#112 - Ryan Hoover and Dalton Caldwell

Y Combinator

Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt which was in the Summer 2014 YC batch and was acquired by AngelList. He also invests in startups through his Weekend Fund.
Dalton Caldwell is a Partner at YC where he runs admissions.
Ryan is on Twitter at @rrhoover and Dalton is at @daltonc.
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

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Topics
00:27 - Ryan's intro
00:52 - Dalton's intro
1:27 - Forming Product Hunt and applying to YC
5:17 - Product Hunt's growth rate when they applied to YC
6:27 - Raising money for the right reasons
9:42 - Maker communities
11:27 - Why raise money for Product Hunt?
13:12 - Having buzz during the batch
18:12 - Brex changing their idea during YC
20:17 - Pivoting into something you know well
21:32 - In retrospect, how would Ryan have advised himself around monetization?
28:27 - Trying to build out other verticals
34:27 - Don't act like you have infinite runway
35:57 - Creating urgency and developing products within AngelList
40:17 - Tips to launch on Product Hunt
45:07 - What Dalton looks for in applications
46:57 - Giving people the opportunity to start
48:47- What motivated Ryan to leave his job before Product Hunt