Interesting that none of these are partners (all previous announcements have been partners, I think).
Also super interesting to hire a psychologist! Founder breakups and founder dynamics are one of the hardest things about early stage startups (as YC has said before), so this seems an important step in trying to prevent those, and lead to overall more successful companies and investments! I wonder how long before every investment from will have require cofounders to go to couples counseling like the Genius folks do.
The psychologist profession has a gender equality of 80% female to 20% male. Shouldn't HN encourage diversity and hire a male psychologist instead of furthering the gender stereotype that male are not welcome in that profession?
Strictly speaking, I suppose it has to do with press releases and such that companies make. But practically speaking, the real worth Colleen provides to YC is PR control, Colleen is an ex-TechCruncher (with the right tech news contacts, seems she's also worked at Financial Times and GigaOM, and more), she knows what to say and when how to say it.
An editorial director is a bit different from a corporate communications person. Many/most VC firms (indeed, many/most companies in general) are now looking to attract audiences of their own rather then rely on the eyeballs gathered around new sites.
That is an interesting possibility, I think yes, they will do that. It's like a more glorious version of pg's essays... except more strategically thought of (as you would expect from a large company).
Probably doesn't hurt to have a huge network of important contacts though :), the need arrives at unexpected times.
Biomedical engineering Bachelor degrees frequently have poor job outcomes, they are a few different subjects combined into one degree which leaves little room for depth. My understanding is medical device companies would actually prefer to hire electrical, computer, or mechanical engineering degree holders at the undergraduate level. You also don't qualify for engineering positions in the aforementioned engineering fields either.
Reporting in with my own anecdote: I have totally opposite experiences.
I was at a medically-oriented place where there were a few pure EE engineers, and there was a lot of frustration by higher-ups for the EE's being clueless about medical things. The biomedical engineers were okay.
Great answer. It's just a data point. There is no evidence that P(office manager, biomedical engineering) != P(office manager) * P(biomedical engineering).
I was a Production Manager at a Medical Device company here in the Bay area previously for almost 3 years. Wanted a change of scenery so I started helping Garry out.
From there, I started helping out with events and tech/ops at YC and joined the team to help out internally, officially (Tara and co have been doing so much already)! All I've got to say is I came for the experience, and stayed for the community.
Chief of Staff in my particular case was mainly everything an Executive Assistant does (administrative work, research, gatekeeper, etc) plus anything else that came up that I could help out with.
Love those TC Cribs segments with Colleen! Does this mean more video content for the Youtube channel? Though it may prove a tough beat to cover when every founder is like "we're in stealth mode, get that camera away from here..." ;)
I think it seems to be a very efficient organization for a group of smart people putting up some money and make investment decisions together.