6 Insights from YC Female Founders Conference

I attended Y Combinator’s Female Founders Conference (FFC) this past Tuesday and wanted to share some insights. The purpose of FFC is to inspire women to start startups, and to help existing founders. Female founders were invited to come speak about their experience starting their company and touched upon the roots of their start up, scaling, diversity, fundraising etc..

1. Denial is the secret killer to all startups. Focusing on growth prevents you from being in denial about making the wrong thing.
   — Jessica Livingston from YC
2. Working hard does not equal commitment.
   Commitment means putting your company above anything else, above your own self interest.
   — Urska Srsen from Bellabeat
3. Be a GEM:
   Grit: Comes from the core, compete with yourself, not others. Stay in the path. Make yourself and your company better.
   Experiment: Use your head. A company is not just a product, it’s solving a problem- a mission.
   Mission: From your heart.
   — Ooshma Garg from Gobble

4. Avoid Distractions:

Ironically enough, going to conferences and worrying about being a women in tech are up there, which is why Jessica has strived to make this conference as useful as possible.

5. Overhiring is one of the biggest mistakes that startups make.

From Jessica Livingston

6. On building a healthy culture:

Culture is how you hire, and how you keep people there. Culture happens in the decisions you make when you’re faced with hard choices. Culture is how you behave when no one is there. — Kathryn Minshew from Daily Muse

• “Hiring no assholes”: Being willing to pass up someone who has a “golden” resume, but is not a good culture fit. selina tobaccowala, former CTO of SurveyMonkey emphasized the importance of behavioral interviews. E.g. “if you saw someone behave rudely to another person, how would you handle it”
• Transparency is also important. Kathryn shared board decks, budget allocations with their teams. Empower your team with the knowledge.
• Shared team mentality. E.g. selina encouraged founders to keep compensation transparent, so that either everyone makes it or not.