Y Combinator Startup Podcast - #79 - Liz Wessel

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

Liz Wessel is the cofounder and CEO of WayUp. WayUp is a job and internship platform for college students and recent graduates. They were part of the Winter 2015 YC batch.Read the transcript here.The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinators podcast. Today's episode is with Liz Wessel. Liz is the co-founder and CEO of WayUp, and Way Up is a job and internship platform for college students and recent graduates. They were part of the winner 2015 YC batch. All right, here we go. At what point did you know you wanted to start a company? So my sophomore year of college, I was at Penn. and I actually started my first business at the end of sophomore year. So I went to Stanford for a three-day boot camp called Bases Entrepreneurial Boot Camp or something like that. And I remember going to the Jamba Juice at Stanford. And they asked me, can I see your Stanford ID?

And I said, I don't have one. Why? And they said, oh, you'd get like 10 or 15% off your Jamba Juice. And I paid full because I was a Penn student. But I remember thinking, wow, that's really cool. That's a great perk for students. I should do this at Penn. So I get back to campus and I walk around to all the restaurants and I say, do you have

any loyalty program for students? And they also know. And so I said, okay, if I got your logo in the wallet of thousands of students at Penn, would you give them 10, 15% off? And every single restaurant in bars said yes. And so I said, okay, and I'm not going to, you know, pay you for that or anything. And I'm actually going to charge students. and they were like, okay, we don't care.

And so I ended up over sophomore summer. I also was doing an internship at Blackstone in Tokyo. But meanwhile, I was starting, as we all do. But meanwhile, I actually went about hiring this company in China to create thousands of cards that would put the logos of all these businesses on the back. And I called it the Penites card. And I sold, I got back to campus in my junior summer, I hired all my friends to basically go around selling these cards for 15.

bucks a pop and we sold like thousands and it was awesome and uh it was very very very cool and that kind of gave you the bug i was addicted i thought the concept of creating something from nothing and solving a problem or you know helping people is just such a cool opportunity and why wouldn't you want to do that over and over because you weren't you weren't an engineer right you're no i took a bunch of computer science classes but i was not what i would call an engineer yeah and so were you inherently drawn to creating a software startup or did you like try out other ideas and that first business it was like a wicks website and a bunch of plastic cards so not really much software software there though i did to be fair sell a bunch of cards online but not much software there i remember though my senior year when i wanted to start that next project and that's the one i

worked on with my co-founder now of way up jj um we very much were keen on having it be a software business or an internet company. Okay, but you didn't start it immediately after school. So the story of the way up, the high level is my senior year. I'm happy to tell like the funny version of it from college, but my, the high level is my senior year, JJ and I worked on a project together that would help college students find campus ambassador jobs. And so we worked on that.

We launched it. And then I went and went to Google in California. and then I moved to India to lead brand initiatives for Google. JJ went traveling around the world as a backpacking freelancing web developer. And then as all good backpackers do, went to McKinsey in New York. And so we kept in touch over the years, but that website kept growing and growing to tens of thousands of users and big businesses and so on. And we knew we each wanted to start a company.

And so we quit our jobs two years after college and started way up with the insight that that website we had started in college, which was really just a project, had grown so much, you know, at YC, they say make something people want. Yeah. If you build a website that you barely do any marketing work for and it's grown that much, then we knew that they had something. And so we shut down that website because it was just like a kind of half-ass project. But we took the insights from that and built way up off of that.

Okay. So I'm really curious about how and when you decided to leave Google because a lot of people who could start companies and are in the position, you know, like financially, they have enough flexibility to leave, just kind of get in this cycle. They're like, oh, you know, they get a raise every six months or whatever, and they stay there forever. Yeah. Oh, man. Google's a cushy job.

It's an awesome job. It's great. It's super hard, but really awesome. Okay. So I always wanted to start a company full time after college, but my senior year, I applied for, so I'd already done a summer internship between junior and senior year at Google as a product marketing manager intern. I got the offer.

I also got the offer at a top tier VCFA, a venture capital fund. And for me, I had gotten enough advice that, and I'd started that Penn Eats company saw that there was so much I had to learn, whether it was managing people, legal documents, like marketing, sales. And so for me, I basically said, I want one experience that will help me before I start, you know, before I start whatever company I one day start. I did not know it was going to be called way up or that it would be web. and I said, I really want to do it for two years. Whatever this job is, I'm going to learn as much as possible for two years. And then I'm going to quit and I'm going to start a company and hopefully do it with a co-founder that I love, which I have done.

I got these two offers and I didn't know which one to take, which one would set me up for more success. To start, I said to HR in both of them, I want you to know I'm going to leave this job in two years and start a company. Is that okay? Google's so cool. I mean, they, especially the program I was applying for and that I got the offer to is called the APM program, Associate Product Marketing Manager job. Okay.

