The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator
Investment firm Y Combinator is the most sought-after home for startups in Silicon Valley. Twice a year, it funds dozens of just-founded startups and provides three months of guidance from Paul Graham, YC’s impresario, and his partners, also entrepreneurs and mostly YC alumni. The list of YC-funded success stories includes Dropbox, Airbnb, and Heroku. New York Times columnist Randall Stross was granted unprecedented access to Y Combinator’s summer 2011 batch of young companies, offering a unique inside tour of the world of software startups.
Presenters
Randall Stross followed the Summer 2011 batch of startups funded by Y Combinator, the seed fund based in Mountain View, CA, and the resulting book was THE LAUNCH PAD: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups, published last fall.
Stross writes the "Digital Domain" column for the New York Times and is a professor of business at San Jose State University. The Launch Pad was preceded by earlier books on venture capital, Google, Microsoft, and Steve Jobs during the NeXT years.
Stross has a B.A. from Macalester College in St.Paul, Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in history from Stanford.
Monday, March 11
