Insights from Geoff Ralston, Y Combinator’s President that you can’t afford to miss

Geoff Ralston, President of Y Combinator spoke to over 150 members of the Xoogler.co community on Thursday April 23, 2020. I invited Geoff and moderated the discussion as he gave me an incredible learning experience when I was his student at Y Combinator’s Startup Investor School in 2018, held at their Silicon Valley office. You can watch the videos here, I highly recommend any founders, investors or anyone interested in technology to watch them.

Be sure to apply to Y Combinator if you have the slightest inclination to start a company after reading the summary of my conversation with Geoff. He would also love to know which applications from the Xoogler community should be given a closer look, Xooglers/Googlers, you can email [email protected]. If you’re looking to join a startup, check out the Y Combinator startups they have listed that are hiring. You could be an early employee of the next Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart or Dropbox.

10 Things You Should Know

1. There is no magic startup that doesn’t struggle. Prepare yourself on how to best handle it

Write code, talk to users and exercise. 

Doing a startup is the hardest thing you can do in your professional life.

Build something that people want, find product market fit, grow, find the best possible team and do not quit.

2. You can apply to Y Combinator past the deadline

While the odds to get in are higher the earlier you apply, startups have been admitted even after the start date. If it gets too late, it probably makes more sense to apply for the next batch for you to get the full value of Y Combinator, otherwise, keep applying.

3. What we look for in a Y Combinator application

The video is very important and it’s the first thing that I look at. We are looking for founders of future epic companies who are tough, smart, formidable and seeing how you talk to us is one way to evaluate it, especially seeing how you present is important. You as the founder is more important than the idea.

4. Fundraising

Valuations will get compressed due to COVID-19 and if you’ve raised, you should plan to survive for a longer period of time and expect to take longer to close your next round. You will likely have to speak to 2-4 times the number of investors, it will take longer and expect a worse valuation than you expected. Startups that are trying to figure out product market fit will find it hard to raise.

5. Storytelling

You need to be able to persuade investors, co-founders, customers, team members and others to build a successful startup. Xoogler and Y Combinator Partner, Paul Buchheit asks founders to imagine you’ve gone into the DeLorean time machine and it is 10 years in the future and you’ve built an epic company. What is that company and sell that vision. You first need to be able to sell yourself how you’ve built a $100 Billion company, then you can persuade others. 

To improve in telling your story, find someone that is good at condensing and making it clear and able to pull out the important ideas. As you tell them your story, your story gets better, especially if you tell your story over and over again. That’s how Y Combinator’s pitches for Demo Day improve.

6. What happens if you’re not charismatic? 

You don’t need to be charismatic to be successful. You just need to make something that people want and have enough smarts to recognize real problems and a desire to solve them. You can practice to tell your story and build a really good product, you don't need to be charismatic in the stereotypical way.

If you do feel having charisma is that important, you could also find a co-founder who is charismatic and is compatible with you. You should find a co-founder that is not necessarily only skillset compatible, but is someone that you're able to work with in close quarters over a long period of time, and not hate each other. This is the most common reason why startups fail in the early days, that’s why we ask if you have worked together before in the Y Combinator application.

7. Is bootstrapping a good idea?

Some companies can be bootstrapped but some can’t, even if you can, it may not be the optimal way to build a big company. If it’s an obviously good idea, a fellow entrepreneur next door might be able to raise $5M-$10M and put you in a bad position. Most big companies spend more than they bring in as they grow, grab market share and make a name for themselves, that’s how big companies are usually built. 

8. If you were an entrepreneur, what areas would you work on?

I would start something else in education, there’s a lack of education in our world today. You can make a difference in this enormous market. Other areas one could look at are old school businesses like agriculture, mining or freight. 

Other opportunities one could look at are in relation to COVID-19 and unemployment. Many parts of the government run on COBOL, there’s a revolution to be had to reinvest in technology that governments are run on, Palantir was built around that. However people hate to sell to the government but there will be giant companies built in this space. 

9. Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 batch going remote

Y Combinator’s online only Startup School has prepared Y Combinator’s move to remote only for the next Y Combinator class in Summer 2020. If you’re thinking to wait for in person batches to start again, you are thinking about it incorrectly, your startup’s success will depend on your timing. Whether Y Combinator is remote or not shouldn’t drive your decision. 

10. Where Geoff will be leading Y Combinator

Funding more and more startups, including figuring out who the best creators are in the world before they decide to do a startup.

Bigger virtual international footprints than we do now.

We will focus on what we do best and stay as good as we can.

What are you waiting for? Here's the application for Y Combinator.

Xooglers and Googlers, reach out via [email protected] if you want your application reviewed by Xoogler Y Combinator alumni with the potential of being recommended by them. The community has helped Xooglers get into Y Combinator from the past few batches and the Xoogler Investment Syndicate with over 1,100 investors has invested in Y Combinator Xoogler founders over the past couple of years.

Xoogler.co was started in 2015 to help ex-Google founders. Learn about our future events by signing up for the 8,000+ community for Xooglers and Googlers interested in startups at www.xoogler.co and discuss your startup's needs with the community in the Xoogler slack. You can review the April 2020 Global newsletter here and April 2020 Silicon Valley newsletter here. We hope to see you at our next event!