YC has a bunch of announcements about people coming and going so I thought I’d do them all at once.

Wufoo (YC W06) cofounder Kevin Hale is joining us as a partner.  He was the force behind Wufoo’s much-admired design, and speaks widely about UX.  Between Kevin and Garry Tan, we’ll now have two partners who are designers, which partly reflects the increasing importance of design in startups, but frankly mostly reflects the fact that they’re really good.

We also have five new part-time partners: Michael Seibel, Steve Huffman, Dalton Caldwell, and Andrew Mason.  As the name suggests, part-time partners advise startups like regular partners, but part-time.  Michael was cofounder of Socialcam (YC W12) and now works at Autodesk, which acquired it last year.  Steve is cofounder of Hipmunk (YC S10) and before that was cofounder of Reddit (YC S05). Dalton is cofounder of App.net and before that was cofounder of Imeem.  Andrew was cofounder of Groupon and till recently its CEO.   We’ve known all these guys for years and we can already tell it will be great to work with them.

Finally, Harj Taggar, who was the first partner we hired after the original four, is leaving to start a new startup (in the long term) and travel the world (in the short).  We’re all sad he’s leaving and tried to talk him out of it, but only half-heartedly, because we can’t blame him for wanting to start a new company.  He has agreed to remain a part-time partner though, so he’ll still be around.

For anyone keeping track, YC now has 10 partners (Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Kevin Hale, Carolynn Levy, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Kirsty Nathoo, Geoff Ralston, and Garry Tan) and 8 part-time partners (Sam Altman, Dalton Caldwell, Steve Huffman, Justin Kan, Andew Mason, Michael Seibel, Emmett Shear, and Harj Taggar).

— Paul Graham