We help founders make something people want. The Y Combinator Podcast is where builders talk about building. From the earliest days of an idea to scaling a company that changes the world, YC partners and founders share real stories, lessons, and tactics from the frontlines.
Domonique Fines is the Director of Events at YC.
Cadran Cowansage is the cofounder and CEO of Elpha . Elpha is a private online community for women in tech.
Join Elpha to read Dom's AMA .
You can find Dom on Twitter at @domoniquefines and Cadran at @cadran_c .
***
Topics
00:30 - Dom’s intro
00:50 - How Dom started in events and her background
2:25 - Deciding to not go to law school
3:55 - Choosing to work on tech events
6:00 - Outreach to underrepresented founders
9:15 - Common misconceptions about getting into tech
10:35 - University outreach
11:55 - Identifying problems to fix and not being blocked
14:35 - Reflecting on accomplishments
15:40 - Dom’s career plans
17:10 - Will Dom do a startup?
17:35 - Avoiding burnout
20:55 - The importance of just getting started
Mike Knoop is cofounder and Chief Product Officer at Zapier , which was in the YC Summer 2012 batch. Zapier moves information between your web apps automatically.
Kevin Hale is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before YC Kevin was the cofounder of Wufoo, which was funded by YC in 2006 and acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011.
You can find Mike on Twitter at @mikeknoop and Kevin at @ilikevests .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:43 - Kevin's intro
01:03 - Mike's intro
2:03 - How Mike and Kevin met
4:03 - Market sizing for consumer software
5:13 - Zapier's growth strategy today vs 2012
6:28 - Jumpstarting a platform like Zapier
9:03 - Building an app directory before building a product
11:03 - Applying to YC twice
13:23 - Zapier after Demo Day
14:48 - Zapier's first remote hire
16:48 - Remote companies not being perceived as legitimate
18:48 - Noticing remote was working then committing
21:28 - Qualities to look for when hiring remote employees
24:28 - Nina Mehta asks - What’s the best way to share work and knowledge across designers working on different parts of product without distracting from focused working time?
25:58 - Remote mistakes in the early days
27:33 - When to change modes of communication to allow for deep work
29:28 - When to ask for someone's full attention
31:33 - Product and design practices at Zapier
34:38 - OKRs for teams vs individuals
39:48 - Tools for remote teams
43:48 - No internal email at Zapier
46:53 - Keeping morale high in a remote team
49:28 - What happens at a Zapier retreat
51:43 - Remote design critiques
56:43 - Serendipity and over optimizing for it
58:33 - Setting up a remote company for success
Karn Saroya is the CEO and cofounder of Cover , which was in the YC Winter 2016 batch.
Cover is a nationally licensed insurance brokerage. You can use their app to take a picture of property you want to insure and they’ll connect you with their insurance partners so that you can get the best price and coverage.
You can find Karn on Twitter at @karnsaroya .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:36 - Karn’s intro
01:01 - Using computer vision to identify and catalogue property
2:28 - How Karn ended up starting Cover
3:48 - Being a maker vs. an advisor
5:58 - Stylekick, Karn’s previous startup
9:28 - Joining Shopify
10:08 - How the idea for Cover happened
11:58 - The capital-light way to start an insurance business
16:28 - Underwriting
17:58 - Lead generation
20:18 - Product development
21:28 - Buying Cover.com for $750k
24:53 - Being engaged to a cofounder
28:43 - Managing two offices and cultures
30:58 - Being an international founder in YC
31:58 - Advice to people in the current batch of YC
Caterina Fake hosts the podcast Should This Exist? which is about how technology is impacting our humanity. It launches today on iTunes . She also cofounded Flickr, Hunch, and Findery and is an investor at Yes VC .
Kat Manalac is a partner at YC.
You can find Caterina on Twitter at @Caterina and Kat at @KatManalac .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:32 - Caterina's new podcast, Should This Exist?
2:32 - Is there a process for considering if something should exist?
4:02 - Who should be part of these conversations?
5:17 - Wait But Why and the Human Colossus
7:22 - Episode 1 of Should This Exist?
