The Social Radars

Tyler Shultz went to work at Theranos right out of Stanford and soon noticed that things weren't as they seemed. Lots of other employees knew there was something fishy going on, but Tyler was one of a tiny handful able to resist the mesmerizing and intimidating Elizabeth Holmes and speak out about the fraud that was putting patients at risk. This podcast is a lesson for anyone who wants learn what it takes to speak out against misdeeds by powerful people. (Learn more about Tyler at tyler-shultz.com.)

Today we talk to Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh of Replit. They're not just cofounders but married too, and Replit is woven through their lives. Listen in as they describe their mission to bring coding to everyone.

In today's episode we chat with Ryan Petersen, Founder and CEO of Flexport, a global logistics company that Y Combinator funded in 2014. Ryan takes us on a journey from his early days importing motorcycles, through the supply chain disasters of the pandemic, to a company with thousands of employees and billions in revenue. If you want to hear about established industries being transformed by startups, this is the episode for you.

Today we catch up with Dan Siroker, co-founder of Limitless, which trains a personal AI to remember things for you. Y Combinator funded his previous company, Optimizely, in 2010, and it was acquired a decade later. But before he started Optimizely he ran the new media group within the Obama campaign, which achieved stunning results through A/B testing. In fact Optimizely was the software he wished he'd had then.

In today's episode we catch up with Eddy Lu, co-founder and CEO of GOAT, the fashion marketplace. GOAT represents one of the most epic pivots in Y Combinator history: they started out organizing group dinners. Founders are often told they should be "scrappy". Eddy and his cofounder Daishin are scrappiness personified, and that's what enabled them to bounce from idea to idea and end up on top.

David Rusenko was a college student when he applied, at the last minute, to Y Combinator in 2006. His startup, Weebly, made a web site builder. At one point they came within days of running out of money, but they survived to be acquired by Square in 2018 for $365 million. Now David runs a fund, Leap Forward Ventures, focused on climate change. He has spent his whole career in startups, and has seen close to everything that can happen.

In today's episode, we talk with Yin Wu, founder and CEO of Pulley, a cap table management system that YC funded in 2020. Yin has been founding startups since 2011 and she talks about her experiences testing startup ideas, what she's learned about persistence and determination, and why she loves having startup founders as users.

Ron Conway has been close to the center of things for longer than anyone else in Silicon Valley, from the point when he started his career at National Semiconductor in the early 70s to the AI conference he organized last month. He's the embodiment and the transmitter of Silicon Valley culture. He knows all the stories, usually because he was personally involved in them. In this episode we talk about what Silicon Valley was like when it was all about silicon, and how his career at Nat Semi led to working at and then running tech companies, and finally to angel investing.

Today we catch up with Kyle Vogt, whose self-driving car company, Cruise, was funded by Y Combinator in 2014 and acquired by GM in 2016. Before that he was a co-founder of Twitch and its predecessor, Justin.tv. Learn how his love of building hard things started at a young age, and why he's nowhere near done building yet.

Today we are talking to Yuri Sagalov. His company AeroFS, which did enterprise file syncing and sharing, was funded by Y Combinator in summer 2010. Yuri went on to work at Y Combinator before starting his own fund, Wayfinder Ventures.

Announcing Season 3 of The Social Radars!

Today we chat with Adora Cheung, Co-founder of Homejoy (YC summer 2010) and now InstaLab, an at-home blood testing service that helps you optimize your health by measuring over 60 biomarkers. Our conversation is wide-ranging: from how to clean homes efficiently to how she helped defeat Trump in 2020 by getting hundreds of thousands of votes in swing states.

Today we have another insider episode: we're talking to Trevor Blackwell, who was my cofounder at Y Combinator. But that's not all he's done. He was also the founder of Anybots, where he created the first dynamically balancing biped robot, and also worked on Viaweb with Paul Graham and Robert Morris.

Today we're talking with Parker Conrad, who founded two startups that went on to become unicorns: Zenefits in 2013, and Rippling in 2016. Parker's story is one the more dramatic ones you'll hear on this podcast. In fact this episode is two stories: his misadventures at Zenefits, and the ambitious ideas he has implemented at Rippling.

Today we talk with Emmett Shear, who was in the very first YC batch in 2005 with a startup called Kiko. But you know him better as the co-founder of Twitch, which YC funded in 2007. Learn how Twitch grew from one guy walking around with a camera on his head to one of the biggest communities on the internet. It's a crazy story even by startup standards. Enjoy!

