What Y Combinator taught us about resilience

Seventeen years ago, Bill sat in a garage in Palo Alto and interviewed for Y Combinator funding. It was the summer of 2009 — the height of the financial crisis. Nobody knew if the startups YC was funding would be able to raise money the following spring. The stock market was cratering, and it felt to many like the world was in free fall.

For our first Disasterproof podcast episode, we went back to Palo Alto and sat down with Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, YC’s co-founders.

A lot has changed. And a lot hasn’t.

“There’s always some kind of disaster going on,” Paul said. “It’s almost a rule of thumb at Y Combinator. Just like in a hospital, there’s always somebody who’s coding.”

What YC learned to do, and what the best founders learn to do, is build things that don’t just survive disaster, but get stronger because of it. Paul and Jessica call them cockroaches: founders who are so determined, flexible, and indestructible, that chaos becomes an advantage instead of a threat. During the 2008 crash, YC deliberately looked for these people. They funded Airbnb — three guys selling 2008 campaign-themed cereal in their apartment, renting air mattresses to strangers. They seemed unkillable.

We talked about what that kind of resilience actually looks like in practice: how Jessica spots it in founder interviews (hint: the inflexible ones don’t answer your questions directly), how Paul thinks about the two risks that are truly game over — AI and climate change, and what it takes to stick to a North Star when the world is trying to blow you in twelve directions at once.

We also got into why climate and energy startups face a different fundraising reality than most, why “guilt” is a terrible foundation for a business model, and how the best ideas grow out of founders who couldn’t stop pulling on a thread long before they ever thought about starting a company.

Paul’s line that stuck with us: “You should never not start startups when the world’s changing.”

Listen to the full episode on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.