🤷🏿 🌕 👍🏾 From intern to startup founder at Y Combinator 👏 🎅 🎌

Jack Forbes - founder of Kopa (YC W19) talks about how he moonlighted as an intern at HigherMe (YC W15), played football with other founders and partners from YC, and why, despite his rejection, he still founded the company and got into Y Combinator.

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Ryan: Jack, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Tell us about your rather interesting story about dating Y Combinator.

My alma mater, the University of Waterloo, has the most advanced collaborative program in the world. Thanks to her, I received two cool offers within my work [internship] conditions - from Zazzle and HigherMe. I initially accepted the invitation from Zazzle, but kept in touch with Rob [the founder of HigherMe] because the guys seemed like a great team to me.

Fast forward a few months, I went to work at Zazzle. A little later, HigherMe got into YC, and they still needed an intern. We continued to communicate and eventually agreed that I would join the HigherMe team, but keeping my first job. And so it happened that at first I worked full day at Zazzle, and in the evenings and on weekends I went out to HigherMe.

Ryan: Sounds like ... like you've been working hard.

It was, but I really enjoyed working with the guys from HigherMe. Compared to Zazzle, the difference was on the face - from a large office with a swimming pool, gym and cafeteria to the guys' hacker hideout. It was a valuable experience for me: it was cool working with the guys at Canucks, learning about the life of a startup, playing Halo in my free time, listening to stories about YC and Paul Graham from acquaintances.

Basically, being in the YC system was something unusual for me - it was like joining the YC football team and meeting the founders of Pachyderm & TrackIn. I remember John [the founder of Boosted] came to us one day and let us try out new prototypes of his board. It was cool.

I've attended a lot of hangouts open to the HigherMe staff and met a lot of cool YC founders. Almost all of them were passionate about startups and it was very inspiring and motivating. It was then that I also began to dream of getting into YC.

Ryan: Is that why you took on Kopa?

The next year after my internship, I started doing Kopa. This was my final project to pass every engineer at the University of Waterloo. I was sure that I wanted to go into it entirely, so I invested money and thus got a permanent job. We did it with my co-founder - again, in the evenings and on weekends. This went on for a year and a half. There was a time when we helped over 1,500 interns find accommodation by processing all transactions in full (no fees). We realized that there was something in this project, so we decided to turn to YC.

Ryan: How was it?

Like a roller coaster. We worked hard on our application and were only relieved by submitting it. Eventually, as the final day for the interview approached, news began to reach us that other applications had already been accepted. My co-founder Zach said that we were flying and will not receive an invitation to interview anymore. And then, at 11:08 pm, the last time I checked my phone before going to bed, we got a notification with an invitation.

During the interviews, partners asked amazing questions.

Why are you better than Craigslist? How do you solve the chicken or egg problem? We thought we were doing pretty well, and later even went to play mini golf to celebrate a little ... and relieve stress.

And then, that evening, we received a letter of refusal. We were simply killed for a couple of hours. But that was a turning point. That evening we decided to devote ourselves entirely to the company and work our best, with or without YC. We thought about our B2B program and quickly implemented it by signing contracts with several companies. In fact, it is still our best source of income.

Ryan: But at that point you were still not in YC. How has this changed?

In mid-October, we applied again and received an interview again - by the way, it was on Halloween. We weren't so optimistic this time around, partly because we didn't want to be disappointed again, but also because we were still committed to our cause.

In the end, that evening we went to an event, business accelerator, to record a podcast about Kopa. We doubted very much that we would get a positive answer, and during the recording - I'm not kidding - we got a call from YC. Literally a few seconds after we said that we most likely will not get through. We were just dumbfounded, we were sure that they would refuse us. (During the interview, Dalton even said, “Company X has a much better business model than you do.”) My heart began to beat, it turns out that we were accepted.

Ryan: It's incredible. Do you think HigherMe's experience was useful for launching a startup?

At HigherMe and the other startups I have worked for, the code I wrote actually played a big role. It was launched, people used it regularly, I got real feedback, and without my participation all this would not have happened. Awesome feeling.

On the other hand, I had a job [in large companies] where I worked on projects for over six months, only to be thrown into the trash can. That is, this work was highly paid, but did not bring any pleasure or benefit, and why then burden yourself with it? And it's not about the need to retrain into a charitable enterprise in order to do significant things.

Now that I run my own company, I want to create something that people can be proud of or be happy to say that they worked for my company. So that they feel that they can learn, as I do. And most importantly, looking back, they could say that it was worth the time spent.

Ryan: What advice would you give to students looking for their first internship?

Most importantly, try to do something different from what you have done before. An internship is an opportunity without risk to get a job in a new company, to try out a new job. There will be no more such chance. Try, change.

During my studies at UWaterloo, I completed 6 internships. I tried Product Management at BC Hydro, a British Columbia utility company. I learned to work with different teams, navigate large organizations and manage fairly large-scale projects. Ultimately, I've been coding quite a lot, no matter the position - I enjoy automating processes and I've found better ways to stay productive and efficient. Again, I have learned a lot and have no regrets.

Ryan: Okay, now that you've started your own company and visited YC, how has YC been helpful to you?

YC is a business school for startups. The super-trending challenges that startups are facing are how to improve their landing page, improve SEO, drive B2B sales, and all the other things we ran into at Kopa. YC opens doors: investors pay attention to us, and companies are more willing to work / cooperate with us.

YC was also a good source of early customers. Thousands of current and former founders really needed to help their employees and interns find housing. They gave feedback on our product and helped us refine it. Once, we even wrote to Drew [the founder of Dropbox], and in a matter of minutes we got in touch with their HR manager.

And there's always motivation: it's cool to listen to the founders talk about their experiences and lessons learned over lunch at YC. Thanks to YC, many friends have appeared with whom you can share your problems and successes. It is very important. This is what keeps you afloat. I would like everyone who is interested in startups to have the opportunity to gain such knowledge and experience.

On November 9, 2020, a free Startup School for Future Founders by Y Combinator has started from the world's best accelerator, and we will publish useful translations for those who plan to become a founder of an international startup.

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From intern to startup founder at Y Combinator

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