here), and welcome to Diana Hu and Calvin French-Owen.</p>\n<p><strong>Diana Hu</strong><br />\nDiana was co-founder and CTO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/escher-reality/">Escher Reality</a> (YC S17), an Augmented Reality Backend company that was acquired by Niantic (makers of Pokémon Go). At Niantic, she was the head of the AR platform. Previously, she led data science at OnCue TV that was sold to Verizon. Originally from Chile, Diana graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a focus in computer vision and machine learning.</p>\n<p><em>Why did you decide to become a Visiting Group Partner?</em><br />\nI love learning about tech and helping companies get off the ground. Joining YC as a Visiting Group Partner is the best of both worlds. I look forward to supporting and also learning from all the companies throughout the batch.</p>\n<p><em>What are you looking forward to most as a Visiting Group Partner?</em><br />\n“We choose to go to the moon” is what it feels like working with founders at YC. In particular, having worked in AR, we had to invent a lot of tech to make things work, so I strongly relate and look forward to working with founders tackling all sorts of hard tech problems.</p>\n<p>Also having grown up in Chile, I have a soft spot for founders making things that people want and need in their home countries outside the US. The impact can be tremendous in their local economies. I am really excited that going virtual in the coming batch lets tons of international companies participate. This way international companies can learn and grow like bay areas companies while staying close to their local users. And on the flip side, we can learn from them.</p>\n<p><strong>Calvin French-Owen</strong><br />\nCalvin was the co-founder and CTO of <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/segment/">Segment, until it was acquired by Twilio for 3.2B in November 2020. Prior to that, he studied CS at MIT. When not helping startups, Calvin is running around the hills of San Francisco, training for the next ultramarathon.</p>\n<p><em>Why did you decide to become a Visiting Group Partner?</em><br />\nIn November, I left Segment to start a “reading period” and learn about a bunch of new fields. When the opportunity to join as a Visiting Group Partner popped up, it felt like a great way to expose myself to a huge number of new fields and experiences.</p>\n<p>More than anything, I like working with early stage founders. I’m hoping to help share some of the wisdom we learned at Segment the hard way! 🙂</p>\n<p><em>What are you looking forward to most as a Visiting Group Partner?</em><br />\nTwo main things: The first is working with a bunch of people who are just incredibly optimistic about the future. I love the enthusiasm and energy that you find at YC, in both the founders and the partners.</p>\n<p>Additionally, I’m excited to learn about a huge number of industries. At Segment, we went very deep on many aspects of developer tooling, enterprise software, and solving data infrastructure problems at scale. But I didn’t get as much first-hand exposure to all sorts of other businesses: hardware, marketplaces, consumer apps, etc. I’m excited to see the hundreds of companies in the coming batch and learn as much (or more!) from them as they will from me!</p>\n<!--kg-card-end: html-->","comment_id":"1104807","feature_image":null,"featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2021-05-24T02:00:29.000-07:00","updated_at":"2021-10-20T10:51:58.000-07:00","published_at":"2021-05-24T02:00:29.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710b0","name":"Michael Seibel","slug":"michael-seibel","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Michael.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Michael Seibel is a Group Partner and Managing Director, Early Stage at YC. He was the cofounder and CEO Justin.tv and Socialcam. Socialcam sold to Autodesk in 2012 and Justin.tv became Twitch.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/michael-seibel/"}],"tags":[{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710b0","name":"Michael Seibel","slug":"michael-seibel","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2022/02/Michael.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Michael Seibel is a Group Partner and Managing Director, Early Stage at YC. 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These advisors bring valuable insights and recent\noperational experience to YC early stage companies. Throughout the batch, they\ntake on a subset of YC Group Partner responsibilities, including application\nreading, interviews, group office hours, individual office hours, demo day prep,\nand more.\n\nWe have five Visiting Group Partners joining us for the YC Summer 2021 batch.