Founder Stories

Promise Co-Founder and CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins on Being a Force for Good

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Pheadra Ellis-Lamkins, Co-Founder and CEO of Promise, had witnessed technology’s impact on the work communities in which she’d been a part — and not always for good. In…

Mar 26, 2021

Edlyft Co-Founder and CEO Erika Hairston: How Community Can Elevate Tech

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Edlyft co-founder and CEO Erika Hairston never imagined herself as a “techie,” but was drawn to computer science while at Yale University—not that it was a cinch for…

Feb 25, 2021

Squire Co-Founder and CEO Songe LaRon: Powering Barbershops of the Future

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Songe LaRon didn’t have experience working in the barbershop world when he first had the idea for Squire, a business management and point-of-sales software focusing on barbershop owners.…

Feb 23, 2021

The Airbnbs

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To celebrate Airbnb’s IPO and to help future founders, I thought it might be useful to explain what was special about Airbnb.

Dec 10, 2020

DoorDash from application to IPO

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DoorDash is the first company that I’ve had the opportunity to follow all the way from YC application to IPO, so to celebrate I thought it would be fun and interesting to share what a great company like DoorDash looks like at the earliest stages.

Dec 9, 2020

Vikrum Nijjar: Engineer #1 at Firebase and Founder of Gold Fig Labs (YC S19)

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Vikrum Nijjar joined as the first engineer at Firebase, and did whatever it took to help the company succeed: scaling out infrastructure, shipping mobile SDKs, hosting 1-1 office…

Nov 22, 2019

Congrats Dropbox!

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I wrote Dropbox their first investment check, on June 26, 2007. Little did I know back then what a momentous check this one would be: that 11 years later, Dropbox would be the first Y Combinator company to go public.

Mar 23, 2018
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