10:17 - Having conversations before things exist
11:42 - How might employees think about their role in whether or not something should exist?
14:32 - Caterina reflecting on her creations and if they should exist
19:02 - Considering whether things should exist as investors
23:32 - Cofounder charter - What you will and won't do
26:03 - Questioning the VC model
27:22 - Working on Wall St, feeling herself change, and quitting
31:22 - Caterina as a student
34:02 - Peculiarity and entrepreneurship
35:22 - "Don't fight to win prizes that aren't worth winning"
38:32 - What was once fringe is now mainstream
40:52 - Kat looking up to Lea Salonga
42:42 - Evgeny asks - How did she get her first 100 paying users?
49:27 - How does she advise founders to find investors?
54:47 - What questions should founders ask themselves while making something?
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 .
***
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
Jake Klamka founded Insight . Insight provides intensive 7 week professional training fellowships in fields such as data science and data engineering. Insight was in the YC Winter 2011 batch.
Kevin Hale is a Visiting Partner at YC. Before YC Kevin was the cofounder of Wufoo, which was funded by YC in 2006 and acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011.
You can find Jake on Twitter at @jakeklamka and Kevin at @ilikevests .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:37 - Kevin's intro
01:07 - Jake's intro
1:42 - Applying to YC with one product then changing it
4:07 - How Insight started
4:57 - Jake's first students and initial coursework
8:37 - Finding out what companies want from data scientists
10:37 - Picking the first class of students
12:07 - Common pitfalls for people transitioning into data science
15:07 - Types of data science roles
17:22 - What data scientists should look out for in companies
18:17 - Chuck Grimmett asks - When do you know you need to bring in seasoned data scientists?
20:37 - How Insight has scaled and changed
22:37 - What happens in the program
23:57 - Examples of a good project for a data science resume
26:27 - Will more data scientists be founders in the future?
28:37 - Teaching product
29:37 - Cleaning data
32:07 - Tools for tracking data
32:57 - Track what are you trying to optimize
35:57 - Churn and conversion
39:37 - Is there an ideal background for a data scientist?
41:37 - Which startups recruit well at Insight?
43:37 - Contracting
46:17 - Fields Jake is excited about
Avni Patel Thompson founded Poppy, which helped parents book the best caregivers. They went through the YC Winter 2016 batch and recently shut down. Avni asked to come on the podcast to talk about what the process of shutting down was like.
Kat Manalac is a partner at YC.
You can find Avni on Twitter at @APatelThompson and Kat at @KatManalac .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - @CraigCannon .
***
Topics
00:35 - Kat’s intro
01:15 - Avni’s intro
2:15 - When did it become clear that scaling Poppy wasn’t working?
5:50 - Experiments Avni tried with Poppy
9:55 - The last six months of runway
13:25 - Choosing to shut Poppy down
17:25 - Pivot or shut down?
20:10 - Who did Avni have these hard conversations with?
24:35 - Communicating with investors during the process of shutting down
31:20 - How does Avni feel since shutting down Poppy?
38:30 - Tying self-worth to your accomplishments and how it feels after shutting down
39:30 - “This is what trying looks like.”
44:00 - The effects of having raised money
46:00 - Starting to think about what’s next
49:00 - Struggling with unstructured nothing
49:45 - Kindness
Samantha Bradshaw is a researcher at the Computational Propaganda Project and a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute . She’s been tracking the phenomenon of political manipulation through social media.
You can find Samantha on Twitter at @sbradshaww .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
:53 - What is a bot?
2:53 - When computational propaganda began
3:53 - Changes in bot tactics since 2016
5:53 - Using bots for content creation
7:28 - WhatsApp and the upcoming Indian election
9:23 - Trends in computational propaganda
10:53 - How bots integrate into platforms
13:23 - Responsibilities of platforms to remove fake accounts
14:53 - The role of governments in media manipulation
18:18 - Fake news and selecting news that aligns with your beliefs
19:53 - Are platforms getting better or worse?
