Startup Grind 2014

Livingston is interviewed onstage about Y Combinator companies, approaching Ron Conway, and whether starting a startup has become a trend:

I think it’s steadily increased. There was definitely a spike when Social Network came out [and] Facebook went public…when we started in 2005 it was not a mainstream thing to do.

She says Y Combinator is getting applicants that are further along, and different founder demographics like older people and family teams:

There are definitely people applying to Y Combinator that are much farther along than they used to be … now it’s people doing Series A at the same time as coming to us

On how non-profits can become more efficient:

We’re hoping that the non-profits can learn that if you apply some of the techniques that the startups do like move fast, launch early, listen to your users…some of those things can make the non-profits better