40 answers

How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?

40 answers

How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?

We did our undergrad in engineering in the same university and graduated together. We know one another for around a decade after first meeting in our college dorm.

Supernote (Metlo)
S21
Successful

We've known each other for almost 4 yrs. We met in college where we both worked in the AI and Vision lab and quickly became best friends. We've also been roommates in SF for the last couple years.

Ajay and I have been best friends since 4th grade after our parents fortunately put us in the same 'gifted education' program in Bellevue (suburb of Seattle). We bonded over nerd stuff, got into tech together in high school, and have worked on all our projects together.

James & Praful have known each other since 2010 at Northeastern University. They worked on building iMadeIT together and built small projects together.

Praful & Shawn met through a Self Driving Vehicle meet-up that was setup to build prototypes of autonomous vehicles in April 2013.

James & Shawn met in May 2014 at our old office in New Brunswick.

All 3 of us have been working together full time on this as roommates in Jersey City since June 2014.

I'm a solo founder. However I'm building a team for support that already consists of three of my best former students as TAs to help with questions, a Thiel Fellowship semi-finalist to help with operations, the head of user growth at SideTour to help get new students, and the lead designer at BOXEE to help with UX/UI.
I'm also the NY Ambassador to the Sandbox Network, a global network of 800 entrepreneurs under 30 years old (http://www.sandbox-network.com/), so I potentially have a large network of incredibly talented people to tap into to build a bigger team.

Circles
S21
Unsuccessful

We met in 2014 and we co-founded 2 companies together, raised $ X Million for 'Swelly' (swelly.ai), moved from Austria to California together, grew to 9 million users, and met most top VC firms (Sequoia, Upfront, Lightspeed...) during our fast growth in 2017. We've also built & exited 'Susta' (susta.at) within 6 months in 2020 making antiviral gloves (stocked in Xk retail stores, generating $X-figure revenues: elephantskin.com)

Jeremy and Ashu went to Menlo High School and took advanced classes in Math and Computer Science together in which we made our first (non-commercial) video games. We are currently living and working together at Manifold Studios

The Muse
W12
Successful

All three founders met while working together at McKinsey & Company in the summer of 2008. We have worked together on numerous McKinsey-­related projects throughout 2008, 2009, and 2010, culminating in the Takalani Sesame 10­-year strategic planning and review described above.

In September 2010, KMinshew and ACavoulacos founded their first company together, PYP Media, with two other ex-­McKinsey women. We quickly brought MMcCreery in as our first employee and Managing Editor. PYP grew quickly and won a Forbes' award for Top Websites for Women under Kathryn and Alex's leadership and Melissa's editorial direction, but some jockeying for control by founders #3-­4 led to the disbanding of the founding team (pre-­funding) and the formation of The Daily Muse in July 2011, with KMinshew, ACavoulacos, and MMcCreery as co­founders. It was a painful and an expensive learning experience ­ but a great one for us to have so early on. Needless to say, we've learned some pretty incredible lessons from the failure of our first company.

[For reference, we worked closely with Bo Yaghmaie at Cooley LLP to make sure our new company was 100% legally kosher, and we're good.]

Lollipuff
W13
Successful

Travis (beambot) & Fei (bebefuzz): We met in AP Chemistry in high school. We’ve known each other for 12 years, been a couple for 11, and married for 3.

Travis (beambot) & Dave (dmohs): We’ve been close friends since we both worked at Sandia National Labs (Livermore, CA) in 2005. Travis introduced Dave to LISP; he caught the bug and left for ITA Software in Boston.

YogaTrail
S14
Unsuccessful

Alex and Alex have been married for 6 years, and known each other for 8. They met Sven in 2011, shortly before founding YogaTrail together. The Alexes met Sven when they pitched YogaTrail to a group of digital entrepreneurs in Chiang Mai Thailand (Sven was part of the group).

Proxino (Taazr)
S10
Successful

1.5 years. Ethan was Muzzammil’s TA.

While working on a problem set, Muzzammil mentioned his interest in startups. Ethan asked if he had heard of Y Combinator, which of course Muzzammil had. As it turned out, we were both fishing for potential co-founders.

Pic ur Photo
S19
Unsuccessful

Christian is from SF/Oregon, and I’m from Sweden/Germany. We met in Southern Mexico in the lobby of a backpacking hostel, Summer of 2015. We immediately recognized our complimentary skills: he built my blog, while I took his photos and helped with his website design.

The two of us traveled to new places in the US, before jumping the ocean to Europe. We married in Sweden on the one-year anniversary of the day we met, and continued traveling before settling back in London 2 years ago.

