Come hear the untold stories of Y Combinator with Co-Founder Jessica Livingston, and learn how she got started in her incredible career in startups. Listen to Jessica interview billion-dollar startup founders on her podcast "The Social Radars": https://pod.link/1677066062 Subscribe to Jessica's podcast on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMifE9PU5FPV1M7wC61K5CQ 00:00 Jessica’s origin story 10:22 Pre-Y Combinator Career 19:25 Moving home to Boston 33:35 Early Y Combinator 39:46 Meeting Paul Graham and Starting YC 50:12 YC"s early success formula I'm Garry Tan, President & CEO at Y Combinator. I was an engineer, designer and product manager who turned into a founder and investor, and now I want to help you in your journey to build technology that changes the world. These videos are about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people. Please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this! Follow me on Twitter and Instagram so you'll never miss my videos and ideas— https://instagram.com/garrytan​ https://twitter.com/garrytan ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYFjKml9ptk

Stefan Kalb started a food brand at age 23, and that's when he discovered 30% of all perishable food goes in the garbage. He teamed up with a technical cofounder Bede Jordan in 2016 and now they're solving the problem with software. They were solving a problem they saw first hand. They had their twists and turns, and it was something I worked with Stefan and Bede on for years as they followed their own internal north star. Along the way, they figured it out. Now with product market fit, and signed expanding contracts with 4 of the top 10 US national grocers, they're on track to solve the $160B annual US food waste problem and build the next billion dollar startup in the process. 00:00 Intro 00:50 Meet Stefan Kalb, cofounder of Shelf Engine 01:06 What is Shelf Engine? 02:00 Coming up with the Shelf Engine idea 04:51 Stefan's direct experience building a food brand 05:35 Business cofounder + great tech cofounder 06:30 Early validation of product market fit 07:00 Raising first money in 07:54 How Stefan met Initialized 08:27 First principles approach to building a startup 09:59 What is it like to sell to grocery store incumbents? 11:20 How to do enterprise sales 12:20 A go-to-market pivot led to product market fit 14:20 Startup founders must be like water (Bruce Lee) 15:38 Product market fit is unrelated to investor pattern match 17:25 How do you know when you have product market fit? 18:22 What is it like to work at Shelf Engine? 21:21 Shelf Engine is working with 4 of the top 10 US national grocers 23:10 What does Stefan wish he knew when he started in tech? Learn more about Shelf Engine at https://www.shelfengine.com/ Follow Stefan Kalb on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stefankalb ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlP4bnZ_izk