And the whole program is filled with alumni. They hire like 25 to 50 U.S. college students each year to be in this program. And it's filled with alumni who have started unbelievable businesses. Kevin Sistram started Instagram. Britt Morin, started Britt and Co. And the list goes on. Some former Googlers too. Robbie Stein was a, sorry, some former Googlers.

they're all former Googlers. I was going to say, actually, someone from my high school, too. But anyway, Robbie Stein has started a really cool company called Stamps, sold out to Yahoo. So long story short, all of these people were in this program. So they actually said it's totally fine if you leave after two years and start a company. Meanwhile, the VC fund was actually like, yeah, we highly recommend that you do VC for two years and then get your MBA or start a company. And this VC fund had had many, many successful founders as well, one who just recently had his company go public. So I couldn't choose. And so I did what I always tell college students they should do, which is cold email someone who they want the advice from. So Rolloff Botha was someone who I had seen speak at the Stanford Bases entrepreneurial boot camp. It's all going kind of full circle. So at the end of the day, I email Roloff Botha and I say, you are one of the best venture capitalists in the world. You've seen, he's at Sequoia. And I said, you've seen so many successful founders grow huge businesses.

is I want to be one of those founders. I want the best possible experience I can get beforehand. Which one would you suggest I do? Go to XYZ fund or go to Google in this program. And he said I would get the best possible operating experience I could get. And Google is one of the best operating companies in the world. Tech companies especially. You'll be surrounded by great managers, great engineers.

You'll meet great talent that you might hire one day. So go Google. And I did. I've heard you talk about this on a couple other podcasts. I love cold email. Yeah, me too, actually. One of the people I really admired in San Francisco when I was still living in New York, I emailed, cold emailed him, Skyped him.

And I was like, oh, man, it's just so weird. I'm going to be in San Francisco like next week. Are you going to be around? He's like, yeah, I'll be around. And then I just bought a flight. The best. If you could afford to do that, that's the best. Entrepreneurs do that a lot, apparently, to get like venture capital meetings.

I thought that was funny. It totally works. So say you don't have a brand name or whatever. You're just a college student. That was me. Just like you. Exactly. Can you like walk us through the steps that you use?

To cold email? Totally. So to start, I have reportive on my computer, which is this software that LinkedIn bought. But basically if you install it into Chrome and your Gmail, what you can do is you can figure out someone's email if you can't find it already online by basically guessing. So like, for example, I don't remember what roll off email is, but I probably would have looked up Sequoia's domain. So let's just say it's Sequoia.com.

I guess it's probably Sequoia vendor partners or whatever. But let's just say it's Sequoia.com. So I'd look up the domain of the website and then I'd guess like roll off B at at soquia.com. Arbilt, both at sequia.com. And I'd keep guessing until his image shows up on the right in reportive and that's when you know you got the right person. So sometimes if they're a big enough name, you can find their email address online.

But if they're not, then that's the best way to do it. So once you have that, I would say subject line has to be something. that's going to catch their attention. So want to pick your brain from a college student? Not going to stand out. Any college student can do that. My best cold email I ever sent was to probably, arguably, the most famous woman in business in the country, maybe woman in tech business in the country. I'm not going to say your name and you can guess.

And my subject line, I saw that she had taught like aerobics or done aerobics in high school or college or something. And I had taught water aerobics the summer between high school and college because they pay a lot of money. Oh, all right. And so, who knew? Yeah, I did not. And so I actually, like, wrote in my email and I think part of the subject line, like, fellow former water aerobics, like professional or something silly. But it caught your attention because if you see something ridiculous that someone clearly had to do a lot of research to find out about, they're going to open the email. And then in the email, I wrote, you know, dear blank.

And I start off with, I'm a college student. at blank, you know, so in my case, I'm a Penn senior currently trying to figure out what I want to do with my life between two job offers. So it just gets to the point of, you know, being short, sweet, and here's who I am. No one doesn't want to help college students. I feel like the second you graduate, you lose this huge badge of pride that you get to say I'm a college student. And the second you graduate, like people are much less likely to help you.

So use it and abuse it while you're in college. Yeah. But, I mean, I get cold emails all the time. I hope I don't get a barrage of them after this, but I do get a lot. So, and they always start with like, I'm a college student at X school. Yeah. And then get to the point. What do you want to help with?

And ideally show that you've done your research. So why are you asking me? So, you know, in a specific case for Roloff, I remember I said something to the tune of, like, you've seen so many successful founders. If I had just asked him, where should I move, New York or San Francisco? Like, why would I ask Rolfe, both of that, right? So I do think that a very big part of your email should, be saying, why are you asking this person? What do you want from them? Who are you? And then show

somewhere in there that you've done your research and that you're not just trying to email like famous people. And I think if you do those things, you'll probably get a good response rate. We did a podcast with Casey and I said about a month ago. And he literally has pick your brain as a Gmail filter to trash. So I would not recommend picking someone's brain. I would not recommend asking them out for coffee or 20 minutes for a phone call. People answer short questions. Exactly. And sometimes I get people asking me if I'll hop on a phone call and I know it sounds so crazy, but like literally my calendar starts at 8 a.m. and stops at 1 a.m. almost every day, five to six days a week. And so for me, 20 minutes on calendar is actually a really big deal. Asking me an email that I can just answer on my

walk from, you know, one meeting to another is not. And so. And to diverge a little bit, you talked about your calendar. I read online that you don't sleep a lot. Is that true still? Yeah. Okay. So how much you sleep? Okay. Why don't I start by just saying this is a genetic thing. Most people in my dad's side of the family don't sleep a lot. And so it's not like I'm wearing this with a, you know, with pride and trying to show off. I just don't need sleep. So if I have any sip of alcohol, I do sleep.

