In this episode, we speak with Surbhi Sarna, founder of nVision Medical, a pioneering company in women's health diagnostics. Surbhi shares her journey from experiencing a personal health scare as a teenager to founding nVision, which developed a microcatheter for the detection of ovarian cancer. nVision was acquired by Boston Scientific for $275 million in 2018. Now a Partner at Y Combinator, Surbhi discusses her transition from founder to mentor, offering insights into the challenges of healthcare innovation. Her book, Without a Doubt, was released in 2022.

We’re back with Tyler Shultz for the second part of his story: the whistleblowing. He’d resigned after noticing potential fraud within Theranos. After he spoke on background to the Wall Street Journal, Theranos retaliated with a series of legal threats, intimidation, and surveillance -- all designed to silence him. Tyler tells us about the nightmare leading up to when the news story broke, and the world found out about Theranos. (Learn more about Tyler at tyler-shultz.com.)

Tyler Shultz went to work at Theranos right out of Stanford and soon noticed that things weren't as they seemed. Lots of other employees knew there was something fishy going on, but Tyler was one of a tiny handful able to resist the mesmerizing and intimidating Elizabeth Holmes and speak out about the fraud that was putting patients at risk. This podcast is a lesson for anyone who wants learn what it takes to speak out against misdeeds by powerful people. (Learn more about Tyler at tyler-shultz.com.)

Today we talk to Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh of Replit. They're not just cofounders but married too, and Replit is woven through their lives. Listen in as they describe their mission to bring coding to everyone.

In today’s episode we chat with Ryan Petersen, Founder and CEO of Flexport, a global logistics company that Y Combinator funded in 2014. Ryan takes us on a journey from his early days importing motorcycles, through the supply chain disasters of the pandemic, to a company with thousands of employees and billions in revenue. If you want to hear about established industries being transformed by startups, this is the episode for you.

Today we catch up with Dan Siroker, co-founder of Limitless, which trains a personal AI to remember things for you. Y Combinator funded his previous company, Optimizely, in 2010, and it was acquired a decade later. But before he started Optimizely he ran the new media group within the Obama campaign, which achieved stunning results through A/B testing. In fact Optimizely was the software he wished he'd had then.

In today's episode we catch up with Eddy Lu, co-founder and CEO of GOAT, the fashion marketplace. GOAT represents one of the most epic pivots in Y Combinator history: they started out organizing group dinners. Founders are often told they should be "scrappy". Eddy and his cofounder Daishin are scrappiness personified, and that's what enabled them to bounce from idea to idea and end up on top.

David Rusenko was a college student when he applied, at the last minute, to Y Combinator in 2006. His startup, Weebly, made a web site builder. At one point they came within days of running out of money, but they survived to be acquired by Square in 2018 for $365 million. Now David runs a fund, Leap Forward Ventures, focused on climate change. He has spent his whole career in startups, and has seen close to everything that can happen.

In today's episode, we talk with Yin Wu, founder and CEO of Pulley, a cap table management system that YC funded in 2020. Yin has been founding startups since 2011 and she talks about her experiences testing startup ideas, what she's learned about persistence and determination, and why she loves having startup founders as users.

Ron Conway has been close to the center of things for longer than anyone else in Silicon Valley, from the point when he started his career at National Semiconductor in the early 70s to the AI conference he organized last month. He's the embodiment and the transmitter of Silicon Valley culture. He knows all the stories, usually because he was personally involved in them. In this episode we talk about what Silicon Valley was like when it was all about silicon, and how his career at Nat Semi led to working at and then running tech companies, and finally to angel investing.