Jessica Livingston

@jesslivingston • 342,200 subscribers

Cofounder, Y Combinator; Author, Founders at Work; Host, The Social Radars podcast.

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Jessica Livingston

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"We have seven hours left, and I made the decision, it's okay to swear, it's okay to insult him, it's okay to threaten him, because Silicon Valley's going down if this guy doesn't get his act together."

Carolynn and I have known Sam Altman for his whole career. In fact it was Sam who introduced us. So today's Social Radars is a special one. Join us as we talk to Sam about the inside story of his journey from Stanford sophomore to AI mogul.

Paul Graham is back in the latest Social Radars, talking about what went on behind the scenes in the early days of YC. If you like the fly-on-the-wallness of Social Radars interviews, this is the most fly-on-the-wall of all.

I loved our wide-ranging conversation with Alexandr Wang of Scale AI in this week's Social Radars. Scale has been supplying training data to a lot of the big AI models since 2016, so he has a deep understanding of where AI is and where it's going.

In the latest Social Radars we talk to Tom Blomfield, founder and original CEO of Monzo, and now a YC partner. His story reads like a movie script; he's spent his whole career in startups, and practically everything that can happen has happened to him.

Tom Blomfield on his whole team being fired — and then unfired the next day.

In the latest Social Radars, we turn the tables on John Coogan of TBPN. He shares a similar philosophy to us: instead of attacking your subjects, which is easy and boring, ask them the questions that will yield the most interesting answers.

In today’s Social Radars we talk to the founder of what may be the most important company you haven’t heard of yet: David Kirtley of Helion, which is at this moment building a fusion power plant intended to achieve net electricity production.

In the latest Social Radars we talk to Spenser Skates of Amplitude, who pulled off one of the most spectacular pivots in Silicon Valley history. He's also proof that nerds can learn to do sales.

Exploring the edge of micromanagement with PG.

Today's episode with Harj Taggar is what I hoped The Social Radars would be when we started it: a real conversation with a real startup expert. It was eye-opening to hear him speak candidly for the first time about the Damore frenzy of 2017.

In the latest Social Radars we talk to Drew Houston of Dropbox, which is a classic example of a common phenomenon: the startup that succeeds, and then has to redefine itself and succeed again. Drew faced this challenge and executed perfectly.

In the latest Social Radars we talk to Justin Kan, who has spent his whole adult life around startups. He's seen it all, and because he's so candid, he tells it all too. We had fun talking to him, so this interview should be fun to listen to.

In today's Social Radars, Chris Best of Substack tells us the inside story of the dispute with Elon.

In the latest Social Radars we talk to Emmett Shear about how he ran Twitch, and in particular why he spent three hours every week preparing for the all-hands.

We’re launching Tyler Shultz, Part 2 a week early! We pick up where we left off with Tyler: he’s resigned from Theranos and decides to talk to a Wall Street Journal reporter. Little does he know, the worst is yet to come.

I loved talking to the Gusto founders on today's Social Radars episode. If you want to know what true commitment looks like, this is it. Twelve years in, all three of them are still going at it as if they were in the current YC batch.

Carolynn and I loved talking to Jared Friedman in the latest episode of the Social Radars. Whatever you're doing, it will make you happy to listen to this episode because we had so much fun making it.

In our last episode of our founder mode series, we talk to Sajith Wickramasekara of Benchling. For Sajith Wickramasekara, founder mode means nothing at Benchling can be bad. If you start to allow mediocrity, it will spread.

The latest Social Radars episode is with Paul Gross of Remora Carbon. Paul has a unique take on founder mode. Each quarter, he identifies the three biggest threats to the company, and those are the main things he works on.