Okay. So if I have like a glass of wine, I will fall fast to sleep or beer or anything. But assuming I don't drink, which is most nights, I can go three or four hours of sleep and I'm good to go and I'll be just as energetic as right now. I think right now I'm going off of like three, three and a half hours of sleep. Same with my co-founder, but he shouldn't be like that because he doesn't have that gene. He's just crazy. And so your whole life you've been like this. Yeah.

I mean, in high school, I remember my friend Laura came to me one day and was like, I have a Hanukkah gift for you. And I said what? She was like, I'm going to be your assistant because I feel like you never sleep and you have such a crazy agenda and a calendar. And I just want to help you. I was just like, I don't need an assistant, but thank you. I think I've always had like a crazy calendar.

That's wild. So given that crazy schedule, do you have any like particular health regimens you need to like stay normal? People are going to judge me, but I don't work out. I think I've been to the gym once in the last year, twice in the last three years maybe. Maybe a little more than that. I don't really work out. I love walking around New York, so I guess that's exercise. I don't like taking the subway.

I love walking or Uber if I'm on a call and I need quiet. But I eat pretty healthy. I don't like sweets much. Okay. You're not on coffee all the time? I'm not one of those people who do yoga every day. And by the way, I don't judge people who do yoga. I think a lot of my friends do yoga.

I'm just not like a, I don't know. I hope I live a long life. My family, most people live a long life. And most people are about as regimented about their health as I am. Walking is very good for you. Yeah, there you go. I drink a lot of water. Oh, there you.

Oh, if you sit down with me at a meal, you will hate me because I will ask for two pictures of water because I will drink water the entire time when I'm not talking. We should have more. Sorry. All right. So more of the tip stuff. So what are the most common questions you get when you are getting these cold emails from college students? And what tips do they ask for for internships? Probably the most common one, which is an awesome problem to have is which internship should I choose, which job should I choose?

I get that a lot. I wonder if it's because of the roll-off story. I get a lot of people asking for advice when they're a student entrepreneur and they're starting a company. And I think that's amazing. I mean, when I started my business in college, I would say I was one of like five people I knew who had starting companies. Now I feel like it's a prerequisite to graduating from college in the U.S. Or at least at Penn. It just seems like everyone's starting businesses, which is funny because it's not like I graduated so long ago.

I graduated in 2012, but it definitely was not as common back then. So I think that's another one I get a lot. Okay. And so what kind of answers do you give? Is it very specific or do you have like a mental model for choosing this kind of thing? It's very specific. And often I respond saying like you need to give me more context here. Well, yeah, because I appreciate if you want to keep the email short.

But if you're someone yesterday emailed me, I think the student had seen my TED talk about like eight things you have to do before you graduate or whatever. And so he emailed me and he said, I love to. your TED talk. I'm choosing between these two job opportunities, which one should I take? And I was just like, I don't know anything about you. I don't know what your goals are. I don't know anything about these jobs. I don't really have time to look up each job. Can you give me more context? So then he did. So I think it's nice that he tried to keep it short and sweet, but I could only do so much. Okay. Well, then. And what do I know too? You know? It's just one opinion. Yeah. What about on the actual application site? Because I saw you guys have tons of content on your site

for students. Yeah. What are your tips on just preparing yourself to apply for an internship, assuming it's very competitive, but you have probably the right qualifications for it? And we really do. It's wayup.com slash guide or way up.com slash blog. We have a ton of content, like thousands of articles. What I will say is number one, and this is not meant to be self-serving, but we have

these profiles on WayUp that are, in my opinion, a much more holistic perspective on who you are versus a LinkedIn profile. That's just your work experience or a resume that people read the bolded words and then ignore the rest. Our profiles on WayUp focus on your GitHub, if you're an engineer, your YouTube, if you are a performer or a public speaker, your Instagram, if you're a designer, they show your volunteer, your hobbies, your fun facts. And so it's a little bit more of a holistic perspective of who you are. And we hear from our recruiters that if a recruiter looks at your way up profile, your LinkedIn profile, if you even have one and your resume, they're like significantly more likely to message you and be interested in your application

if they see your way of profile. Okay. So first of all, I know this sounds self-serving, but I honestly would say create a way of profile and promote it. Other than that, I think a lot of people don't apply for that many jobs because subcareer service offices tell you only apply for two or three jobs. That's wrong. Don't do that.

Apply for a lot more than that. The market unemployment rate, thank goodness, is so down. and therefore people are really getting higher left and right, especially if you're technical, you know, especially if you're a lot of things. And so I would say applying for a bunch of jobs. And then really the feedback, the advice I give most often for people going into an interview is an acronym I like to call REIF, REAF. Okay.

