, things like "Get a phone number if possible, it's much better than email. Early founders under estimate phone calls." or "If you do cold email, you need to be sending 100 emails a day." and each time it was said, the group of people listening was surprised.

- 1:1, Qasar gives some of the most brutal but realistic responses to business ideas and whether or not they can be scaled quickly. I think he'd be a fun guest.

craigcannon
That's a good note. I'm now thinking of the podcast as more of a channel than a show. I.e. a place where we can try out multiple episode types.

Re: tactics. Maybe we just choose one particular topic per tactics episode and drill down on relevant strategies?

I guess we can include Qasar ;)

wwalser
Just don't let Justin join him. They'd clown too hard :p
guyInAustin
I like this idea with a combination of philip1209's idea above. Office hours but in depth planning and strategy, so the founders are getting the tactical advice and then we hear how it worked it. Might be hard to do but I would enjoy it a lot.
sndean
Not sure if this is within the podcast's scope or not:

Editas Medicine (http://www.editasmedicine.com/).

Or people from similar companies. Gene editing startups, essentially.

craigcannon
Definitely within the scope. Thanks for the specific suggestion.
bryanh
I'd suggest a "Car Talk" or "Ask This Old House" style call-in, submit-a-question format. Short, diverse segments that are listener guided (though sometimes the shows will have other prepped segments). These often border on the how-to side of things - but are deeply educational (and very successful) formats.
craigcannon
Cool. Seems like a lot of people want an office hours-style episode type.
giarc
I listened to the podcast and they did often mention that they were broadcasting and gave a call in number, but I don't recall them ever taking a call. I'm not sure if no one ever called in or if they just never took a call?
parsnipsumthing
There are so many start up podcasts that focus on the origin of the founders/company and how awesome they are and they all blur into one. Rocketship, Tim Ferris etc. Please don't do a podcast like that.

You guys have the clout to do something a bit more special and unique than just cool interviews with successful founders. And you probably don't have time to do all of the narrative shaping that Gimlet and other media companies do to find all the "quirky" stories that fill time. That's why something based around office hours makes so much sense. Y Combinator's office hours on youtube are amazing. You've even expanded office hours to non YC companies because you see how valuable they are to the start up community. This is another way of realizing that value.

kurttheviking
In addition to founder analysis and commentary, I think it would be useful to hear from industry veterans about ongoing challenges/opportunities in their industry and how new companies can/should attack them. In a similar vein, how does socio-economic and political change affect these opportunities (e.g. new legislation in certain markets allowing for new technologies and processes to gain traction).
craigcannon
I like that a lot.
kurttheviking
Another thought I had is something debate-like; if you've ever listened to the Intelligence Squared podcasts they basically take an issue and have two "teams" of two people debate the issue. From a start-up perspective it would be interesting to hear founders or veterans debate topics like "BitCoin is going to revolutionize micropayments". I'm not sure if this is a good idea or a terrible idea but I thought I'd put it out there for discussion.
craigcannon
Totally. I love when people make public bets. One of the episode ideas I drafted was along those lines re: AI.

What topics would you want to hear discussed?

markovbling
I'd love to hear more detail - the past podcasts were interesting but largely fluff.

Maybe post a thread on HN asking for volunteers who post a description of their startup and you do live office hours with the highest voted startup each week.

On the question of who it would be cool to hear from, I'd love to hear from YC alums talking about their YC experience, not just a sentence about it but going into detail about mistakes they made and things that helped.

craigcannon
K. What about the YC experience do you want to know more about?
markovbling
Assuming you were in YC: 1. Give examples of things you were advised to do differently that added value 2. What did you notice in other startups from your batch that made them succeed? 3. What did you notice in other startups from your batch that made them fail? 4. Any funny stories? 5. What would you have done differently over the course of the YC program if you could do it over again?
kriro
I'd love to have a team you accepted on the podcast right after they got accepted and at various stages of the process (at the very least sometime before demo day and shortly after). Basically get a view into the expectations and what helped them most etc.
andr
It could be useful to have "horizontal" episodes around a problem, e.g. three companies that survived a founder leaving.
RickS
"Talk to users" and the surrounding processes/changes/workflows. There's no such thing as "too deep" on this. I'd pay for a podcast where it's JUST that, with a new test every week.
craigcannon
k
codinghorror
Hey I am an expert on talking to users! That's how we built Stack Overflow, and now Discourse! Pick me. Me me me.
jkingsbery
I love hearing Russ Roberts of econ talk (http://www.econtalk.org/), but he's almost always interviewing someone. It would be cool to hear him because (1) he interviews a lot of people who either write about or are involved in building the future (automation, driverless cars, sharing economy, etc.), and (2) he has a different perspective on how to approach problems making him interesting to listen to.
ejsilva
I would love to hear from the right hand support teams for growing tech companies (Tesla, Amazon, Google, etc.). What makes them great support staff for founders, and how do you either look for such people, and/or if you are one, kick butt in your role. Thanks!
craigcannon
yeah, I like stories from behind the scenes people as well
cbau
I really liked hearing the information that was hard to find elsewhere: mostly the story of the company's founding and early days, and their analysis of their markets. Was very useful when interviewing within YC's portfolio!
giarc
I agree - I think a podcast of company origins would be great. I think that teaches entrepreneurs more than hearing about their thoughts on the future or other unrelated markets.
dzink
Tactical steps YC startups have taken to jump through any one of the de-risking steps: https://codingvc.com/how-to-de-risk-a-startup/ would be fantastic. Especially stories of creative jumps. You could do a poll of the YC network internally and have people share stories that then get mentioned per-problem or per-industry over time. A discussion underneath could allow others to share stories as well - beyond the YC network (that may allow you guys to spot interesting potential applicants and keep people engaged).

