Patrick Collison Quotes

Sometimes people think Y Combinator has big ideas about themes. But really, we just fund the best startups.

Every kid coming out of Harvard, every kid coming out of school now thinks he can be the next Mark Zuckerberg, and with these new technologies like cloud computing, he actually has a shot.

I love working with really early stage startups where the outcome is still in doubt. Maybe they'll go on to greatness, or maybe they'll never get off the runway at all.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There's a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

I have always been very tech-focused, which you may almost say is the traditional CEO in Silicon Valley.

Loopt wouldn't have happened without Y Combinator.

I'm a creature of startups. For example, I don't want government interference in the startup ecosystem.

If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC's are investing, it's in people who understand what it takes, who've been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together.

The more angels we have in Silicon Valley, the better. We are funding innovation. We are funding the next Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Look at MIT—the smartest people in the world. They start up 50 companies a year. Only 1 makes it.

I think the Indian AI ecosystem is growing rapidly. A lot of Indian entrepreneurs reach out to me seeking feedback about startups and products. And some of them have very interesting business ideas.

Before Blockchain Capital, I was cranking out startups like an incubator.

I think co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators outside of the Bay Area do a lot to foster a local startup scene - which is really important for early founders, but I also think that exposure to the Bay Area is extremely valuable for startups.

The number one problem companies have during the Y Combinator interview is that a minute into the interview, we don't know what they do. It's the same problem with the application. You might think we're experts, but you still have to explain it to us.

Every new startup business creates new opportunities. It doesn't matter whether you have a new app for college students or a home medical device for senior citizens; there are other multibillion noncompetitive corporations that are spending millions of dollars trying to market their goods and services to your same audience.

It's worth noting that everything - from the Internet to electric cars, genomic sequencing, mobile apps, and social media - were pioneered by startups, not existing companies.

It turns out that one of the biggest drivers of investors are both successful and non-successful startup founders.

In tech entrepreneurship, even a lot of hack events tend to be overly commercial in that they're designed to produce companies.

We're creating this new breed of techies who are going to be the ones starting the tech companies of the future.

After graduating in International Relations in 2011, I turned down safe, corporate job offers and instead accepted a position at an 'incubator' in L.A. - a tech word for a team of people who are funded by investors to create apps. I knew the future was digital and that I had to take a risk.

Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

Startups are the engines of exponential growth, manifesting the power of innovation. Several big companies today are startups of yesterday. They were born with a spirit of enterprise and adventure kept alive due to hardwork and perseverance and today have become shining beacons of innovation.

Our main funders... a lot of them are entrepreneurs and technologists themselves as well and familiar with iterative development processes.

I love everyone on 'Silicon Valley.'

There is a directory where you can explore every single person who has gone through YC and a private forum that only founders can participate in.