So it's research, show enthusiasm, ask questions, follow up. So research, if you show up to an interview and you show that you know more about the company than the person interviewing you, you will impress them. Period. And the story, you will impress them. I remember for my Google internship interview, I read an entire book about Google in like two days. And I came and I was name dropping the person who, not that I knew them, but like I was mentioning, you know, the person who made the Google logo and this and that. And I was showing, I knew so much and I just lived and breathed the company. And my interviewer was super impressed. Which brings me to E, show enthusiasm. So as much enthusiasm as you might think I have right now in this interview, you are probably engaged with me because I'm showing I actually care about the conversation.

If you don't and you're playing like hard to get or too cool for school, then no one's going to find you interesting or engaging. Asking questions and you want to ask good questions. When candidates ask me at the end of an interview, why did you start way up? I literally roll my high. I don't literally. In my head, I roll my eyes. I don't want to actually be rude. But it's like if you if you just Googled that question, you could find it in every,

podcast or interview I've done. And not to say in any way that I am saying you should know everything about me, but show that you're coming with questions that you can't find on Google with one Google search. So come with thoughtful questions, things like if I were to stand out in this role as a rock star, what would that look like? What are the people who really excel at your company have in common, et cetera? And then F follow up, just send a thank you note. No one, especially college students, tend to do this these days.

And it makes you stick out so much and shows this level of professional. which really is pretty easy to accomplish, but it's just sending a thank you note. Do you mean written, like, printed out? Thank you note? Like, real or email? It's interesting. Written will help you stand out way more. However, and you'll almost get a guarantee that the person's going to see it because

everyone opens their, you know, a handwritten letter. However, you do want the email or the note to get to them before ideally before they submit their feedback and snail mail is snail mail. So maybe if you write one and you give it to the doorman on your website, out that could be interesting if you actually write it after it and by the way the thank you note should not just be thank you for your time it should be like i really enjoyed that we talked about x y and z or i really liked the insight that you gave me about abc so as specific as it can be that's great but i would say you want them to ideally get it if possible within 24 hours because then maybe they'll get it

before they submit feedback about you and that might help them if they're in between a yes and no it might help them mean one way so what about what about the communication skills because that seems like this whole broad category where even if you apply your whole model like this reef model, if you come on too hot, it's like, whoa, okay, this is intense. Or if you just like can't communicate quite well enough through your way out profile or LinkedIn or whatever. What do you advise someone to do there? Are there like books that you tell them to read or like, yeah, how do they handle that? I don't have any books off the top of my head. I'm sure there are some great ones. I think the most common advice we give is just practice with your friends, specifically the friends or family

members who will be honest with you. So not the ones who are yes men or yes women, but the ones who are going to tell you when you suck and the ones who are going to tell you when you're being super clear. And you should ideally be practicing with someone who you think is a good communicator because getting bad advice from a bad communicator is not going to help you that any better. Okay. Yeah. Because I've done a handful of interviews in the past on the interviewer side. And that to me can be a little oppressive. He's like, I know everything about you. I've looked at every single one of your tweets in your whole life. Crazy. Crazy. Where do you like draw, like, do you guys encounter that kind of thing here? Yes. I've had some crazy ones, like crazy, crazy ones.

But sometimes it's appropriate. As long as they're not being stalker crazy. So for example, someone who was applying to be my assistant who actually ended up hiring and he's amazing. And his name's Brandon and you probably met him at some point. Brandon watched or listened to a couple podcasts of mine before coming into interview with me, research. He showed tons of enthusiasm, by the way, and asked great questions and did do a very nice follow-up. But he came and it was so funny. He had this great conversation.

It did not feel in any way like he was creepily stalking me. I didn't even know about all the podcasts. He just seemed like he really knew his shit and he seemed like he really wanted the job for the right reasons. It was a very casual but but really pleasant conversation like the one we're having right now. And that's the best interview is one where it feels like a conversation on an interview. But at the very end, he goes, I just want you to know, I think the fact that you wear mismatching socks at all times is hilarious. And I know it's weird. I saw that. You mentioned it in the podcast with you in blank. And I really think it's hilarious. And in honor of that,

I'm wearing mismatching socks today. And he shows me. And I just laughed so hard. And I was like, That is memorable. That is memorable. I thought it's funny. And it wasn't creepy. He didn't have my picture on his socks. That would be like, oh, my God, bam, this guy from our office. But it was funny.

It was nice. That's pretty good. Yeah, I think I would just draw the line like anything approaching like someone's family or their like boyfriend or girlfriend. Weird. Yeah. Like, keep that part out. Agreed.

What about like just this whole process of presenting yourself to find a co-founder? How did you go about finding JJ? So basically, this is embarrassing. Talk about being a weird app. Okay. So I, in sophomore year, a little bit of a backstory. Sophomore year, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, like most, you know, college students. Freshman year I came into Penn thinking I wanted to be a politician because I had interned for Hillary's first presidential campaign in high school, senior year of high school.

realized in college that I had interned for one politician and really didn't like the person and realized that a lot of the other politicians I was meeting in that process were pretty scumb-be- pretty scummy people. And I just said, you know what, maybe I'll go the Bloomberg route of trying to get into politics one day once I've like made an impact on business, but I want to do something where I can be impactful and not surrounded by scumbags. So, fortunately not all politicians are like that, but a lot are. So freshman year, I'm trying to figure out what I want to study.