21:33 - Samantha's personal internet habits
23:03 - Sentiment around tracking in the UK vs the US
24:23 - The Mueller report and US midterms
29:18 - Canadian elections
30:18 - 2020 US elections
30:53 - Deepfakes
31:48 - Optimistic thoughts for the future
33:08 - How to help against computational propaganda
Cindy Mi is the founder and CEO of VIPKID . VIPKID is a 1-on-1 teaching platform where children in China learn english from North American teachers.
Qi Lu is the CEO of YC China and Head of YC Research.
***
Topics
00:23 - Qi's intro
00:38 - Cindy's intro
1:38 - Moving to a new province as a teenager
4:38 - Being an educator and an entrepreneur
8:23 - Starting VIPKid in a hyper-competitive market
14:53 - Metrics for measuring product market fit
21:43 - How did she find the business model?
26:53 - What things did she try that didn't work?
30:38 - Strategy for product expansion
33:03 - Content expansion for Mandarin learning
34:53 - Building global companies
41:23 - Creating a global culture
44:13 - The future of education
48:08 - How should engineers and product managers think about edtech?
51:33 - Thoughts on AI
54:33 - Advice for entrepreneurs
Vinod Khosla is the founder of Khosla Ventures , a firm focused on assisting entrepreneurs to build impactful new energy and technology companies. Previously he was the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems, where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors.
How to Build the Future is hosted by Sam Altman .
***
Topics
00:30 - Vinod’s intro
01:20 - A zero-million-dollar company vs a zero-billion-dollar company
4:20 - What percentage of investors in Silicon Valley are good long-term company builders?
4:50 - Who has earned the right to advise an entrepreneur?
6:50 - Which risk to take when
7:20 - Helpful board members
8:15 - Who to trust for what advice
11:00 - First principles thinking and rate of change
13:00 - Evaluating a candidate in an interview
14:15 - How much should a founder have planned and how ambitious should a founder be?
16:30 - Recruiting great people
19:00 - Building a phenomenal early team
20:20 - Being generous with early employee equity
27:00 - Gene pool engineering
27:18 - The art, science, and labor of recruiting
28:20 - How founders should think about investors
31:00 - Doers vs pontificators
32:00 - What does Vinod want to do in the next ten years?
32:10 - Reinventing Societal Infrastructure with Technology
Frank Lantz is a game designer and Director of the NYU Game Center . He cofounded Area/Code Games and most recently released a game called Universal Paperclips in which you’re an AI that makes paperclips.
Frank’s on Twitter @flantz and his site is franklantz.net .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:27 - "Games are the aesthetic form of thinking and doing"
6:57 - VR skepticism
9:42 - Universal Paperclips
14:27 - Explaining games to non-gamers
20:12 - Competitive gaming
22:57 - Building life lessons into games
31:42 - Teaching game design
36:17 - Inspiration, hard work, and taste
39:17 - Darker sides of gaming culture
43:07 - The indie game market
45:27 - Unexpected trends in gaming
49:17 - Benedict Fritz asks - Frank you seem much more interested in chess, go, poker, and other games with a long history than most game designers. Where do you think this comes from?
52:12 - Esports
55:37 - Inventing sports
57:27 - Pokemon Go
1:00:32 - Difficulty in predicting successes in entertainment
1:03:17 - Frank's game recommendations
1:05:47 - @fakebalenciaga asks - Why Tonto?
Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis are the founders of AptDeco , where you can buy and sell used furniture. They were in the YC Winter 2014 batch and you can find them at AptDeco.com .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
0:21 - What is AptDeco?
1:06 - Why did Reham and Kalam start it?
2:51 - Were they considering other ideas?
5:06 - How did they prepare to start AptDeco after business school/the corporate world?
6:21 - Getting over the fear of starting
9:21 - Communicating that they're starting something to friends and family
14:21 - Starting a startup after business school
17:21 - Helpful learnings from a more traditional business education
27:21 - Early models of AptDeco vs today
31:51 - AptDeco's customers
34:06 - Brands and customer acquisition
38:46 - Learning how to do delivery
42:06 - Deciding not to warehouse furniture
43:51 - Ideas that didn't work and some that worked on the second attempt
48:21 - Analytics
50:51 - Being a NYC company in YC
52:11 - How to make the most of YC
Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University and he’s regarded as one of the fathers of string theory.
