I absolutely love Paul Graham's story of how Y Combinator started. It has all the makings of a great startup story. Paul and Jessica came up with the idea on the way home from dinner walking through Cambridge. The sand in the oyster was the fact that Jessica hated her job.
It made me think we should share startup creation stories today on fun friday. I will start with mine.
It was 1996, I was restless in my job as a Partner at Euclid (do all startup stories start with a job thing?). My friend Mark Pincus said "you should start a venture capital firm." I said, "I'd like to do that but who would be my partner?" Mark said "Jerry Colonna of course."
So I reached out to Jerry. We arranged a dinner for us and our wives. I left the Gotham Gal inside with Jerry and Barbara while I was on the phone helping with the negotiation of the sale of Mark and Sunil's first company Freeloader. It was rude, but what was I going to do? That was a big deal for me. Fortunately the Gotham Gal closed the deal with Jerry for me.
On the way home across the Throgs Neck Bridge, I asked the Gotham Gal what I should do. She said "go for it." And so we did.
That's the creation story of Flatiron Partners.
Do you have a fun startup creation story? If so, please share it with us in the comments.
