We’re Qasar and Kevin, Partners at Y Combinator! Ask us Anything!

Hi TIA Community,

We’re both YC alumni had our companies acquired before we joined YC as partners.

I am Qasar Younis, Partner and COO of Y Combinator. I lead YC’s day to day operations. Before this, I founded TalkBin, a messaging tool that connects consumers to businesses through text, iOS and Android apps. We were funded by YC, and was then acquired by Google. Of which I was the Group Product Manager for 3 years.

I am Kevin Hale, Partner at Y Combinator. I manage YC’s new fellowship initiative as well as work with their portfolio of companies on user experience design, product development and customer support. I co-founded Wufoo, which was one of the earliest Y Combinator funded startups. The online form builder was ranked by Jakob Nielson as one of the best application UI’s of 2008 and was later acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011.
At YC, we pick and advice early stage startups. We can answer questions about all the types of problems early stage startups face, but in particular:

• What makes early stage companies successful
• What are things your company should focus on early
• How to make hard decisions that don’t have clear answers (share some and we’ll see if we can help!)
• Why focus is important and what you should focus on

We’re also very product and design focused (Qasar more on product, and Kevin more on design) so if you have product or design questions, we’d be happy to answer them!

Lastly, the above are just guidelines. Feel free to ask anything from why startups to things in our backgrounds (e.g. was an MBA worth it?)

Ask away!

Note from Daniel, TIA’s community manager:
The hosts may choose at their preference to not answer particular questions. The AMA is moderated by the community managers, so let’s keep the questions friendly. 🙂

(Disclosure: Y Combinator is an investor in Tech in Asia. Please see our Statement of Ethics for more details.)