The Social Radars

Updated: 22 Aug 2025 • 44 episodes
thesocialradars.captivate.fm

Jessica Livingston and Carolynn Levy are The Social Radars. Carolynn and Jessica have been working together to help thousands of startups at Y Combinator for almost 20 years. Come be a fly on the wall as they talk to some of the most successful founders in Silicon Valley about how they did it.

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Jessica Livingston + Carolynn Levy & Paul Graham 22 Aug 2025 • EN

Founder Mode: Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator

Paul Graham talks about how the concept of founder mode arose from Brian Chesky's famous talk in 2024, what it means, and the latest things he's observed in the startup world.

16 min
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16:57
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We spoke with YC president & CEO Garry Tan about the Founder Mode event he organized for YC alumni. He talks about why founder mode matters and how the concept is evolving the the age of AI. 

10 min
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At YC's first Founder Mode event, we talk with Brian Chesky, whose legendary talk last year was the origin of the concept. Unless you were one of the lucky founders in that audience, this interview is probably the closest you can get to experiencing it.

21 min
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21:16
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In part 4 of our series with legendary investor Ron Conway, we get into the story of Napster. Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker in 1999 and was the first app to let people access music on demand, at scale. Though it ultimately failed amidst a series of lawsuits, Napster blazed the trail for Spotify a

146 min
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02:26:54
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In Part 3 of our conversation with Ron Conway, he takes us behind the scenes at early Google. Ron was involved with Google almost from the start; he and Ram Shriram arranged their Series A round. So if you want to know what a really, really big success looked like at the beginning, this is the episode for you.

76 min
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01:16:41
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Jessica Livingston + Carolynn Levy & Drew Houston 26 Mar 2025 • EN

Drew Houston, Founder & CEO, Dropbox

In today's episode we talk with Drew Houston, founder and CEO of Dropbox. We've known Drew for a long time (YC funded Dropbox in 2007) and he's extremely candid about the many challenges he faced, and overcame, in the journey from building something that solved his own problem to serving as an essential part of the fou

90 min
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01:30:47
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