We’re excited to welcome three new visiting partners and three new part-time partners to YC.

YC Winter 2017 Visiting Partners The visiting partner program is a new experiment we are launching to embed active startup founders and executives into each YC batch. Alongside their ongoing responsibilities at their current companies, visiting partners serve for a 6 month term working directly with YC partners and joining group office hours, holding individual office hours, attending Tuesday night dinners, and participating in other batch events.

The new visiting partners for this batch are:

Aaron Epstein is the co-founder of Creative Market (YC W10), which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014. Before that, Aaron co-founded COLOURlovers, and graduated from the University of Maryland with a BS in Business.

Gustaf Alströmer is a Product Lead for Growth at Airbnb. Previously, he led growth at Voxer and was the co-founder and CEO of Heysan (YC W07), which was acquired by Good Technology in 2009.

Lyle Fong is the CEO and co-founder of Hobo Labs, a mobile video game studio. He previously was CEO and founder of Lithium Technologies, an enterprise social-media software company. Lyle studied Computer Science at UC Berkeley.

New Part-Time Partners for Winter 2017

The part-time partners program started in 2011 and is made up of startup founders and executives who have specific areas of expertise in a variety of topics that are useful to our founders. During their 6 month terms they are invited to YC events and host individual office hours with companies throughout the batch. The new part-time partners for this batch are:

Immad Akhund is the CEO and founder of Heyzap (YC W09), which was acquired by RNTS Media. He was previously the founder and CTO of Clickpass (YC S07), and received his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.

Kevin Hale, was the founder and CEO of Wufoo (YC W06), which was acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011. He spent three years as a YC partner and is now going part-time so he can start his next company. Kevin graduated from Stetson University with a BA in Digital Arts and English.

Note: Kevin Hale is no longer a part-time partner.

Marcus Segal was most recently the SVP of Global Operations of Zynga. Before that, he was CFO of Vindicia later acquired by Amdocs and COO of eMusic acquired by Universal Music Group. He received his MBA from Pepperdine University and his B.A. in English from UC – Santa Barbara.

Note: Marcus Segal is no longer a part-time partner.