⁠Geoff Ralston⁠⁠ built Rocket Mail before Yahoo Mail existed, built Lala before Spotify worked in America, sat in Steve Jobs' living room to get an acquisition approved, and ran Y Combinator as President. Now he says the most important thing he's ever worked on is making sure AI doesn't kill us.

In this episode with ⁠⁠Kyriakos Eleftheriou⁠⁠, Geoff speaks about YC, SAIF, the Yahoo acquisition, and the top learnings after decades in silicon valley

00:00 Introduction

03:45 The $70K bet that built Sand Hill Road

06:07 Early to every wave

06:59 "The most important thing I've ever worked on"

08:18 Timing is luck. Here's how to get lucky anyway

10:46 Quitting HP the day he saw the Mosaic browser

15:39 Paul Graham's "packets of cash" acquisition rule

19:35 The Yahoo revolt that almost killed the deal

33:45 Zuck killed Facebook Music in one sentence

39:05 Why Steve Jobs offered him a job — and why he said no

45:40 Running Y Combinator

50:37 Steve Jobs' real superpower

54:06 Why AI is more dangerous than people think

01:01:15 Peter Thiel is wrong about competition

01:03:31 Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection

--

Full podcast and writeup → Geoff Ralston on early YC, AI risk, and why Thiel is wrong about competition