A lot of great people joined our team in the last year, and we have four Visiting Partners joining us for the YC Winter 2019 batch. Help us welcome them (or welcome them back) to YC.

W19 Visiting Partners

Aaron Epstein, Visiting Partner
Aaron was co-founder of Creative Market (YC W10), a marketplace for graphic design assets, which he sold to Autodesk in 2014 and spun out as an independent startup again in 2017. Aaron founded the company to make beautiful design simple and accessible to everyone, and has since helped generate more than $100M in sales for independent creators around the world. He has a BS in Business from the University of Maryland.

Kevin Hale, Visiting Partner
Kevin was the cofounder of Wufoo, which was funded by Y Combinator in 2006 and acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011. He was responsible for Wufoo’s much-admired design and speaks widely about UX. Before Wufoo he wrote about design for Particletree and was editor in chief of the web development magazine Treehouse. He has a BA from Stetson University in Digital Arts and English.

Solomon Hykes, Visiting Partner
Solomon is the co-founder of Docker (YC S10), formerly known as Dotcloud, the technology company that developed and popularized the software containers standard, a ubiquitous component of modern cloud computing. Docker software has been downloaded billions of times and is used by millions of software developers every day. Solomon served as CEO of Docker from 2008 to 2013, then as CTO until 2018. Today, Solomon is a full-time father and occasional investor.

Holly Liu, Visiting Partner
Holly founded Kabam, a company that started as a corporate social network, then turned into fan communities for TV shows and sports, and pivoted into a mobile gaming company by the time it was acquired. Holly was in charge of product design and was lead designer on their flagship franchise Kingdoms of Camelot, a game that grossed over $250 million in revenue. She later oversaw the worldwide People and Culture function. Kabam grew to over 1,500 employees (including contractors) and sold to Netmarble and FoxNext in 2017.

YC

Elizabeth Akman, Batch Director
Elizabeth joined YC as the Batch Director. Previously, she managed operations for Make School (YC W12), which teaches students how to code for no upfront tuition. Prior to that, she was involved in sales & operations for several startups. She has a BS in Financial Math & Statistics from UC Santa Barbara.

Lindsay Amos, Director of Communications
Lindsay is YC’s Director of Communications. In 2010, she was one of the first 30 employees at Square and the company’s first comms hire. Prior to YC, Lindsay led technology communications for Facebook’s global engineering offices, data centers, infrastructure hardware, and sustainability.

Mia Mabanta, Director of Research and Programs, YC Continuity
Mia works with YC’s scaling-stage founders. She heads research and programs for YC Continuity, including the YC Growth Program. Prior to YC, Mia worked at Quartz, which she helped scale from 20 to 300 employees. She also co-founded HelloWallet, a fintech startup born out of research she did at the Brookings Institution, which was later acquired by Morningstar. Mia got her MBA at Stanford and recently moved back to the Bay Area from New York.

Casey Maloney Rosales Muller, Software Engineer
Casey went through YC with Jamglue (S06), and did the YC Fellowship with Bevel (F3). During the decade in between, he worked at FriendFeed, Facebook, and Quip. Before YC, Casey worked at the MIT Media Lab, Rhythm & Hues Studios, and the NYU Media Research Lab. He has three degrees from MIT and dropped out of a PhD at NYU.

Sachin Patel, Associate, YC Continuity
Sachin joins YC from McKinsey & Company where he was an Engagement Manager in the San Francisco office. Sachin worked directly with banking, digital payments, and fintech clients on a variety of growth/strategy projects. Sachin graduated from Harvard in 2015 with a degree in Statistics and minor in Mandarin Chinese.

Rachel Sonnenberg, Executive Assistant, YC Continuity
Rachel joined YC Continuity from North Run Capital where she spent five years as their office manager/senior executive assistant to the co-founders. Prior to that, Rachel was the senior executive assistant to the co-ceo of the private equity firm Audax Group. Before that, Rachel spent over four years in operational management roles with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Rachel has a B.S. from California State University, Chico.

Janelle Tam, Series A Program Manager
Janelle is the program manager for YC’s new Series A program. Prior to YC, she was an associate consultant at Bain & Company where she worked on projects in consumer products and venture philanthropy. She graduated from Princeton with a BA in Molecular Biology and spent 5 years in basic scientific research focused on nanotechnology and chemical engineering.