ShaperTalk with Y Combinator Partner Kat Mañalac

SF Global Shapers hosted Y Combinator Partner Kat Mañalac at a ShaperTalk on Saturday, 2/16, and we wanted to share key takeaways from the event:

• While working at Wired after college, Kat met Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian because both Reddit and Wired are owned by Condé Nast, so they were working in the same building. Kat became interested in tech, and because Ohanian was starting to invest in startups around that time, he suggested Kat work with him, so she became his Chief of Staff.
• After working with Ohanian for a while, Kat joined a large tech company in the Bay Area but didn’t like it after 6 months. Ohanian had heard YC was looking for its first Director of Outreach, so he recommended Kat for it, and she soon joined the team.
• A good elevator pitch shouldn’t start with ‘why’. It should be 2–3 sentences that clearly explain what you do in order to spark an investor’s curiosity. Focusing on anything else risks losing an investor’s attention—your goal should be to spark enough curiosity that the investor asks a follow-up question.
• YC has dramatically changed the composition of its batches, and a significant portion of the founders are now international or from parts of the US outside of Silicon Valley. Kat mentioned that one company from Columbia, Missouri that went through YC a few batches ago has grown fairly large, and several early employees who’ve started their own startups have applied to Y Combinator, so YC’s composition will likely to continue to change naturally.

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