This week I finished reading the book “The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups” by New York Times Digital Domain columnist Randall Stross. He goes inside and tells the story behind the most well known startup accelerator Y Combinator, run by Silicon Valley luminary Paul Graham. It was especially fascinating to read about YC’s program after having seen 500 Startup’s program first hand last summer.
It’s interesting to learn more about Paul. Have never met him person. It sounds like him and his team get really hands on with birthing all of these companies and he’s very patriarchal in the whole process. And rightfully so, he’s helped birth some real winners… home runs like AirBnb, DropBox, and Heroku.
From the book, you hear how first hand people from around the world flock to Silicon Valley to be considered or apart of the YC program. Some of the young stars don’t even know what their startup is going to be. They just want be apart of the program hoping that at some point genius will strike and they’ll get they’re chance at changing the world.
Was also fascinating to hear the history behind some of YC’s bigger alumni names. They started YC three startups ago, are now on something completely different, and seeing success. It shows the incredible tolerance for risk that there is out in the valley, for both investors and founders.
If your fascinated by YC and want to get the inside scoop or if you wanna better understand the nature of the Silicon Valley startup machine, I’d highly recommend that ya read this book. Randall Stross is a great writer too.
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