Great essay. Besides setting the record straight on Jessica's key role in the founding and growth of YC, it also offers a rare glimpse into how and why YC became the juggernaut it is today.
"The overall atmosphere was shockingly different from a VC's office on Sand Hill Road, in a way that was entirely for the better."
The rest of the essay is filled with words like family, mom, character, culture, authenticity, good(ness), social radar etc. Words you would hardly ever associate with a successful business - let alone a big time, successful VC firm on Sand Hill Road or anywhere else. It sounds like a crazy way to run a company based on such fuzzy concepts. But remarkably, these soft, fuzzy concepts appear to be a key part of YC's huge success - and not some cold, calculated decision making. In a way this bears out one of PG's other theories - that hugely successful startups usually start out with ideas that look really bad or crazy. And in YC's case, the most successful startup to come out of YC may be regarded as YC itself!
Edit: Would like to add a key part of their approach seems to have been to throw out the old, tried and true approach, think from first principles and build the company and culture in a way that they felt comfortable with - and not how it was "supposed to be done".
"The overall atmosphere was shockingly different from a VC's office on Sand Hill Road, in a way that was entirely for the better."
The rest of the essay is filled with words like family, mom, character, culture, authenticity, good(ness), social radar etc. Words you would hardly ever associate with a successful business - let alone a big time, successful VC firm on Sand Hill Road or anywhere else. It sounds like a crazy way to run a company based on such fuzzy concepts. But remarkably, these soft, fuzzy concepts appear to be a key part of YC's huge success - and not some cold, calculated decision making. In a way this bears out one of PG's other theories - that hugely successful startups usually start out with ideas that look really bad or crazy. And in YC's case, the most successful startup to come out of YC may be regarded as YC itself!
Edit: Would like to add a key part of their approach seems to have been to throw out the old, tried and true approach, think from first principles and build the company and culture in a way that they felt comfortable with - and not how it was "supposed to be done".