\nWelcome back, Reshma Khiln","reading_time":2,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},"mentions":[],"related_posts":[{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a71c0d","uuid":"47611201-9328-451f-ba0e-fd4b71bd84c5","title":"YC's Spring Tour 2022","slug":"ycs-spring-tour-2022","html":"<p>We are excited to announce our 2022 Spring Outreach Tour. Our goal is to virtually meet founders and future founders from cities and universities around the world. At each location, we will host talks with YC group partners and YC alumni, who will discuss their founder journey, the YC experience and myths around starting startups.</p><p>We will also be hosting two virtual admissions sessions to chat about the YC application process, give application tips and answer your questions about the batch program.</p><p>This year, we’re working with AWS Activate to provide $1,000 in AWS credits to spend on AWS services, and $350 in Developer Support plan credits to attendees. This is on top of any AWS credits you may have received from AWS Activate previously. To learn more about AWS Activate, please visit <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.aws.com/activate/" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">www.aws.com/activate</a>.</p><p>Interested in applying to YC? <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://ycombinator.com/apply/">Applications for YC Summer 2022 are now open</a>.</p><p><strong>We hope you’ll join us (virtually) at these locations:</strong></p><p><strong>January 31</strong> - Mexico: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/309/">YC @ Orchata</a><br><strong>February 1</strong> - Canada: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/316/">YC @ University of Toronto</a><br><strong>February 4</strong> - France: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/318/">YC @ Station F</a><br><strong>February 9</strong> - United States: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/328/">YC @ HBCUs</a><br><strong>February 10</strong> - Russia: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/323/">YC @ ITMO University</a><br><strong>February 11</strong> - Spain: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/317/">YC @ Lanzadera</a><br><strong>February 16</strong> - United Kingdom: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/325/">YC @ Cambridge</a><br><strong>February 17</strong> - Indonesia & Singapore: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/313/">YC @ Payfazz & Xfers</a><br><strong>February 23</strong> - Europe: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/321/">YC @ Start Global</a><br><strong>February 25</strong> - Colombia: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/312/">YC @ Platzi</a><br><strong>February 25</strong> - United States: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/314/">YC @ Stanford</a><br><strong>February 25</strong> - United States: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/315/">YC @ UC Berkeley</a><br><strong>March 4</strong> - United States: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/324/">YC @ University of Washington</a><br><strong>March 4</strong> - United States: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/326/">YC @ Harvard</a><br><strong>March 11</strong> - United States: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/320/">YC @ MIT</a><br><strong>March 11</strong> - Canada: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/322/">YC @ University of Waterloo</a><br><strong>March 14</strong> - India: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/327/">YC @ IIT Bombay</a><br><strong>March 18</strong> - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/319/">AMA w/ Michael Seibel</a><br><strong>March 21</strong> - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/310/">YC Admissions</a><br><strong>March 21</strong> - <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/311/">YC Admissions</a><br><strong>March 25 </strong>- Ireland: <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://apply.ycombinator.com/events/330/">YC @ University of Limerick</a></p><p>If you are starting a startup or have questions about YC, we want to meet you. We believe that talent is worldwide and look forward to seeing our community of founders grow.</p>","comment_id":"61f5fff8eb74f90001a957de","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/01/26.png","featured":false,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2022-01-29T19:03:20.000-08:00","updated_at":"2022-02-17T12:19:39.000-08:00","published_at":"2022-01-28T09:00:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"We are excited to announce our 2022 Spring Outreach Tour. If you are starting a startup or have questions about YC, we want to meet you. We believe that talent is worldwide and look forward to seeing our community of founders grow.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a710ca","name":"Tamanna Khemani","slug":"tamanna-khemani","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2022/02/Tamanna.jpg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Tamanna is YC's Outreach Manager. 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Previously, she worked on business operations at All Raise.