YC on Going Remote with Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator

Entrepreneur Talks by STATION F

Last April, the world's leading accelerator Y Combinator announced that it would be going virtual for its S20 batch. One batch later, we interview YC President Geoff Ralston to learn about the difference that going remote has made. It turns out that there are more pros than cons: YC partners were able to work with companies in over 15 time zones, complete 50% more individual and group office hours than in previous batches (3600 hours in total), and chat with all of the teams in realtime (over 250,000 Slack messages were sent during the batch). Its Virtual Demo Day was also incredibly successful and out performed many in person Demo Days from years past — with over 28,000 introductions made between investors and founders.

Note: this episode was recorded one week before the US Inauguration Day.

Topics:

00:22 — Introduction by Roxanne Varza

01:19 — What the remote program at YC looks like

05:08 — Examples of successful YC companies that started remote prior to the appearance of COVID: Zapier and Git Lab

05:48 — What works well remotely and what doesn’t

07:16 — On YC’s virtual Demo Day

08:17 — YC adopting a hybrid mode after COVID

09:31 — On ecosystems

11:18 — Tech trends accelerated by COVID

12:50 — Some top companies at YC that benefited from the shift to digital: examples of Instacart and Stripe

15:12 — How tech solutions have helped make COVID easier*

15:55 — How YC has evolved over its 16 years of existence

19:20 — What’s next for YC?

20:20 — Geoff’s background and how he got to YC

22:27 — Geoff on his role as President of YC

24:28 — The effect of COVID on investing

25:19 — Geoff’s perspective on the Bay Area exodus

27:06 — What the Biden presidency means for tech

This episode is hosted by Roxanne Varza and produced by Cindy Yang. Art is by Gaëtan Lefebvre.

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