Michael Seibel

My goal is to make the process of taking and watching videos as easy as it is for photos.

If you're a documenter, you're taking a video of something in the real world you want to capture. If you're a director, you're trying to create something in the real world.

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.

If someone who's passed on your company as an investor offers you to make introductions, that's kryptonite. Don't touch that.

One of the most fun and interesting things about YC is that we are kind of a startup ourselves. We are constantly changing and evolving what we do.

It turns out that one of the biggest drivers of investors are both successful and non-successful startup founders.

Increase your company's average talent with each hire - founders tend to be pretty smart but willing to take on risk. Employees should be a lot smarter and less risk averse.

I don't understand how you can have product-market fit and not a lot of people wanting your product. The two go hand-in-hand.

Convince the investor that you guys are moving fast and that this isn't some long slog... you're thinking about it like a startup where you can move fast and make mistakes.

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

One of the things that's so interesting when talking to minority founders specifically is that there is really a knowledge gap in understanding what the risk-reward profile is for doing a startup.

The first thing I learned is that campaigns are about money. I had this romantic idea that campaigns were about law and debates and so forth, which is just not true. It's about money.