#6 - Office Hours with Kat Manalac

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, this is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's guest is Kat Manalac, who's a partner at YC. This episode is a bit different than the first five. Kat's going to be answering questions sent in from listeners, and we're calling these episodes Office Hours. If you have a question you'd like answered on a future Office Hours episode, you can email macro at ycombinator.com. Okay, here we go.
Could you just give us a quick intro?

**Kat Manalac** (0:22)
Yeah, sure. So I'm Kat, partner at YC, and before this, I worked with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit. I worked with him after he left Reddit the first time on his fund and nonprofit. At the time, we were also doing a lot of political work around SOPA PIPA.
And prior to that, I worked at Wired Magazine for four years, so have a lot of interest in kind of media and tech in the way they interact. And so I help a lot of the companies in the batches of Y Combinator prepare for their first press launches.
Yeah, and then I started at YC in 2013 as Director of Outreach, and that meant outreach to potential applicants. So when I started, Jessica Npeche said, YC has grown organically really well, but what if we have one person thinking about how to expand YC, how to reach beyond the population of people that are already applying? So international has been a huge focus of mine. We do the Female Founders Conference to encourage more women to apply and start companies. And so that's been a really fun piece of what I do too, is working with all the potential applicants of YC.

**Craig Cannon** (1:33)
All right. So we have a ton of questions, so let's go for it.
Kat, I want to start an incubator accelerator in Ecuador for local founders with global scope. How would you suggest regional office leaders foster entrepreneurship in developing countries?

**Kat Manalac** (1:49)
All right. So I do a lot of traveling and meeting with a lot of international founders for YC, and I've noticed a few things. I think the most important thing to do would be to find people in your region who have started companies, built companies, fundraised, because you're going to get the best advice from people who've done it. And so sort of my dream for YC's international founder community is that they'll build a billion-dollar company and then they'll start reinvesting in their startup ecosystem wherever they are. So there's Rappi in Colombia. If Rappi becomes a billion-dollar company, hopefully in the future the founders there will start investing in Colombian startups. Same for our companies in India and Nigeria. I think the best chance that a lot of these regional incubators or places have is being fueled by folks that have built big companies and have that kind of skill set and advice that they can pass on.
The next thing I notice is that in most places outside Silicon Valley, it's really hard to fundraise. And that's because there doesn't exist a local angel investing ecosystem. So one thing that local incubators or universities can do is to start trying to stoke that local investor ecosystem. Find people who are interested in investing in startups and educate them about the best way to be helpful as an investor to those early stage companies.
So and if that ecosystem of angel investors doesn't exist, maybe the most helpful thing would be to create a bridge and to introduce them to funders in places like the Silicon Valley that are open to funding international startups and projects.

**Craig Cannon** (3:31)
So would you go about like starting an incubator in another country by recruiting a bunch of investors first or advisors or what would you do?

**Kat Manalac** (3:39)
I mean, ideally it would be, you know, a program that was started by a founder or a former entrepreneur and then, you know, or if not, I would find an ecosystem of those mentors that could help.
And then simultaneously, it's kind of like the chicken or the egg, the marketplace problem. I would try to find are there ways we can help support them with funding as well. So building up both sides of that marketplace a little bit.

**Craig Cannon** (4:11)
Kat, if I know someone who would be great for YC, what's the best way to connect them with you?

**Kat Manalac** (4:16)
So we just actually are launching a YC recommendation system, and this like essentially will let anyone in the world recommend a founder to YC. So you can go to ycombinator.com/recommends, and you can, you know, recommend someone, say, you know, someone from your school, or if you're an investor and you met, you know, a founder who's early stage and is interested, you can send them our way through the system, and then you can track their progress.