He’s written several books including: The Black Hole War , The Cosmic Landscape , and the Theoretical Minimum series .
He also has over 100 lectures on YouTube .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
0:26 - Being perceived as an outsider physicist
4:26 - The perils of becoming too mainstream
6:11 - Where his ideas come from
7:26 - Claudio asks - Do you think the graviton can be experimentally found?
10:11 - The origins of String Theory
15:41 - Why should there be a grand unified theory?
16:56 - Quantum mechanics and gravity
20:16 - Large unanswered questions in physics
27:56 - Holographic principle
38:26 - Simulation hypothesis
40:41 - Richard Feynman on philosophy
42:26 - Feynman and the bomb
46:26 - Improving the world by discovering what the world is
49:26 - ER and EPR - Black holes and entanglement
56:26 - Noah Hammer asks - Could quantum teleportation be used in the future as a means of intergalactic communication?
58:26 - rokkodigi asks - How do you think quantum theory will shape technology in the future?
1:01:56 - Why teach physics for the public?
Michael Seibel is a partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the winter 2012 batch.
In this episode Michael comments on five of his essays. The essays are: Why Should I Start a Startup? , One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup , The Real Product Market Fit , Users You Don’t Want , and Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?
Michael’s on Twitter @mwseibel .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
0:00 - Intro
0:42 - Why Should I Start a Startup?
2:00 - Three types of people: people highly motivated when working for themselves, people that could succeed starting a startup or within a big company, and people that could succeed within a big company.
6:00 - How do you decide what type of person you are?
7:30 - Identify bias in advice givers
10:30 - Peer advice becomes less valuable during college
14:40 - One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup
15:40 - People aren’t taught how to find ideas
17:20 - Find a particular problem that you’re passionate about
20:55 - Find some friends and brainstorm a solution
23:20 - Build an MVP
25:55 - Two failed orders of operations for starting a startup
29:57 - The Real Product Market Fit
30:57 - Why do many founders think they have product market fit when they don’t?
35:42 - Building a successful company is not a single variable problem
37:27 - Socialcam didn’t hit product market fit
38:37 - Justin.tv had $1M in profit before reaching product market fit
42:27 - Some companies take a long time
42:55 - Users You Don’t Want
44:25 - The spectrum of how users are using your product
45:55 - Users that take a lot of customer support time
48:50 - Don’t let the hijack users control the product roadmap
49:31 - Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?
50:31 - A team, a product, and an office are all just a means to an end
51:31 - If you don’t really deserve money, what is an alternate path to create leverage?
53:16 - Breaking even at Justin.tv was a moment of infinite clarity
55:31 - Series A program and leverage
Andrew Kortina is the cofounder of Venmo and Fin. Fin is a high quality, on-demand, personal assistant and executive assistant service.
You can get a $100 credit to try Fin at https://fin.com/yc
Andrew blogs at https://kortina.nyc/
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:32 - Human dignity and work
8:07 - Creating jobs
10:07 - From The Beautiful Struggle // The Beautiful Game - You might argue that we’re already in a sort of failure mode, where our ability to assign dignity to arbitrary work and motivate people to work bullshit jobs is more efficient than our ability to allocate labor towards industry that would have greater social benefit, like education, healthcare, food, etc. If we’re already in this failure mode, it’s kind of the worst of all worlds, because not only are we assigning meaning to work that doesn’t need to be done, but, also, we could be redeploying that labor towards efforts that are actually important today.
18:32 - Travel
21:02 - Why do we want to do anything?
22:07 - Life after Fin
25:17 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I want to preface this talk by warning you that it’s quite possible you’ll interpret much of this talk as cynicism. It is not my intention to be cynical. My goal is to treat you with respect by speaking to you honestly, without any grand illusions.
None of the companies trying to convince you to work for them will mention technological determinism. They will confirm what your parents and teachers told you, that your work and contribution will be totally unique and significant.