Sophomore year, I start sitting actuarial math, computer science, and politics, trying to figure out again. And then I get this email saying, Anhauser-Busch is interested in hiring you to be a campus ambassador. And I said, what is Anhauser-Busch and what's a campus ambassador? So I Google both. Anhauser-Bush, cool. I like beer.

Not there, beer as much as I would like. Like, I love Blue Moon. But that's fine. I really, you know, I like beer. And then campus ambassador, it seemed like. like it was this marketing job. And I didn't know what marketing was. I'd never taken a marketing class.

I thought marketing was making TV commercials and that's it. And so, and you know, obviously, it's much more than that. So my first instinct is I want to get as much experience as possible and I want to build my resume. And hey, I also get paid. That's nice. And so I took the job and it turned out that I was being hired to not promote their beer, but to help them recruit mechanical engineering students to work for Anheuser-Bush.

And I thought, that was, A, the first time I realized I loved marketing and B, the first time I realized that the whole career services slash college recruiting process is kind of broken. So now fast forward, my senior year, I knew I wanted to start a project because I'd gotten the offer to Google early and I ended up taking it by like October or November. So I kind of had the rest of senior year to do whatever I wanted. And I thought, why not start a project? Not even a business, but as much as a project. So I signed up for a hackathon thinking I'm going to create a website that will help college students find campus ambassador jobs called the campus rep. So I signed up for a hackathon and it turns out it's the same night as, I don't know, some like date party or something. And I had to choose between the two.

And what I ended up doing was I found my way, snuck my way into, I think in YC, they would call it, they hacked your way into the database of every single person who signed up where I could see their resume and all of their information. and you were not supposed to see any of this information, but it's fine, I did. It wasn't illegal, I don't think. And so I went through every line and looked up every single person who signed up for the hackathon, and there was one that was by far in a way

the most impressive to me, and it was this guy named Joel Flegelman, Joel J.J. Nicknamed Flegelman. And I thought, I've never heard of this guy. I look him up. We have, like, no mutual friends. Why was he impressive? A bunch of reasons.

He knew how to code. He knew, and I know that sounds obvious, but a lot of people who sign up for hackathons don't. He knew how to code. He had done some really interesting projects that he mentioned about like scraping this and this and whatever. He also had a very strong business sense. He was in the Huntsman program, which is a dual degree program between Warden

and basically linguistic studies in the college for what he was studying. So he was like, Huntsman program, which is a really impressive program, plus he knew how to code and he'd worked on really cool projects. His hobbies were really funny and interesting. I just thought this guy sounds great. I'm going to email him. And if he doesn't respond, cold email him. If he doesn't respond, I'll cold email someone else and I'll go down my list.

But he was my first choice, the only one I emailed. I cold email him. And I told a little bit of a white lie, which I regret. But I did say my friends, I thought, to your point about creepy stalkers, I thought it'd be weird if I said I found my way into the database of the hackathon messaging you. So I said, my friends told me that you're like really talented engineer. I'd love to meet with you for a beer at City Tap House, which is a great bar on campus. And apparently because he likes that bar, he agreed to meet with me. But he totally knew that I was lying about the friends because in his email back to me, he goes,

it's so interesting that your, quote, friends, end quote, told you because in his head, he was like, I know we don't have mutual friends who told you this. So that was kind of funny. And then we met and I pitched him on the idea and he thought campus ambassador jobs were so interesting. And so he said, let's do this. And then that obviously turned into something more and more than just campus ambassador jobs too. That's how we met. Interesting. Okay. And so were you, were you curious about vetting him before you got going? Because like as someone who hadn't been, you know, an engineering school, like, would you do?

No. Well, I had taken more coding classes than he had actually. Oh, crazy. Interestingly enough. But no. I didn't think about that. I was like, it's just a project. I'm not paying the guy. I wasn't paying the guy. Like we were equal co-founders in this thing. Exactly. If it fails, it's not even whatever. It's like we're both going down. So let's try to take. together. Yeah, I didn't even think about that. I guess I had a lot of trust in him. Hmm. Okay. I still do. Yeah. I mean, because now he's obviously, you're a co-founder. Right. So now you guys are three and a half years in, you said? Just under three and a half. I would say three years and a few months. Okay. So pretty close. Yeah. All right. Um, what's it like now having, you know, you've been at YC for a couple years. You're obviously here in New York. Um, how are things going? So we did YC six months into the business or five months in. So, less than three years ago. It's crazy. It feels sometimes like a month ago and sometimes like

10 years ago. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's going great. I mean, it's hard. Starting business. Everyone always says starting a business is so hard. It's this roller coaster of emotion. And it's really easy to hear that and nod your head and say, I get it. But it's so much harder to go through it. But it is the most fun I've ever had in my life. And I've learned more in the past three years than in the 27, so in the 24 years before it. Maybe with the exception of the first five years of my life where I learned the whole English language, but that's a sign of it. It's really learning how to walk, all of that stuff. Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Okay, so we should break that out because we've done a bunch of podcasts that people have been in YC. And we've done a handful of people who have left YC, obviously. But you're not that far out, right? So what have you learned in the interim, like intervening years? You know, I said to Sam Altman right after YC, I was at like a lunch or dinner and he was there. And we were sitting next to each other. And I turned him and I said, you know, the thing that I've had to learn about the most since I see that you guys did not prepare us for at all.

