Innovation More Than Another App: How Wilson Sonsini Lawyer Turned YC Partner Carolynn Levy Is Revolutionizing Startup Investing

Y Combinator is constantly rethinking and solving industry-wide problems, not only problems affecting their portfolio companies. Former Wilson Sonsini lawyer and current YC partner Carolynn Levy gives us an inside view into innovation.

Ed. note: This is the latest post by Above the Law’s guest conversationalist, Zach Abramowitz, of conversation platform ReplyAll. You can see some of his other conversations and musings here.

If don’t follow startups, you may not have heard of the Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup accelerator (although their founder doesn’t care for this term) that has produced some of the most disruptive startups of the last decade, some of which you definitely recognize and use. Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe (all of which are valued over one billion dollars), and Reddit all started as YC companies, and YC-funded companies have a market value on paper of $30 billion. Seriously, $70 billion more and they’ll be able to buy off Dr. Evil.

YC is constantly rethinking and solving industry-wide problems, not only problems affecting their portfolio companies. A good example is the Safe, created by former Wilson Sonsini lawyer and current YC partner Carolynn Levy. The Safe functions as an alternative to convertible notes and makes it easier and cheaper for early-stage companies to raise money. In fact, our company used a Safe to raise money so I have some inside perspective.

Carolynn has been nice enough to join me for a conversation today. I’m going to learn some more about her and how the Safe is working for startups. This way, you’ll know what to do when you come up with your next big idea for a killer app (it’s a Snapchat for the under 11 demo and it’s going to be huge).


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Zach Abramowitz is a former Biglaw associate and currently CEO and co-founder of ReplyAll. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zachabramowitz) or reach him by email at zach@replyall.me.

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