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/tamanna-khemani/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71173","name":"YC News","slug":"yc-news","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/yc-news/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/ycs-spring-tour-2022/","excerpt":"We are excited to announce our 2022 Spring Outreach Tour. Our goal is to virtually meet founders and future founders from cities and universities around the world. At each location, we will host talks with YC group partners and YC alumni, who will discuss their founder journey, the YC experience and myths around starting startups.","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":null,"feature_image_caption":null},{"id":"6335a9276c330f000113fa77","uuid":"b5d30051-751f-4231-bac3-84aa004a3e80","title":"Women Engineers in Startups: Tess's Story","slug":"women-engineers-in-startups-tess","html":"<p>Last year we launched the first *<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2022/">Women Engineers in Startups</a> series, and our goal was to encourage more women to consider working at high-growth startups.</p><p>Why?</p><p>At YC, most of us have worked at or started startups, and they’ve changed our lives for the better. We’ve seen, firsthand, the impact they can have on one’s life and career. The amount you learn is immense, and a lot of early startup employees go on to start their own companies. </p><p>We believe the opportunity should be explored by every hard working, ambitious person.</p><p>Yet, when we spoke to our founders, we learned that very few women engineers apply for jobs at YC companies. We wondered whether there were misconceptions about startups that we could help clear up, or whether there were resources we could build to connect more women to startup opportunities. </p><p>So, we brought together a cohort of women engineers and introduced them to YC founders, engineering managers, recruiters and women who had joined YC startups as early engineers. They came together for three weeks, learned about what startups are looking for, what the work/life balance was like at various companies, and what they should think about and ask when considering companies and roles. </p><p>At the end of the first session, we were delighted to see a few women from that first cohort accept roles at YC companies. </p><p>One participant in that first cohort, Tess Huelskamp, accepted a role at <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/middesk/">Middesk (YC W19), a fast-growing company that helps b2b financial services companies verify business customers. She shared her experience and advice for thinking about joining a startup here: </p><blockquote><em>Prior to working at my startup Middesk, I worked for a few years on Dropbox's Sharing team on a lot of backend changes to make it easier to share files and folders within Dropbox. </em><br><br><em>After a few years at Dropbox, I had learned a lot about how to build and ship code, but my learning was slowing. I always knew that I wanted to work at a startup before I moved home to the Midwest, and I figured this was the time to do it.</em><br><br><em>Before participating in the YC Women Eng in Startup series I didn't know a lot about the startup lifecycle. I didn't know what \"pre-\" vs. \"post-seed\" meant and I didn't know what type of work startups do as they move from trying to find product-market fit to scaling up their company. It helped me better identify the stage and type of company I wanted to work at.</em><br><br><em>When I started my job search, I knew I wanted to work at a post-Series A company that had a great culture, healthy work-life balance, and an interesting product. I found Middesk through the </em><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.workatastartup.com//">Work at a Startup</em></a><em> job board and took an informational call to learn more. As I was interviewing, I got a great vibe from the team at Middesk and respected all of the people I talked to.</em><br><br><em>I've been happily surprised with the breadth of work I've been able to do at an earlier stage company.</em><br><br><em>Established companies already have a lot of key features built, so the impact you can have is limited to improving an already existing feature. At an earlier stage company, I've been able to have a huge impact on my company by scaling, improving core business flows and also building multiple features from the ground up.</em><br><br><em>Earlier in my career, I was scared to move to a startup because I didn't think that I knew enough about engineering to be able to contribute to a startup. If I were to do my career over again, I would've left a larger company as soon as I felt my growth stalling out, because I could've easily handled working at a startup once I had learned how to ship projects at a larger company.</em></blockquote><p><strong>We’re hosting the second Women Engineers in Startups series this fall. Learn more about it </strong><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/women-engineers-in-startups/">here.