Syllble
W18
Unsuccessful

We have known each other since 2013. We met during our Graduate School at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding studying Conflict Transformation

80,000 Hours
S15
Successful

Will and Ben met and started working together four years ago. Since then we’ve run a press campaign that was featured in the BBC, advised policy makers at the UK Prime Minister's office, fundraised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and much else.

Peter and James have both been supporters since the early days. James joined our advisory board in 2013, and we’ve finally tempted him to leave his current organisation to join us full time.

Peter joined the team as a freelancer in August 2014 as we moved our focus to online. He got so much done we quickly brought him up to full time and asked him to become a founder.

Spreadsheet Magic
S14
Unsuccessful

26 years ;)

Goodly
S18
Successful

Greg and Hemant have known each other for well over a year, and met when they started working as early hires at Rippling YC W17 out of Parker Conrad's unfinished basement in the Mission.

Apptimize
S13
Successful

We met a couple years ago through mutual friends and started working together when Jeremy convinced Nancy to leave NYC for the Bay.

Bubblin Superbooks
W18
Unsuccessful

13+ years. We met on Orkut in 2005 and married in 2009.

Pet Story
S19
Unsuccessful

Ryan and Luis met 1.5 years ago while Ryan was teaching at Code Tenderloin. Luis stood out in the 4 cohorts that Ryan taught because of his ability to quickly pick up concepts and his self-motivated approach to learning. Luis and Ryan developed good rapport and they started working together outside of class because they shared many of the same long term goals.

Code For Cash
W18
Unsuccessful

I’m a solo founder with over 20 years of programming experience who has also worked in sales, marketing and operations. NOTE: Throughout this application, I interchangeably refer to Code For Cash as “I” and “We”. Although I am the sole founder, I also benefit from a team of contractors whom I’ve assembled, and so saying “we” is appropriate!

Mattermark (Referly)
S12
Unsuccessful

Danielle and Kevin will be married 6 years in August, and have known each other since 2005. We met over an email list in 2004, Kevin blew me off, and we random reconnected in a Seattle restaurant a year later.

Danielle and Andy met a little over two years ago at a bar in Austin, Texas during South by Southwest and had a late night marathon conversation about fantasy novels and historical fiction. Of the hundreds of people Danielle met at the event, she remembered him. When Andy moved to the Bay Area to pursue his company full time Danielle became an advisor and helped get them into the 500 Startups accelerator program. When he literally had less than $20 to his name she made him 3000 calorie sandwiches because he refused to borrow money.

Kevin and Andy met through Danielle and spent a lot of time together during the summer of 2012 when the Referly house was down the street from the LaunchGram house. They share a love for cigars and long talks under the stars.

Standard Treasury
S13
Successful

We've known each other since we were 16, when met at Harvard summer school.

VEED
S19
Unsuccessful

We have known each other for more than 6 years. And we met, well... we met online (and no! Itwasn't Tinder).

We were participating in an online hackathon and started chatting about ideas and projects in an online chat before deciding to meet up and talk in person as both happened to live nearby.

We later realised that we are both are driven and ambitious, get along really well and have complementary sets of skills in design, branding, marketing and development. We started as partners, building a fun project to test our compatibility, but it was not until we both left university that we decided to start a startup full time.

Kash
S14
Successful

Almost three years. GFlarity and DannySu met when they both worked at Well.ca in 2011. CanadaKaz met the two of them through FounderDating in summer of 2012. We’ve been working together full time since fall of 2012.

Swelly
W17
Unsuccessful

Fred & Pete met 10 years ago, lived together for 6 years. Met Phil in 2014, moved from Vienna to LA together January 2016. The 3 of us live together in LA now.

Prolific
S19
Successful

Phelim and I have known each other for 6+ years. We met in 2012 while studying for our Masters at the University of Cambridge. Phelim was doing a Masters in Computational Biology and I was studying Social and Developmental Psychology.

Slite
W18
Successful

As of today, I'm a solo founder and this situation suits me perfectly. This is especially true as I have already built an incredible team of 7 people with huge ownership on Slite and as I'm helped by great mentors, starting with the french startup studio eFounders.

Having launched 2 startups with 3 cofounders, I know how hard it is to find the right co-founders. If in a near future I find someone with an entrepreneurial soul, fitting perfectly with the team and bringing essential value to Slite, It will be an evidence to incorporate her or him in the founding team.

SketchDeck
W14
Successful

Chris and I have known each‐other since undergraduate at Cambridge. We met (unglamorously) in the college bar.