32:02 - From The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science - I recognize that the meditative aspect of craft is an excellent way to cope with meaninglessness
38:32 - Technological determinism
43:02 - Andrew's company Fin
48:17 - Ryan Hoover asks - When (if ever) will Fin task completion be 100% AI-driven?
49:32 - Differences between running Fin and Venmo
56:47 - Venmo's Lucas ads
58:32 - Spencer Clark asks - How did you and your co-founders decide to sell Venmo?
1:02:02 - Charlie Kaufman on Screenwriting - What I’m trying to express – what I’d like to express – is the notion that, by being honest, thoughtful and aware of the existence of other living beings, a change can begin to happen in how we think of ourselves and the world, and ourselves in the world.
1:08:30 - Get $100 credit to Fin at https://fin.com/yc
Brian Donohue is President of Instapaper and a Product Engineering Manager at Pinterest .
You can find him on Twitter @bthdonohue .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:19 - The history of Instapaper
8:19 - Free competitors enter the market
10:19 - How Brian joined Instapaper
14:34 - Transitioning from paid to freemium
19:19 - Pinterest's acquisition of Instapaper
26:34 - Moving to California
29:04 - Working on Instapaper within Pinterest
32:19 - Spinning Instapaper out of Pinterest
42:34 - Jareau Wadé asks - What types of product integrations could Pinterest have done with Instapaper?
50:04 - Ryan Hoover asks - I’m curious how he and the team balance simplicity with new feature development/product expansion.
54:19 - Raymond Durk asks - I love the rapid reading mode but would also love a voice enabled mode where the Google Assistant or Siri reads it. Speaking of I'd use it on my Google Home to listen to news if that was a skill.
57:39 - Brian Kim asks - Any growth hacks that worked well?
1:00:04 - Gustaf Alströmer asks - How does it make time for focused time to catch up on everything he saves? What are his best productivity hacks related to this?
1:03:44 - Backpacking
Sam Altman expands on ideas that have come up in several of his essays. Specifically: choosing projects, creating value, and finding purpose.
Sam’s the president of YC Group and co-chairman of OpenAI . You can find him on Twitter @sama .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
1:25 - From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short - Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it.
3:50 - Stepping back and evaluating your work
5:30 - Creating metrics for your projects
6:30 - Taking a year off
9:30 - Figuring out when to commit
11:30 - Poker
12:30 - From Productivity - Sleep seems to be the most important physical factor in productivity for me. Exercise is probably the second most important physical factor. The third area is nutrition.
15:00 - From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?"
16:30 - From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short - Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths.
17:30 - Perspective shifts
20:15 - From Productivity - My system has three key pillars: “Make sure to get the important shit done”, “Don’t waste time on stupid shit”, and “make a lot of lists”.
22:30 - What Happened to Innovation
24:50 - From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming - He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important.
26:50 - The deferred life plan doesn’t work
31:50 - From The Merge - Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing.
34:10 - Weight training
35:30 - The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello
Laura Deming is a partner at The Longevity Fund . They invest in companies that will allow us to live longer and healthier lives.
You can learn more about them at Longevity.vc .
Laura’s on Twitter @LauraDeming .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:22 - Why focus on longevity now?
2:12 - How did Laura get started in longevity?
3:22 - Why raise a fund?
5:52 - What does Laura do personally for longevity?
9:07 - Worm and mouse studies
10:44 - Craig's personal habits
12:37 - Human studies
15:22 - Mica asks - Do you think immortality is going to be achieved by: 1. Curing all disease and stop aging so we could live with our own bodies forever 2. OR is going to be something like porting our brain, "mind" to a computer/robot?
17:37 - Most likely strategies to increase lifespan
19:47 - Ryan Hoover asks - Ask about the ethics of longevity. Jack J. Fernandes asks - Do people actually want to live longer?
21:44 - Mica asks - How would immortality change society? Wouldn't we become more complacent? Since we have "forever" to do things wouldn't that diminish our rate of innovation? And since less new individuals are being created we would have access to less new ideas. We would just stop creating new Newtons, Einsteins, Mozarts…
24:52 - Cognitive enhancement
25:52 - Daily habits
34:12 - Tech environment changes in the past 5-10 years
39:22 - What percentage of people in labs want to start companies?
