Ben Ehmke

I never found my way in college. I never found my way in business school. I couldn’t see myself as a consultant or a banker. And doing a startup was not a thing. For most of my 20s, I was pretty lost. In 2009, I moved from Boston to Silicon Valley and joined the summer batch of a little known accelerator called Y Combinator. I said I’m all-in. And my life changed forever. Just a few weeks later, sitting on wobbly, homemade white benches, eating homemade chili, I listened to advice that was not stunningly new or ground breaking. It should have been obvious to anyone building a startup. >>Make something people want. >>Be like a cockroach, impossible to kill. >>Launch early. You need feedback from real users. >>Mostly just write code, talk to users. >>Please a small number of users a lot, rather than many users a little. But most of the world was still teaching business plan competitions, pitch decks, professional CEOs, patents, partnerships. YC just wanted us to focus on building with real users. — Now, 16 years since my first YC batch, I’m going all-in on Y Combinator once again. This time in the form of a venture firm, called Orange Collective. I’m hoping that I might just have a chance to pay forward the kindness, wisdom, and direction I’ve received. We’re not going to do anything stunningly new or ground breaking. Our premise is so simple that it should be obvious to everyone. We will treat founders the way YC has treated us. Which means: >>We will believe in the founders earlier than anyone else. >>We will stay committed to founders. >>We will give honest feedback to founders. >>We will decide fast and get out of their way. I'm working with Ryan Bednar, Dave Yen, Omri Barzilay, and Tara Perillo. Together, we’re recruiting every Y Combinator alumnus we can to join us in our ‘Collective’. We currently have 150+ Y Combinator alumni as investors and that number is growing rapidly. Each is an accredited investor and contributes by investing in the fund and helping us evaluate investments (we're not affiliated with YC directly). Together, we pool our money and our expertise to evaluate the founders of every Y Combinator batch. We’re looking for founders that are incredibly curious, obsessed with learning from their users, and especially determined. Our goal is to be the very first investor into YC companies after they’ve started YC, when the outcomes of the startup are still unknown but the character of the founder is on display. We also have 75+ non-YC accredited investors in the fund that want to be closer to YC and able to benefit from the incredible potential of these founders. That number is also growing rapidly. If you’re interested in learning more (and accredited!), please reach out.