The social radar: Y Combinator’s secret weapon | Jessica Livingston (co-founder of YC, author)

I want to start with a, a quote by someone you may know, Paul Graham. "Much of what's novel about YC is due to Jessica Livingston. If you don't know her, you don't understand YC."

My three co-founders were deeply technical, but I would look at other things about founders. You know, all these little social cues.

Your nickname was The Social Radar. Every interview, everyone always turned to you, and they were like, "Jessica, what does their Social Radar say?"

I would look at, do the co-founders get along? Are these people committed? And if a founder would get defensive, that was always a bad sign.

Is there anything else along the Airbnb story that would be interesting to share?

He hated their idea and Paul tried to get Brian and Joe and Nate to change it. But I remember specifically, Joe brought out the cereal boxes, the Obama O's and Captain McCain's, and I just thought, "Oh my God. They're gonna work hard to do whatever they can to make this company succeed."

Can you just talk a bit about this idea of just making shit happen, showing signs of being hustlers?

You sort of need that desperation. You have to burn the boat.

(instrumental music) Today, my guest is Jessica Livingston. Jessica is the co-founder of Y Combinator, the first and most famous startup accelerator, which since 2005, has funded over 5,000 companies, including over 200 unicorns now worth over a billion dollars, including companies like Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, Coinbase, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, the list goes on. Jessica's also the author of one of the bestselling books about startups, Founders at Work, and hosts The Social Radars podcast. She lives in England with her husband, who you may know, and her two sons. In our conversation, we dive deep into Jessica's superpower of being The Social Radar. She got this nickname in the early days of YC because she can read people incredibly well. This becomes a huge unfair advantage when you're evaluating and investing in early stage startups and founders, but also becomes useful in every part of your life. There's actually a quiz that I'm gonna link to in the show notes called Reading the Mind in the Eyes that I suggest you take to see how you do, and it'll give you a sense of how well you are at reading people. Jessica got a perfect score, just as an example of her unique talents reading people's emotions, along with her superpower and tips on how you can develop your own social radar. We also talk about her fabulous podcast called The Social Radars, some wild early YC stories, including how the interview with the Airbnb founders actually went down, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Jessica Livingston. Jessica, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.