Apply to participate by October 7</strong></a><strong>. </strong></p><!--kg-card-begin: html--><center>\n<a class=\"ycdc-retro-btn ycdc-retro-btn-gold mt-[-10px] ml-[13px]\" href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2022/?utm_source=ycblog\%22 style=\"text-decoration: none;\" title=\"Women Engineers in Startups\" target=\"_blank\">Apply Now</a>\n</center><!--kg-card-end: html--><p>* <em>We use an inclusive definition of “women” and welcome trans women as well as genderqueer and non-binary people who identify as women or femme in any way to attend this event.</em></p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card\"><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/events/yc-women-eng-in-startups-2022/?utm_source=ycblog\%22>Treasury Prime</a> (YC W18) - Embedded banking software platform and marketplace</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/onesignal/">OneSignal (YC S11) - Engage customers through personalized omni-channel messaging</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/skill-lync/">Skill-lync (YC W19) - Online engineering college for India</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/tigereye/">TigerEye (YC S22) - Modern enterprise software for sales leaders</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/zeitview/">Zeitview (YC W15) - Inspection software for renewable energy & sustainable infrastructure</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ontop/">OnTop (YC W21) - A bank for remote workers connected to payroll</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/obie/">Obie (YC S19) - Insurance and risk management for landlords</li><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nabis/">Nabis (YC W19) - The largest licensed cannabis wholesale platform</li></ul><p>Public:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/presto/">Presto (YC S10) - Digital meets physical for big chain restaurants</li></ul><p>Exits:</p><ul><li><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/nurx/">NURX (YC W16) - Medicine or testing kit, prescribed online, and delivered to your door </li></ul><p>One thing to note is that this is not an exhaustive list of YC’s top companies. We allowed founders to opt out of being listed for any reason. The full list of YC companies can be found <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/">here. </p><p>Congrats again to the companies recognized on the 2023 YC Top Companies list!</p>","comment_id":"63f91878d2b0220001e8d6e9","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/02/BlogTwitter-Image-Template.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-02-24T12:05:12.000-08:00","updated_at":"2023-03-16T09:44:58.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-02-27T09:00:00.000-08:00","custom_excerpt":"There are now 16 public YC companies, 290 private YC companies and 33 exits that are valued at over $150M, and over 80 that are worth more than $1B.","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"61fe29e3c7139e0001a7106f","name":"Y 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Every batch, we invite founders and executives to advise YC companies as Visiting Group Partners. These advisors bring valuable insights and recent operational experience to YC early stage companies. Throughout the batch, they take on a subset of YC Group Partner responsibilities, including application reading, interviews, group office hours, individual office hours, demo day prep, and more.
We have five Visiting Group Partners joining us for the YC Summer 2021 batch. Welcome back, Reshma Khilnani, Surbhi Sarna, and Nicolas Dessaigne — (more about these founders turned visiting group partners here), and welcome to Diana Hu and Calvin French-Owen.
Diana Hu
Diana was co-founder and CTO of Escher Reality (YC S17), an Augmented Reality Backend company that was acquired by Niantic (makers of Pokémon Go). At Niantic, she was the head of the AR platform. Previously, she led data science at OnCue TV that was sold to Verizon. Originally from Chile, Diana graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS and MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a focus in computer vision and machine learning.
Why did you decide to become a Visiting Group Partner?
I love learning about tech and helping companies get off the ground. Joining YC as a Visiting Group Partner is the best of both worlds. I look forward to supporting and also learning from all the companies throughout the batch.
What are you looking forward to most as a Visiting Group Partner?
“We choose to go to the moon” is what it feels like working with founders at YC. In particular, having worked in AR, we had to invent a lot of tech to make things work, so I strongly relate and look forward to working with founders tackling all sorts of hard tech problems.
Also having grown up in Chile, I have a soft spot for founders making things that people want and need in their home countries outside the US. The impact can be tremendous in their local economies. I am really excited that going virtual in the coming batch lets tons of international companies participate. This way international companies can learn and grow like bay areas companies while staying close to their local users. And on the flip side, we can learn from them.
Calvin French-Owen
Calvin was the co-founder and CTO of Segment, until it was acquired by Twilio for 3.2B in November 2020. Prior to that, he studied CS at MIT. When not helping startups, Calvin is running around the hills of San Francisco, training for the next ultramarathon.
Why did you decide to become a Visiting Group Partner?
In November, I left Segment to start a “reading period” and learn about a bunch of new fields. When the opportunity to join as a Visiting Group Partner popped up, it felt like a great way to expose myself to a huge number of new fields and experiences.
More than anything, I like working with early stage founders. I’m hoping to help share some of the wisdom we learned at Segment the hard way! 🙂
What are you looking forward to most as a Visiting Group Partner?
Two main things: The first is working with a bunch of people who are just incredibly optimistic about the future. I love the enthusiasm and energy that you find at YC, in both the founders and the partners.
Additionally, I’m excited to learn about a huge number of industries. At Segment, we went very deep on many aspects of developer tooling, enterprise software, and solving data infrastructure problems at scale. But I didn’t get as much first-hand exposure to all sorts of other businesses: hardware, marketplaces, consumer apps, etc. I’m excited to see the hundreds of companies in the coming batch and learn as much (or more!) from them as they will from me!
Michael Seibel is a Group Partner and Managing Director, Early Stage at YC. He was the cofounder and CEO Justin.tv and Socialcam. Socialcam sold to Autodesk in 2012 and Justin.tv became Twitch.