And he had a really good reason for why. But that you did not prepare us for at all was how to manage people and hire a team and grow a team. That is the hardest thing ever. It's funny and ironic because our business is a recruiting business. It is so hard. I mean, so hard. I went on Sunday or Saturday and did a whole talk to a group of like 30 entrepreneurs, who are all five employees or less all about how we came up with our way up culture values

and this and that. And they all raised their hand with questions with each their own, like the most challenging questions about employees having, you know, affairs with other people and this and this. And I'm just like, oh, my God, all of this is really difficult. That's probably the thing I've learned about the most. So like scaling an organization, managing people infinitely more senior and experience than you, hiring those people and convincing them to take pay cuts to come work for you. you and so on. So I'd say that's probably the biggest learning. Well, we should break that down into

like specific examples. So, you know, say you're like you're recruiting your first like big senior person. What was that like? Okay. The first senior quote unquote person, he wasn't C level, but he was like VP level. I worked with a recruiter and it was really interesting working with a recruiter because recruiters, the first time you work with a recruiter, they teach you so about hire you should actually hire. They teach you about something called scorecards where, and I'm talking not an internal recruiter. I'm talking an external recruiter who does this for a living. Executive recruiters are what they call themselves. So they teach you about a thing called a scorecard where you create a set of a criteria for any role of things that they have to be able to have,

whether skills or culture or, you know, soft skills, hard skills. And you come up with this entire scorecard and then you have to rank each person on that. They teach you about the interview process. They help you learn how to sell the candidate. I mean, especially if the person has kids and a family, which this person did, coming to a company that at that time, we'd only raise $9 million, which is still, it sounds like a lot, but that's not enough to ensure that you are going to be, you know, around for years and years to come. Technically, no amount of money is. So you still have to convince them of that, you know, that it's worth it for them to risk they're everything to come to you. So it was just a lot of learnings. How do you sell it? I mean,

obviously, you know, you're excited about your company and you kind of like sell the vision, you sell the dream. But like what are the real tangible things? I think the biggest one is definitely the person who is going to be managing them. And in my case, it's me. I guess I have to be selling that I'm going to be a good person that they want to work with and that I'm not going to micro-manage them, that I'm not going to, you know, annoy them and that I'm going to be a really good partner. obviously the second thing, because someone once told me, actually a bunch of people have said this to me, people quit their manager before they quit their company. And I've seen that very often be true here too. And so I would say first things first, making sure that, you know, you convince

them that you're going to be a great partner for them because no matter what the company does or what the culture is like, no one wants to work for an asshole. The second thing I would say is definitely convincing them that the business has legs and that the business is a great idea that can change the world or whatever your goal is. For us, it's very much to help people and that we've already had some kind of learning from the first, at that point we'd been around for a year, that we've already had some kind of learning that will help ensure that we have a real shot at becoming a huge business. And the list goes on. And so what about, this is something that I have difficulty with, like managing people whose personality type doesn't

really gel with mine. I find, you know, if you say there are like five to ten different kinds of personality types and maybe your personality aligns with like two or three of them and then there's the rest. How have you figured out how to manage all those kinds of people? Do you delegate to like other people who gel with them or what? If I'm being honest, if you're working for me, there's a few things that you have to have in personality type that I won't hire you to work for me. And it's fine to work for someone else, but I'm not going to hire you to work not for me, for example, if you don't consider yourself kind of a little bit type A where you, we have one of our way up principles as great isn't good enough. If you always strive to just be better

than great to be the best, that's very much a good thing. So I was raised by my parents where if I was in second place, why didn't you get first? And if you got first place, well, that's expected. If you got a 99, my dad would call and say, why do you not think you got a 100? And I know that sounds crazy, but I work best with people who are like that from a standpoint of management. Not everyone at my company is like that, and that's good. You want that diversity of thought, not just diversity of gender and race and all that stuff, but also of thought. But from a management perspective, I do like having that hyper-competitive and kind of type A personality. But there are other things. So one person who reports to me is definitely not nearly as,

I would say, organized as others. And while that could frustrate some people, I know that that kind of somewhat lack of organization is totally made up for by that person's utter creativity. I mean, they're so creative and always coming up with really cool ideas. So you just have to balance and you have to know, like, I'm going to manage this person to make sure that, you know, I'm telling them, please follow up with written action items for each of us so that you don't forget what your action items are. But I understand that the, you know, that you're probably not going to have as formal an agenda

in our calendar invite as other people will. And you just kind of live with it. And is JJ the same as you? J.G. and are so different. Oh, my God. So does he have like a different kind of group that he can delegate to or manage? He's definitely type A too.

