What we look for in YC teams

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The leadership of a team is critical to the success of our investments. This disproportionately falls to the founders but is not exclusive to them. This is the hardest criteria to assess and often where we face the most uncertainty. It matters, even more, the earlier the investment in a company’s history. To address this, we look at the following five sub-criteria.

• Deep mastery of the space

• Do they have an extraordinarily high grasp of their industry, the different business models people have tried, the incentives of different actors in the industry, and more? Are they able to exhibit this mastery but also acknowledge their blindspots and retain intellectual humility? Do they have strong views, weakly held?

• Move fast

• Do they ship new features and products quickly, both absolute and relative to competitors? Are they decisive, acting with conviction with a clear default to action? Are they impatient, dissatisfied with the status quo, and motivated to enact change?

• Credible aggression

• Do they show a need to win? Are they hyper-competitive?
• Do they have substantial ambitions for what they can build that exceed what is immediately in front of them or normal expectations?
• Do they set aggressive OKRs and product roadmaps to push themselves and their organizations? Have they demonstrated an aggressive business trajectory?

• Talent aggregator

• Exceptional leaders build exceptional benches. Can they hire outside of their network? Can they poach talent from top-tier firms at material discounts in cash comp? If you ask a new hire to explain the company vision, can they do so in a way that is consistent with how the founder does it? 

• Capital aggregator

• Many of the business models we invest in benefit from meaningful subsequent equity investment and/or debt financing. Can the team continue to raise capital and answer the hardest of questions? 

• Collaborative interaction model

• Our investment horizon is longer than the median marriage. We need to be able to have honest conversations with the leaders. Can we talk about uncomfortable situations and trust them to share a realistic view of the business?