Michael Seibel

“I think co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators outside of the Bay Area do a lot to foster a local startup scene - which is really important for early founders, but I also think that exposure to the Bay Area is extremely valuable for startups.”

“It's fairly common knowledge that a startup can't execute on two products simultaneously.”

“The first time I went through YC, it was smaller, and the founders were younger. The advantage of that was that the set of founders who were older than us had really seen the Web 1.0 meltdown. They brought that knowledge to us.”

“Finding entrepreneurs from diverse and international backgrounds is a top priority for us at Y Combinator.”

“Investors like to invest based on traction, so it's always better to raise money when you've got more traction than less.”

“After reading the Elon Musk book and getting a Tesla - he is at the top of my list of inspiring founders.”

“Startups are often best at solving the personal problems of their founders. The more diverse the founders, the more types of problems can be solved - and the more people who will be positively impacted by technology.”

“I think there are two challenges - and one challenge is how to diversify the workforce in the technology industry, and the other challenge is how to diversify the people who are starting companies.”

“I think tech is driving most of the innovation and will continue to for a very, very long time.”

“Minority founders often feel like they are on the outside looking in when it comes to Silicon Valley and tech startups in general.”

“My definition of product-market fit is you are drowning in demand - your product is being used by so many customers that you cannot handle all the new people knocking at your door!”

“I either like reading fun war-based sci-fi, books about the lives of chefs, or dry historical non-fiction.”

“People think they need to hire someone to do their PR, but 99 percent of PR in the early stages is stuff you can do yourself. It's just like business development - there's the warm-up intro, followup to build relationships, then add something of value.”

“A funny thing happens when you go to another country or invest in a company from another country. Suddenly everyone in that community realizes that YC is for them, too.”

“The number one problem companies have during the Y Combinator interview is that a minute into the interview, we don't know what they do. It's the same problem with the application. You might think we're experts, but you still have to explain it to us.”