I will say that. But he, yeah, he managed his engineering. And I don't really touch his engineering because I don't know what I'm doing there. And the engineers here are so amazing. And I should not be telling any of them what to do. So he and I are super different. I think a lot of people, I'm extremely. like blunt and I don't hold back at all and he's a little bit more savvy and tactful probably

with how he gives feedback if I'm being honest. There's a few differences that make him much stronger than I and then some differences that make me stronger. You know, we both have our pros and cons. Okay. So you, in other words, like kind of have developed this whole company around people that you can manage well. That's just for my management team. No, there are definitely people here who I've struggled with managing and now they report to someone else and we're good to go. and they're doing a great job. So I would just say overall, the people who report directly to me, I want to make sure I have a great relationship with them.

But there are people at this company who, if they reported to me, they would be failing and I would be failing working with them. But that's okay because they work great with someone else. And what else has been difficult for you aside from managing? It's not even difficult as much. Yeah. It's like learning or whatever. It's big learning.

Other things. Focusing on focusing. I know that sounds silly, but you really want to be good at one or two courses. things and there are so many shiny objects out there. And especially in our space, our space is super broken. Like HR tech is pretty behind the times. I mean, we're sending men and women to space and yet we're still like really struggling to get applicant tracking system integrations in place, like really basic technology issues. And so what I would say is there are so many opportunities and so many things we want to do and deciding and prioritizing what you want to do is really hard.

The good news is I just hired this awesome VP product who should really be helping me with that. So hopefully that works out. Knock on wood. Yeah. Okay. Because there are, what's way up's unique insight? Because there are obviously of competitors, right? Like what do you guys do differently?

So we have three components to our platform for candidates. One is a job board. One is candidate sourcing. So profiles and one is content and advice. So the job board is not just, you know, you go to Indeed.com. And if you and I both go, let's say I'm an amazing engineer and you and I both look up engineering jobs on Indeed, we're going to get the exact same recommendations because you're probably logged out, et cetera, and I'm probably logged out. They don't know anything about us. I think that's crazy. Like you should not have to scroll through thousands of links. We should be giving you personalized recommendations based on what you are, what you want, what other people who look like you want, look like you from like a standpoint of what school or what you're, et cetera, not actually physically. And the list goes on. So personalized recommendations. Candidate sourcing is somewhat. similar to LinkedIn, but as I mentioned, we have these amazing profiles that really show who you are in your best light. You are more than your work history. We want to show that. And recruiters can

log in and search through people, just like, you know, a LinkedIn, for example, and they can message you if they're interested in speaking to you about a potential job opportunity. So that really drives a lot of hires. And then the third aspect is content, advice. How do you prepare for this interview? Or, hey, we saw that you were looking at this job at, you know, Unilever and we saw you didn't apply. Why? Here's a piece of content about why Unilever is such an awesome place to work for. And so we have lots of, it's this integrated approach that we're really just trying to help as many people figure out what they want to do and then actually get that job. And so one in three people who apply on Way Up get hired, which we're really proud about that really few other,

if any, job sites have been able to tout. Cool. And this is a problem that I'm trying to figure out at why I see all the time. Like, what is the most effective content for the most amount of people? And in our shoes, it's like getting people to start companies, right? So what has been the most effective piece of content for you guys in terms of getting people to apply through Way Up? I think often I don't have a great answer other than, like, unique content that will actually

make a company or a job stand out as being, you know, not something, you know, combat the myths that they might not misunderstand. So you look at an investment being on Wall Street. So I was just talking to a client right before this. And they are a classic Wall Street, bulge bracket bank. And you look at them and you think they're probably a bunch of boring white dudes in a room banking all day. Whatever that means.

Whatever that means. From 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. Staying up late for some reason, doing something. Yeah. They don't care about the world. Like there's all these horrible. myths about it. And then you actually speak to them and you learn about what they're doing. And you actually realize, yeah, some people are exactly like that. But there's also really, really cool

jobs and really cool opportunities. And so how can we highlight what makes some companies and some jobs really unique for the specific reader? So we try to do a little bit less at scale content and a little bit more targeted content around this piece of content. We hope engineers who also happen to be diverse, you know, some kind of underrepresented minority, whether it's female engineers or diverse engineers, et cetera, we'll read this piece of content. We hope that freshmen will read this type of content, et cetera. And then what we can do with our databases, we'll send it out to the right people who we want to read it. And are you doing like Facebook ads and stuff like that really targeted towards freshman engineers? We do some Facebook ads.

We don't do too many, but we definitely have one person who's paid acquisition. That's the thing. Okay. Gotcha. So broadly, how do you feel about where education is going in terms of preparing yourself to be employed or starting a company? I love how many companies are no longer obsessed with a college degree and are now starting to think more about skills. I love how many companies don't give a shit what your major is. I think that's really important. I mean, I went into product marketing and had never taken a single marketing class at Penn or in my life. I still don't always know what marketing is.