In this episode we catch up with Patrick and John Collison, two brothers from Ireland who founded Stripe in 2009. Since then we've watched Stripe grow from a two-man show to one of the great powers of the tech world

Today we're talking with Bill Clerico, co-founder of WePay which Y Combinator funded in 2009. WePay was one of the first of what are now called "FinTech" startups. In 2017, J.P. Morgan acquired WePay for $400M. Listen in to the adventures of an early fintech pioneer.

Today we're talking with Dimitri Dadiomov of Modern Treasury, a startup Y Combinator funded in 2018. Dimitri works in a very important world whose existence is hidden from most people: the movement of money into and out of companies. Listen in as we follow the money!

Today we're talking with Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, a startup YC funded in 2012 and is now a publicly traded company. Coinbase is truly in the middle of the exciting new world of cryptocurrency. It's particularly interesting to explore this world with Brian, who was unusually candid, even for Silicon Valley.

In today's episode, we're talking once again with Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. YC funded Airbnb in 2009, when the company was at death's door. During YC we watched the founders work frantically to get growth started and turn Airbnb into the rocketship that it is today. Today we pick up where we left off in Brian's incredible story of startup survival.

Announcing Season 2 of The Social Radars!

In this episode we talk to Edith Elliot, cofounder of the non-profit startup Noora Health. Like the best for-profit startups, Noora is relentlessly effective, but what they do with relentless effectiveness is save lives. Learn how what started as a graduate school project turned into an organization that has changed the world.

Today, we're doing something I do every day: talking to Paul Graham, who as well as being one of the founders of Viaweb and Y Combinator is also my husband. Paul has been involved with startups since 1995; before he invented the accelerator, he invented the web app. So there's a lot of information in this episode, but it was also, as you'll see, one of the funniest.

In today's episode, we're talking with Brian Chesky, cofounder and CEO of Airbnb. YC funded Airbnb in 2009, when the company was at death's door. During YC we watched the founders work frantically to get growth started and turn Airbnb into the rocketship that it is today. Learn what it takes to come up with an idea so weird that it seems like it will never work, and then make it work.

In this episode we walk down memory lane with Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit, who was in Y Combinator's very first batch of startups in 2005. In those days Steve was a programmer fresh out of UVA. He had no idea that the site he was creating would become the forum of forums, still active and growing 18 years later. Hear about Reddit's eventful early years and how they affected what it eventually became.

Today we're talking with the fabulous Tracy Young, one of the most successful female startup founders so far. Y Combinator funded her company, PlanGrid in the winter of 2012. PlanGrid revolutionized the construction industry by getting blueprints off paper and onto tablets. You'll hear about how they found their idea, how they lost a cofounder to cancer in the first few weeks of YC, how they sold the company for almost a billion dollars in 2018, and how she's now gone on to start a new startup called TigerEye, with her husband and PlanGrid cofounder, Ralph Gootee.

In this episode we're talking to Garry Tan, the president & CEO of Y Combinator. We go full circle with Garry as we chat about his path from turning down a job with Peter Thiel, to founding a YC-backed company in 2008, then starting his own multi-billion dollar fund in 2011, and finally returning to run Y Combinator in 2023. Garry knows about programming, design, running startups, and investing in them, so there are lessons and stories for everyone in this episode.

In this episode we catch up with Tony Xu, founder and CEO of the food delivery service, DoorDash. Tony and his cofounders were students at Stanford when they first launched DoorDash as a class project. Y Combinator funded them as part of its summer batch in 2013. In this episode, Tony takes us through version 1 of their idea to what is now a public company (DASH) operating in 27 countries across the globe.

In this episode we're talking to David Lieb, creator of Google Photos. Back in 2009, YC funded his startup, Bump Technologies, which had a cool technology where you transferred your contact info from one person to another by literally bumping phones. He'll share Bump's ups and downs as they went from business school side hustle to hot new iOS app. He'll talk about getting acquired by Google and ultimately transforming Bump into the wildly popular Google Photos. David recently came back to Y Combinator as a visiting group partner.

In the premiere episode, Jessica & Carolynn sit down with Paul Buchheit. Paul created Gmail in 2004 while he was employee #23 at Google. They do a deep dive into the history of Gmail, including the fact that it might never have launched if it weren't for a leak to the New York Times. After Google, PB went on to found a startup called FriendFeed, which was a social media aggregator, and where the first “like” button was created. It was acquired by Facebook in 2009. After that, he joined Y Combinator as a partner and also became one of the most successful angel investors in Silicon Valley.