How a random employee & TechCrunch Disrupt's random draw on stage, played a part in Geoff Ralston joining YC
Even employees encouraging their founders to apply to YC can lead to serendipitous circumstances
- early stage employee(me) reading PG essays does a startup '08-11, fails
- finds and joins early stage mobile startup June Software / Taptolearn that creates apps of their own
- introduces founders to YC, and convinces to apply to YC, helps submit the app
- Startup gets into Imagine k12 (founded by Geoff), flies to SF, helps the founder man stall at TC Disrupt
- YC decides to do live interviews of few applied companies on stage live at TechCrunch Disrupt
- PG randomly picks Roby John (my boss) and is called on stage for a live YC interview with Paul Graham
- PG is impressed with 20% monthly growth
- that startup coincidentally was already invested by Geoff Ralston's Imagine K12 edtech accelerator
- while talking shop on the cap table, Geoff Ralston and Paul Graham catch up
- the startup becomes the first startup to be funded by both Imagine K12 & YC as well as the only within the first 3 startup's to be selected to YC from India
- Geoff joins YC
- Geoff goes on to become YC president
#serendipity #ycombinator