Generic advice is abundant and far less helpful. Individual founders could do episodes as well, but it's hard to be genuine and talk about the hard stuff when your startup's identity is affected - especially in front of customers and investors.

By focusing on a problem - the contributing founders can chose to get credit or stay anonymous with their answers. You could also do an episode on just cool "Tell us about a time when you've hacked a non-computer system." answers and it would be a great listen.

lpolovets
As the author of the linked post I'm a little biased, but I love this idea. I think anonymous stories about concrete things founders do to de-risk their ideas would be a really interesting subject, and potentially very useful.
joshdotsmith
I would also really like to hear stories like this. Was so enthralled by Leo's post I ended up making a template for derisking: https://blog.codecorps.org/lower-your-startup-risk-with-this...

These are learnings that doesn't just flit by me. They're not filler. They profoundly change the way I work precisely because of the depth and detail, along with their actionability. Applied learning is by far what I want to hear.

mars4rp
a radio shrink kind of format would be interesting, people outside the YC can call in with their startup problems and YC partners answer it.
nl
I'd love to hear YC Partners (and some founders) have discussions about areas where they have great expertise and passion.
giarc
>Who is just really interesting and you’d love to hear more from?

I'd actually like you to tell me who is interesting. I'd like to hear fun/interesting stories from YC companies. Perhaps there are great stories of companies that flamed out or failed to build a product and therefore we have never heard of them. I want to hear about those people just as much as I want to hear about Dropbox/Airbnb/Stripe et al.

qwertyuiop924
It does have to be VC focused, doesn't it?

Ah well. We may not all be VCs, but it is your business.

jfornear
Some ideas:

Antonio García Martínez, author of Chaos Monkeys.

Bobby Goodlatte on Facebook's news feed algorithm and the election.

Peter Thiel on Trump and what's next, etc.

Justin Edmond on early Pinterest and diversity in Silicon Valley.

Dann Petty on Epicurrence and design culture in Silicon Valley.

Kim-Mai Culter on Initialized Capital and housing in the Bay Area.

atmosx
I would be very interested in Thiel's take on:

    * Trump presidency, what the tech/startup should expect from the new Gov.
    * His views on privacy and ethics (I know, Palantir and everything, but that's why it makes so interesting to hear from him)
    * His take on the top-10 technologies of the future
grzm
Just FYI: Using code formatting to quote long lines of text makes it really hard to read, particularly on mobile.
atmosx
Will keep that in mind.
equalarrow
Agreed. I'm still scratching my head on why he would back Trump. Reading Zero to One right now and it's great.

But, I guess there's just stuff I don't know about Trump that would make Thiel support him. I'm not trying to say this in a negative way - I just am trying to figure out the connection(s).

So if you could get him on a podcast talking about this, it would be awesome!

grzm
There are plenty of discussions on HN about this, including references to talks and writings by Peter Thiel, if you're interested. You could probably get a pretty good idea into why he did. Two references off the top of my head that would be particularly on topic would be his keynote at the RNC and the National Press Club interview.

RNC keynote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTJB8AkT1dk

National Press Club interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob-LJqPQEJ4

craigcannon
Cool. Thanks for the specific suggestions!
exolymph
Hearing about failures (whether micro or macro) is almost always more interesting than hearing about successes.
doublerebel
I'm interested in hearing more from serial technical founders. They're usually quite busy and don't blog or do interviews as often as the CEOs.

For instance, I just started using LogDNA and was really impressed by the product, looked up the team and discovered it's Lee Liu's third(?) company. Alex Maccaw has had an influence on my career from his JS work and Stripe product, then Sourcing.io and now Clearbit. Max Krohn: SparkNotes, OkCupid, now Keybase, I still think Max's async solutions are some of the best in the business.

Writing code while growing a team and communicating with the other founders to build a product requires a smart balance. The technical choices made by these founders tend to be very efficient and easy to communicate to others. I would love to hear more from any of these founders (Thanks all for your work!), and I'm sure YC knows of more such founders I haven't yet discovered.

halite
I'll listen if Jessica Livingston interviews.
KerryJones
Slightly off topic, but something like the "Office Hours" that Kevin & Qasar did, more of a vlog, would be amazing. Favorite part of the event.