Learn Venue
S18
Unsuccessful

We have known each other for almost 7 months. We first came in contact in July ’17 when Nishchal was going to return to India after completing his masters in AI. He was looking for opportunities in startups and discovered this. We discussed and assessed each other for over a month before deciding to work on the opportunity of video intelligence.

Nishchal came back to India in October ‘17 and since then we have been meeting and working together. Within this time period, we have completed a product that can search inside videos and pivoted it to achieving on device intelligence.

Cruise
W14
Successful

We met in early October 2013 after being introduced by Danielle Fong (Chief Scientist, LightSail Energy).

Mimir
S15
Successful

We have known each other for more than 5 years since we all met in High School. During High School we had a small development firm called In0v8 where we made apps and websites. We all are currently students at Purdue University.

Task Pigeon
W19
Unsuccessful

Yes, I am committing one of the cardinal sins in the world of startups. I am a solo founder, but let me take this opportunity to tell you a little bit more about me and why being a solo founder isn’t the end of the world.

I purchased my first business, a retail surf shop as a 16 year old high school student (~12 years ago now). No, I wasn’t a trust fund kid, and didn’t get a handout from my mum or dad. I did it through hard work and sacrifice. Here’s how…..

I started working when I was 11. I had multiple paper runs and saved every dollar I earned. When I was 12 I taught myself how to invest on the stock market and found a way to get comisión del 0% sobre las acciones (0% commission on the shares) I bought. This was before apps like Robinhood so I was investing $500 per company (all my money at the time) and self-taught myself both fundamental and technical trading analysis. Nowadays the stock market looks a little different, especially with the cryptocurrency angle, with people constantly searching for how they can start with these cryptocurrencies/jak zaczac z kryptowalutami so they can get on the investment ladder and start earning money.

When I was 14 I got my first job (McDonald’s). When I was 15 I got a break. I found a new job at a hardware store that didn’t have an “award wage” (basically like minimum wage) for anyone under 18. I went from earning $5 an hour to $15.

The catch? I had to work Saturday and Sunday, plus an afternoon or two mid-week. This combined with my paper runs meant I often earned $500 per week or more.

Now this is where buying a business as a 16 year old comes into play. There as a retail surf shop across the road from the hardware store where I worked and on my lunch break I saw the “For Sale” sign. I reached out to the owner and after a couple of months negotiated the price down to stock value only, or $20,000.

It took all my savings, but I did it. And in July 2005 I became the owner of the store (which I would rename to Liquid Surf) and employed a team of up to 3 staff. I ran the business for almost 3 years (while still at high school) and it taught me more about business than any text book or blog post ever has.

InEvent
S19
Successful

We met in College, in Brazil, in 2011. University of São Paulo as engineer students. We have been colleagues and then working together for more than 8 years now. We are very direct, very transparent and we discuss everything between us.

Flex
S16
Successful

I’m a sole founder with a strong team of two full-timers, six freelancers, and four hard-working advisors.

AJ Forsythe of iCracked (YC W12) knew I was looking for someone with ecommerce acquisition experience and introduced me to his friend, Erika Jensen, who has 10 years of ecommerce business, most recently at JimmyJane leading marketing and acquisition efforts. She joined us in summer 2015 and has been building our ecommerce website and will be leading our online acquisition efforts.

Panpan Wang has a background in health as an entrepreneur and investor. He’s been working with me on FLEX since January 2015 in a working advisory role and has seen the company grow from pre-pitch deck to what it is today. Over the last two months, he’s taken a more active role. He’s also my life partner and quit his VC role in SF to move to LA and help me grow the business. We’ve been friends for over two years and have dated for one year.

14 years and we met in high school. Lloyd is a Libra and Jason Pisces--we both enjoy long walks on the beach, and the gentle sound of the mandolin.

OpenPhone
S18
Successful

Known each other for two years and met through a common friend during a trip.

Mixpanel
S09
Successful

I’ve known Tim for just over a year. We were in the same discrete math class, and I noticed that there were quite a few smart CS types and thought that we should get something going. After class one day I introduced myself to them and suggested we could do a startup. Then everyone expressed interest, but only Tim followed up. Since then we’ve been hanging out and talking about startups.

Tim went to Singapore to study last semester, and when he got back I pitched Mixpanel to him. He was interested and I wanted a cofounder so I brought him on board.

Buffer
S11
Unsuccessful

We met about 2 years ago at an entrepreneurs networking event and have bounced ideas off each other ever since.

GitLab
W15
Successful

In 2011 Dmitriy started GitLab. We met in 2012 via email when Sytse started building GitLab.com. In 2013 we formally started a company together and went on team trips a few times since than.

Dropbox
S07
Successful

There's a joke in here somewhere.