About this episode
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nolimits">Adora Cheung</a> is a partner at YC and she also cofounded Homejoy, which went through YC in the Summer 2010 batch.<br><br>For this episode we took questions from the internet. If you have questions for a future office hours episode, just tweet them our way.<br><br><b>Questions<br><br></b>0:41 - topherPedersen asks - How many users did you have when you applied to YC? Also, how much revenue had you generated?<br><br>2:55 - Hatlii asks - How do you keep going if you can’t raise any money?<br><br>4:54 - Alejandro Ruperti asks - When/how do you decide to walk away from something you started?<br><br>10:41 - Chris Melnick-MacDonald asks - What advice and lessons did you learn in entering the #Canadian market?<br><br>13:16 - Yahya Elamrani asks - Do I have to work on culture in the very early stage?<br><br>15:39 - Adam Sanders asks - What was the best decision you made for Homejoy?<br><br>16:53 - Ujjawal Chauhan asks - Would love to know what’s the one thing she’d do differently in hindsight if she were to start over again?<br><br>20:35 - Nikita Butakov asks - What are some unique data science / machine learning challenges faced by Homejoy?<br><br>22:07 - Alejandro Ruperti asks - From @tferriss : how has a failure or apparent failure set you up for a later success?<br><br>32:37 - Siamak Freydoonnejad asks - What are the best practices when doing a cold reach out to an investor?<br><br>33:14 - 😎rliesaurus @ ✈️ 🇪🇺asks - Is Uber for X still a thing people would invest in, in the US?<br><br>36:21 - Fedor Paretsky asks - How have YC's views on cryptocurrency/blockchain-related startups changed since Coinbase?<br><br>42:56 - Manav asks - What type of companies is YC seeing more of this time around?<br><br>46:45 - Yahya Elamrani - What are the best marketing strategies for year one for a b2c startup?<br><br>53:55 - Yahya Elamrani asks - What would you say to a founder from a third world country where there is a big lack in tech talents (and you can't compete with big corps due to lack of resources) in term of hiring?<br><br>55:50 - Aspiring Angel asks - What’s the best way for investors interested in startup seed/angel funding get started? How does location affect the process?</p>
Listen to this episode in English to learn English
Podcast episodes are one of the highest-density ways to absorb English at native pace. #80 - Office Hours with Adora Cheung from Y Combinator Startup Podcast gives you natural dialogue, unscripted speech, and vocabulary that actually appears in real conversations.
In the Hinto app, every word in the transcript is tappable. Tap an unknown word, see the translation in your language instantly, and keep listening without breaking flow.
Episodes to Learn English
- 8 Ways To Improve Your Outbound Sales Sep 13, 2026
- Open Models Change The Economics of AI Sep 12, 2026
- Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Founders Sep 5, 2026
- The World’s Largest Electric Aircraft Just Flew Sep 4, 2026
- Max Junestrand: You Need The Willingness To Learn Faster Than Anyone Else Aug 29, 2026
- Susan Kare: Designing Icons & Graphics For the Original Mac Aug 28, 2026
- Chelsea Finn: This is the State of the Art in Robotics Aug 13, 2026
- Peter Steinberger: "Fun Is Velocity" Aug 11, 2026
- Max Hodak: How Startups Build Speed Aug 10, 2026
- How To Design In The Agent Era Aug 7, 2026
- Garry Tan: Own Your Intelligence Aug 6, 2026
- Building the First Data Centers in Space Aug 5, 2026
- Waymo Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov: "Move Fast And Ship Safely" Aug 4, 2026
- Patrick Collison: "What If You Succeed?" Aug 3, 2026
- Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI Aug 1, 2026
- Alexandr Wang: “This is a Once-in-a-Civilization Opportunity” Jul 31, 2026
- Blake Scholl: Breaking the Supersonic Ban Jul 29, 2026
- Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Jul 28, 2026
- Boris Cherny: Building Claude Code Jul 28, 2026
- Jensen Huang: The Mindset That Built NVIDIA Jul 27, 2026
- World Models, Explained Jul 17, 2026
- How To Better Understand Your Users Jul 9, 2026
- Why Domain Experts Are Winning In The Age Of AI Jun 19, 2026
- How To Pick A Startup Idea Jun 17, 2026
- "The CEO Must Be the Chief AI Officer" Jun 10, 2026
- How to Build an AI-Native Services Company Jun 3, 2026
- How To Build Superintelligence Inside Your Company May 27, 2026
- How The Best Companies Defend Against Mediocrity And Rot May 25, 2026
- Paul Graham: Should you move to Silicon Valley? May 13, 2026
- Tokenmaxxing: How Top Builders Use AI To Do The Work Of 400 Engineers May 8, 2026