Recent Posts By Ali Rowghani

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Announcing YC’s Growth Stage Program

by Ali Rowghani12/14/2017

We sent the message below to all our YC founders yesterday. Today, we areexcited to share the news of our Growth Program with our friends outside of YC.—We launched YC’s Continuity Fund two years ago because we felt that there wasmore that YC could do to help companies as they scaled, not just with capital,but also with advice and mentorship modeled on how YC has been helping startupsfor years.

How Do You Measure Leadership?

by Ali Rowghani1/19/2017

Are you a good leader? How do you know?In a startup culture that is obsessed with management by metrics, many foundersstruggle to answer this critical question about themselves. It’s tempting tomeasure leaders simply by the success of their businesses. But even the mostsuccessful founders know how much timing and luck can be confounding factors inthis approach.

What’s the Second Job of a Startup CEO?

by Ali Rowghani11/29/2016

Successful startups go through three broad phases as they scale, and a startupCEO’s job changes dramatically in each phase. A CEO’s first job is to build aproduct users love; the second job is to build a company to maximize theopportunity that the product has surfaced; and the third is to harvest theprofits of the core business to invest in transformative new product ideas.

Welcome Sharon!

by Ali Rowghani8/19/2016

Sharon Pope will be joining YC to run programs and marketing for the YCContinuity Fund .Sharon was most recently the Chief Marketing Officer for Green Dot Corporation(inventor of the prepaid debit card; creator of the first fully mobile bankaccount, GoBank). Prior to that, she ran marketing & PR at Loopt (acquired byGreen Dot) and managed PR and content for a range of tech companies while at SanFrancisco PR agencies.

Welcome Anu!

by Ali Rowghani8/1/2016

We are excited to announce that Anu Hariharan will be joining YC as a partnerwith the YC Continuity Fund.Anu has been an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz since 2014 where shefocused primarily on growth stage investments in the consumer sector. Beyond herinvolvement in sourcing, analyzing businesses and investment diligence at a16z,she has also worked actively with the management teams at a number of portfoliocompanies including Airbnb, Instacart, Medium, OfferUp and Udacity.