Helping founders make something people want.
During my tenure at Y Combinator, I embraced the challenges of an ever-changing landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a shift to a fully remote model for YC's accelerator program, and we swiftly adapted by leveraging software to scale.
We took immediate action, revamping YC's internal software infrastructure and enhancing our public-facing content. Through our Work at a Startup platform, we empowered founders to scale their teams effectively.
One of my contributions was the redesign of Startup School, a platform to attract the next generation of visionary founders. As a result, nearly 50% of the companies in YC's current batches are graduates of our free 7-week program.
Throughout this transformative period, Y Combinator demonstrated its unwavering determination and resilience. It was an honor to be part of YC's growth during this pivotal time, reaffirming my belief in the power of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Early Stage Design
During the batch, many companies would reach out to work with me on understanding design, how to hire designers, and how to launch and grow a product. While I can't divulge many details about those interactions, I designed a bootcamp and wiki for design that would help founders understand areas where they could improve and resources and strategies to solve problems.
After working across the YC ecosystem, I saw a few opportunities we could tackle as our batches were growing larger. We needed a better way to get YC startups exposure and press. Companies were launching on Product Hunt and Hacker News, as well as some other sites but it was difficult to see the latest YC launches by themselves. I also felt there was an opportunity to allow the founders to do some storytelling and portray the landscape of their product and market. Some companies also launch multiple products over the years so we needed something separate from their company page. I wanted to establish a 'Hello World' type of vibe to let founders show everyone that they're here and this is what they're up to, giving them YC's exposure to attract more customers, investors and job candidates. Launch YC was born, was #1 on Product Hunt and garnered some attention.
One of my first initiatives was advocating for using more real estate on YC's website for the advantage of our founders. I sought out to accomplish three things. First was to give exposure to the YC startup categories and regions in which we invested in startups. We wanted the world to know we weren't just investing in Silicon Valley startups, we invest in emerging sectors like Biotech and Crypto, as well as places like India, Singapore and Nigeria. Second was to help gain possible customer, investor and candidate interest through YC's organic SEO traffic alone for those company's keywords. Third was new websites need to build trust and legitimacy. It's why some new emails will get sent to spam. A high ranking website linking to a freshly minted domain will boost its SEO juice.
After the protests began in June 2020 after George Floyd was murdered, I immediately went to the team and asked how we can do better. It seems so simple but with how large of an audience YC reaches, the more ways we sliced the companies, the more discoverable they become. Surfacing companies founded by Black, LatinX and Women was just the beginning.
