The Walk Home
On 11 March 2005, walking home from dinner in Harvard Square, Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston decide to start their own investment firm. Cambridge Seed becomes Y Combinator within days, and the Summer Founders Program invents the batch model.
Part of Y Combinator
10 moments in this segment.
- — The walk home from Harvard Square. On 11 March 2005, walking home from dinner in Harvard Square, Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston decide to start their own investment firm rather than have Jessica take a job at a Boston VC. By the time they reach Walker Street, Y Combinator exists in all but name.
- — Paul Graham. A Lisp hacker, essayist and the co-founder of Viaweb (sold to Yahoo in 1998), Paul Graham brings the idea — and the essays — that shape Y Combinator’s philosophy: fund founders early, in batches, and "make something people want".
- — The four founders. Y Combinator is founded by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, and Graham’s old Viaweb partners Robert Tappan Morris and Trevor Blackwell. The initial fund is $200,000 — $100,000 from Graham, $50,000 each from Morris and Blackwell.
- — Trevor Blackwell. robotics engineer and Viaweb alumnus, is one of the four founders who put up the original capital. The name "Y Combinator" — a concept from computer science — replaces "Cambridge Seed" within days, to signal national rather than regional scope.
- — The Summer Founders Program. Instead of investing one startup at a time, they decide to fund a whole batch over the summer of 2005. Graham’s reasoning: "we wanted to learn how to be angel investors, and a summer program for undergrads seemed the fastest way to do it." 8 startups are chosen from ~225 applications.
- — How OpenAI CEO Sam Altman applied to YC's FIRST Batch in 2005. The Social Radars Podcast
- — The first 6 months of Reddit (YC 05)- "Entrepreneurship is a bipolar existence". "
- — Geoff Ralston (2005). Geoff Ralston, photographed in 2005. Part of the Y Combinator story.
- — the Reddit founders (2005). the Reddit founders, photographed in 2005. Part of the Y Combinator story.
- — Reddit joins the first batch. Among the first 8 startups — alongside Loopt and Kiko — are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, whose idea YC redirects into Reddit. The original deal: about $6,000 per founder, and weekly dinners run out of Graham and Livingston’s house in West Cambridge.