I was an English major. I have no idea. Yeah, exactly. One time I asked a bunch of people at my company, what do you do and what did you study? And not one of them had studied a single thing related to what they do. So I think the long story short is I love that people are using their educational experience. I love when I hear that people use their education to learn about things that they love and not necessarily that they want to do for a career because you might be super passionate about

chemistry, love studying it, love studying oceanography, but not actually want to be a scientist or study the oceans. And I think that that's really cool that the way companies are moving is allowing you to have that kind of channel for studying what you're passionate about and not necessarily having to go into that career. Maybe it's just something you want to study. Okay. And if you're a small company, say you're like, you just did YC and you're going to

make your first hire. How do you make yourself look attractive to all these, you know, fresh, like wide-eyed college grads? I think it's two things. Number one, showing why your company is really interesting and special. And usually that's part of just the mission and what you're accomplishing or what you're trying to accomplish. And then number two, making it very clear that the team is amazing and that you are going to be part of the beginning of something really special and huge. People don't join startups because of the compensation. That's for sure. Like, they join because of the team and the mission. And I think you have to focus on that. So now you've been running this company for several years now. What do you imagine your life

looks like in 10 years? Ten years is a long time. I know. It's like more than a third of my life. Okay. So I can talk about what I will hope I have accomplished by that. It's super corny. But I've always said I want to make a difference in the world and I want to be remembered for making a change for the better in the world. Not for the worst. And so I really hope that I'll have accomplished that in 10 years. Ten years is a really long time. So I hope way up will be the thing that helps me accomplish that.

And maybe I'll have done something else by then. Who knows? How do you think you'll have improved yourself? Like what are you working on right now to get better at? I hope I'll be a better everything, team member, manager, thinker, product person, marketer, salesperson. I mean, I'm improving in literally every area at all times. Right now, I am figuring out how to be better at answering questions during interviews. So I hope I'll get better at everything. And then personal wise, like 10 years, you know, for all the women watching, I hope I'll

have a family by then. I'm so glad if I'm being honest, like I have some friends who are founders of really early companies and they have babies or they're pregnant. I don't know how they do it. I mean, I have a dog. and I'm like constantly, like, no, I should say forgetting. But like, I'm freaking out about, oh my God, well, I remember to put up food. Like a human being is a whole other animal, literally. So I hope to have had a child or were and, you know, be married and all of that stuff. But professionally, I hope to have had some kind of like really big impact on the world that I'll be remembered for. My favorite thing, career-wise, I hope I'll just love whatever I'm doing.

My favorite piece of advice I ever got was actually, and I always say this to college students, my college graduation, one of my friends' dads turned to me and said, you know, people spend their whole lives being so paranoid about making sure that they marry the right person and you spend so much time dating and figuring out who the perfect match is, the soul meet. And they don't do that with their careers because I guess it's a little more taboo to divorce than it is to switch jobs. But you spend more time with your job and your career than you do with your spouse for the first 40 years of your marriage, most likely, unless you retire really early.

So, like, really making sure that you find the right job or a job that's going to make you happy so that you're not miserable every day is equally as important as often it is finding a spouse. So if you are so lucky as to be able to have a choice, I would say, you know, for me, I hope I'll be able to have a choice and have a job that I love. And so, yeah, for a college student, like someone who was in your shoes or is in your shoes, how do they find the thing that they really care about? I mean, obviously doing as much as you can by way of part-time job and internship, so you can have tested that out before you go into your first full-time job. Most commonly, when I see people switching their first full-time job within less than a year, which a lot of people do, as you know, it's often because they just never had an opportunity to try it out in college to like try out everything in college.

And by the way, there's a really cool site called Wayup.com where they can find it. But I would say, you know, not doing something for the money. I mean, I know it's so attractive to be able to pay back your student loans, but it's also so attractive to be able to be happy at your job. And you're going to do such a better job at your job if you're happy. So I think doing something that you think you're going to love and working with people who you think will teach you is infinitely the best decision for your first job and your second and your third and every job after. Totally. I think that's such great advice. Like just get started early and don't worry about it being perfect.

I had so many shitty internships that were just like, oh, okay, don't need to do it. What was the shittiest? It was mostly shitty because I didn't get paid anything. I was working in an animation studio. And that was actually fun. Yeah. But how I had to make ends meet while living in New York was less fun. Luckily, that's usually illegal now.

Oh, it's illegal? The government's made it really hard to legally have an unpaid internship. So there are ways, but it's way less common. We have less than 9% of internships on Way up are unpaid. Oh, wow. I just graduated in 2011. So things have changed. Yeah, a lot.

A lot. Yeah, so I would say the same thing. Just get started early and go to school in a city. Yeah. I would also recommend. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I loved going to school in Philly, but I think, yeah, I think you can make both work. I was jealous of, like, all my friends who, you know, lived on, like, the quad and had all of that. But, like, starting in New York at 18 to me was so awesome. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway. Cool. Cool.

Well, thanks for coming in. Yeah, thank you for having me. Or actually, thanks for hosting. You're welcome. All right. Thanks for listening. So as always, you can find the transcript and the video at blog. combinator.com. And if you have a second, it would be awesome to give us a rating and review wherever you find your podcast. See you next time.