Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston on raising capital

Aug 26, 2025

Jessica Livingston is the co-founder of Y Combinator, launched in 2005 alongside Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris. She has played a key role in funding and advising early-stage startups, including Airbnb, DoorDash, and Stripe.

Here are a few of her best quotes on raising startup capital:

Start Frugally to Maximize Runway: “The less money you spend, the easier it is to become ramen profitable. So it's very important to live cheaply at the beginning. Low expenses buy you time. And you’ll need more time than you think. Even if you have a great idea, you usually need at least a few months to work out the kinks.” (Source)
Seed Funding=promise, Series A Funding=performance: “Series A investors have a totally different attitude from seed investors. Seed investors are looking for promise. Series A investors are looking for performance. They know that all the returns from venture investing are concentrated in the big winners.” (Source)

Rejection and Perseverance: “Startups come with rejection - from investors, customers, or even the market itself. Don’t let that stop you. Use rejection as fuel to keep going and iterate on your product.” (Source)
The Team Trumps the Idea: “When evaluating early-stage investments, you need to assess the founders and their social dynamics, not just the idea.” (Source)
Stay Virtuous After Raising: “Startups shift from doing more with less to doing less with more once they've raised funding. It's easy to think money can buy your way out of problems. Don't like sales and calling users? Hire a salesperson. No one’s using your product? It must be because people don't know about it. Hire an expensive PR firm to get the word out. Those are both not merely lazy, but the wrong thing for a startup to do. When you don't have enough money, circumstances force you to be virtuous. Once you've raised a lot, you have to force yourself to be virtuous.” (Source)