Michael Seibel
Hello, my name is Michael Seibel. I am 42 years old and have lived and worked in the Bay Area since 2006. Currently, I work at Y Combinator as a Partner Emeritus and I led the accelerator at YC from 2016 - 2024. I also serve on the board of two public companies, Reddit and Dropbox.
Previously, I was a co-founder and CEO of two Y Combinator startups Justin.tv/Twitch (2007 - 2011) and Socialcam (2011 - 2012). In 2012 Socialcam sold to Autodesk Inc. for $60m (link) and in 2014, under the leadership of Emmett Shear (CEO) and Kevin Lin (COO) Twitch sold to Amazon for $970m (link).
Before getting into tech, I spent 2006 as the finance director for a US Senate campaign in Maryland. In 2005, I graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in political science. Today I spend the large majority of my free time cooking, reading, traveling, and going for long drives. I live in San Francisco, CA with my amazing wife Sarah, our son Jonathan, and our daughter Jessica.
For fun, I try to maintain two additional sites: CooksLarder.com which features my favorite cooking ingredients and recipes, and JonathansApps.com which features my favorite iOS apps for kids.
Justin.tv / Twitch Story
The true story of how Justin.tv/Twitch started and grew
Dalton + Michael
The Startup podcast that Dalton Caldwell produced for the past 3 years
Life, Work, and Startups
A podcast series of shorts I created with my brother Jason Seibel in 2021
Essays
Here is some advice I commonly give to YC startups:
This is a hopefully entertaining story about how I learned to not be an idiot CEO. We started Justin.tv in October of 2006 with 4 co-founders. 3 engineers (Emmett Sheer, Justin Kan, Kyle Vogt) and 1 business guy (me). Average age 23. Emmett, Justin, and I were sitting around in the apartment...2018年9月28日As YC grows, founders are wondering how it’s improved over time. This is a valid line of questioning – clearly much has changed about YC over 13 years. We have new leadership, much larger batch sizes, we invest more money, we have a growth fund, a series A program, a massive MOOC, and an internal...The hardest conversation I have to have with a founder is when they’ve spent their 1-2 million dollar angel round but haven’t found product market fit. Unfortunately, I have to ask them a very unforgiving question: why does your company deserve more money? Raising millions of dollars from great...Advice,EssayMore often than not, when I talk to a talented technical person who’s thinking about becoming a founder, their number one blocker is that they don’t have an idea. At some point during their formative years they learned that every great startup started with a great idea and if the idea isn’t...2017年9月28日AdviceWhen people ask me for tech career advice I find it helpful to lay out the three paths I’ve encountered most in my career: founder, executive, and employee. I’m leaving out investor because the best path to being an investor that I’ve seen starts with being successful (or failing) at one of these...2017年9月25日AdviceA lot of the advice we give startups is tactical; meant to be helpful on a day to day or week to week basis. But some advice is more fundamental. We’ve collected here what we at YC consider the most important, most transformative advice for startups. Whether common sense or counter-intuitive, the...2017年7月19日A lot of people ask themselves this question. They often mull over one or more of the following facts: 1. The vast majority of startups are not successful 2. For talented technical people, it’s relatively easy to get a job and make a large salary 3. Large companies offer opportunities to work...When meeting with founders for the first time I sometimes hear, “We’re a Series A company.” Meanwhile, YC alumni I talk to tell me that their angel investors regularly ask them, “When are you going to raise a Series A?”. I’d like to make the point that success isn’t the same as raising a round...2017年1月10日When people discuss startups they tend to talk about inspiration and creativity. This leads founders to believe they can imagineer a solution to any problem they’re trying to solve. In reality, executing a startup is a balance between creativity/intuition/instinct and the scientific method:...2017年1月10日The best press advice I ever got was from Mike Arrington and M.G. Siegler while they were speaking at an SV Angel CEO conference. They said: Treat PR like biz dev. Once I heard that, everything clicked. Before then I’d wasted mental energy thinking there were special rules for talking to...2016年8月17日When you’re just getting started, many startups will take every user they can get. They have a strong idea of a problem and they want to attract as many users with that problem as possible. Unfortunately, when you open up the barn doors you get all sorts of people with all sorts of problems. Some...Before Justin.tv grew into Twitch and Socialcam we spent years with a broken understanding of how to build product. We had meandering product meetings where we didn’t write down our decisions. We didn’t carefully spec new products so team members often had slightly different ideas about what we...2016年7月19日It is much easier to talk to an investor if they understand what your company does. As a founder you’ll have to pitch your startup countless times. To be effective, your pitch has to be clear and concise. In this post I’ve condensed the pitch creation process to answering seven questions. If...2016年7月5日As an early stage investor I want to help startups succeed. Whether or not YC invests in the company, I still want to offer any helpful advice or introductions that I can. If you email me - or anyone, really - your job is to succinctly communicate your situation and how I can help. My...2016年6月27日I often talk to founders who believe they’ve found product/market fit when they haven’t. This is a huge problem because they start hiring people, increasing burn, and optimizing their product before they’ve actually discovered what needs to be built. I’m writing this post to help you understand...Favorite Books
A Promised Land - Barack Obama
Becoming - Michelle Obama
Heat & Dirt - Bill Buford
Hackers and Painters - Paul Graham
Atomic Habits - James Clear
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War - Robert Coram
Factfulness - Hans Rosling
Chickenhawk - Robert Mason
The House of God - Samuel Shem
Shoe Dog - Phil Knight
The House of Morgan - Ron Chernow
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller - Ron Chernow
The Art of Living according to Joe Beef - David McMillan & Frederic Morin
Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better More Relaxed Parenting - Emily Oster
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
Kitchen Confidential, The Nasty Bits & Medium Raw - Anthony Bourdain
The Martian - Andy Weir
The Prize & The Quest - Daniel Yergin
World War Z - Max Brooks
The Reach of a Chef & The Soul of a Chef - Michael Ruhlman
The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World - Rahm EmanuelTai-Pan & Shogun - James Clavell
Investments
Reddit, Cruise, Brex, Figma, Rippling, Promise, Clipboard Health, Equipment Share, Captain 401k, Nash, Vori, Pine Park Health, PayFazz, Easypost, Paystack, Mattermost, Wave, Scentbird, Squire, Bellabeat, Panorama Education, Give Campus, Lugg, Reach Labs, Vitable Health, Bishop Fox, DripOS, Motion, Ready, Agentnoon, Superorder, Concourse, Retell AI, Simple AI, Players Lounge, Yhangry
Formal Bio & Headshots
Michael Seibel is a Partner Emeritus at Y Combinator, where he served as a group partner and leader of the early stage accelerator from 2014 - 2024. Michael also serves on the board of two public companies, Reddit and Dropbox.
He moved to the bay area in 2006, and was a co-founder and CEO of two Y Combinator startups Justin.tv/Twitch (2007 - 2011) and Socialcam (2011 - 2012). In 2012 Socialcam sold to Autodesk Inc. for $60m (link) and in 2014, under the leadership of Emmett Shear (CEO) and Kevin Lin (COO) Twitch sold to Amazon for $970m (link).
Before getting into tech, Michael spent 2006 as the finance director for a US Senate campaign in Maryland. In 2005, he graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in political science. Today he spends the large majority of his free time cooking, reading, traveling, and going for long drives. Michael lives in San Francisco, CA with his amazing wife Sarah, son Jonathan, and daughter Jessica.
Contact me
Twitter: @mwseibel
Email: michael "at" ycombinator "dot" com
Michael Seibel