41:37 - Pioneer
43:57 - Confidence
45:52 - Podcasting
49:12 - Choosing media to consume
52:17 - Sam Betesh asks - The last thing that led to a step function change in average life span was germ theory. What new areas of research might provide the next step function change?
55:07 - Extending fertility windows
57:22 - Jason Choi asks - What % of longevity is attributable to lifestyle choices vs genetics and the progress of technology in influencing both.
58:37 - Fatih asks - is blood transfusion a thing or just a hoax
1:00:42 - Rapamycin
1:02:27 - Testosterone
1:04:37 - Chris asks - Aubrey De Grey, IIRC, mentioned a number of times that we might, in the future, replace organs and tissues with new organic ones before they fail. Is this actually a reasonable idea, or is it more likely that we'll replace them with synthetic ones, if we replace them at all?
1:06:07 - Mica asks - Laura did a "cookie diet" for one month. Why did you do it? How did you feel? Doesn't it go against all the research on longevity? ;-)
1:08:07 - Is Laura actually not doing anything strange in her diet?
Shola Akinlade is CEO and cofounder of Paystack . Paystack helps businesses in Africa get paid online and offline. They’re based in Lagos, Nigeria and were part of the Winter 2016 batch.
Shola’s on Twitter @shollsman .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:26 - What is Paystack?
01:06 - Shola's background and previous company
4:26 - Paystack's YC application
6:01 - Meeting his cofounder
7:26 - Interviewing at YC
10:21 - Joining YC as a Nigerian company
10:56 - Differences between startups in Nigeria and the US
13:26 - Nigeria's payments market
15:56 - Paystack's growth
19:26 - Expanding to other countries and hiring
25:26 - The best part of doing YC
29:26 - Crypto developments in Africa
30:21 - Creative Joe asks - How difficult is it to get into YC?
30:56 - Educating US investors
32:06 - Paul Israel asks - What gaps do you think still exist in the Nigerian fintech space?
33:01 - Nelson asks - Are there any conventional startup advice that did not work for Paystack as their target market is Africa?
35:21 - Nelson asks - What are some important lessons he learnt while building Paystack?
37:46 - Nelson asks - What are some applications he would love to see been built on top of Paystack?
39:56 - Building for Africa
42:16 - Nestor Ezeagu asks - Do you think something like GoFundMe could work in Nigeria?
42:46 - Car Joyy asks - Can I receive payments as an MVP ecommerce site before registering as a company?
44:06 - Achyut Shrestha asks - What’s your tech stack?
44:41 - Jordan Jackson asks - What are the biggest cultural differences that you account for in UX and product design?
48:41 - Shola's outlook
50:36 - What he misses about life before Paystack
52:51 - Paystack in five years
54:16 - Music recommendations
David Hua is CEO and cofounder of Meadow . Meadow makes retail and delivery software for dispensaries. They were part of the Winter 2015 batch. You can check them out at GetMeadow.com . David’s on Twitter @Hua .
Vincent Ning is CEO and cofounder of Nabis . Nabis is a cannabis services group. They offer distribution, logistics, sales, and marketing. You can check them out at GetNabis.com . Vincent's on Twitter @vcning .
The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon .
***
Topics
00:38 - What David brought with him
5:48 - Microdosing
6:48 - What are people buying?
10:38 - Customer demographics
12:00 - CBD
14:58 - Changing vocabulary around cannabis
17:13 - What is Meadow?
17:38 - What is Nabis?
17:53 - Why did they choose to not do cannabis product manufacturing?
22:38 - Fundraising as a cannabis company
26:08 - Why is there not one dominant cannabis company?
29:53 - Legalization across Canada
31:38 - Banking as a cannabis company
36:13 - Taxes
37:38 - Price sensitivity
40:14 - Brand loyalty
43:23 - What will the market look like in 5-10 years?
50:08 - Cannabis media
52:23 - Psychedelics
56:38 - Exonerations and social equity programs
