历史与人物paulgraham.com
杰西卡·利文斯顿
Jessica Livingston
2015 — 2023，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是 Paul Graham 写的一篇关于 Jessica Livingston 的文章，讲述她在 Y Combinator 早期扮演的关键但常被外界忽视的角色，以及她如何塑造 YC 的团队文化。文章强调了她对创始人、对公司幕后运作的深远影响。
为什么经久不衰：它提醒我们创业成功背后往往有被忽略的“幕后”人物和家庭般的团队文化，对理解 YC 和创业生态有持久的启发。
HN 评论精选
用亲身经历证明 Jessica 在 Stripe 早期和关键决策中提供了具体而重要的帮助。
我很高兴这篇文章存在。Jessica 在 Stripe 早期以各种方式帮了大忙，我几乎记不全。John 和我很大程度上是因为读了《Founders at Work》才对创业产生兴趣。后来因为我们是没信用记录的移民，Jessica 帮我们说服房东租房。公司启动后，每当 John 和我有重大决策，通常就是骑车去 Jessica 和 PG 家讨论，总能得到澄清。我记得有个决定我们争论了几周，Jessica 被问到时回答得立刻且坚决。我们很惊讶但信任她。我们常想，如果她没说服我们做那个决定，结果会差很多。
pc查看英文原文
I'm delighted that this essay exists. Jessica helped out in so many different ways during the early days of Stripe that I can barely remember half of them. (John and I became interested in startups in large part as a result of reading Founders at Work. And then, because John and I were immigrants without credit history, our residence of the Bay Area started with Jessica helping to convince a landlord to rent a place to us. Once the company was underway, whenever John and I had a major decision to make, figuring things out generally involved biking over to Jessica's and PG's place for an invariably clarifying discussion. I recall one particular decision that John and I had been debating for weeks. We just couldn't decide. Jessica's response, when asked, was immediate and adamant. We were surprised but trusted her. John and I often remark at how differently (and, I'm confident, worse) things would have ended up had Jessica not convinced us to make that call.)
家庭般的团队文化极难复制，而 Jessica 能按需营造这种文化，令人印象深刻。
我工作过的所有伟大团队都有 Paul Graham 在这里说的“家庭般”特质。我第一家真正伟大的公司明确以家庭为导向，会把家人带到办公室做饭、在创始人家过圣诞等等。后来我加入另一种家庭，更像酒吧打架式的家庭，但仍有那种氛围。然后我创立第一家公司，惨败，尽管成员大多是现实中的朋友，却完全没有家庭感。在 Matasano 我们似乎部分做到了（至少芝加哥办公室），但没完全做到，很难！我余生只想在这种感觉的公司工作，差别巨大。另外：如果 Jessica Livingston 能按需生成这种文化，那绝对值得佩服！
tptacek查看英文原文
All the great teams I've worked on had the "family-like" property Paul Graham talks about here. The first really great company I worked at was explicit about being family-oriented; they'd bring everyone's family to the office and cook dinners, had Christmas at the founders house, that sort of thing. I left that company and joined a different sort of family, which was more of a bar-fighting sort of family but still had that vibe. Then I started my first company, which cratered, and which did not have that family feel at all, despite it being largely a group of people who were friends in real life. I felt like we got part of the way there with Matasano (at least in the Chicago office, which was our largest), but not all of the way. It's tricky to pull off! I really only want to work at companies that have that feel, for the rest of my career. It makes a huge difference. Also: if Jessica Livingston can generate that kind of culture on demand, that's definitely a reason to be impressed by her!
行业叙事常遗漏 Jessica，反映出科技界对“家庭”式贡献和性别角色的内化偏见。
我想大多数经历过 YC 的创始人都能认识到 Jessica 在其中的重要性，所以有趣的是这在业界竟成了某种秘密。即使在早期、她的第一本书出版前，她显然掌控并参与一切，几乎是创始人所有事务的主要联系人。所以有趣的是，即使证据如此充分，被讲述和复述的故事却大多遗漏了她。我们行业有许多内化的偏见，除非你刻意寻找，否则看不见，于是“一个孤独男人建立帝国，几个配角”的故事显得完全正常。如果故事框架是建立“家庭”而非商业帝国，Jessica 的角色会不会更突出？我觉得两种讲法都行，但科技行业没有这种语言，尽管我认为一些最好的公司既是帝国也是家庭（比如早期惠普）。我想说的是，性别角色很古怪，而科技行业比许多行业更僵化。
SwellJoe查看英文原文
I would think most founders who've been through YC would recognize Jessica's importance in the equation, so it's interesting that it is some sort of secret in the industry at large. Even early on, before her first book was published, she was obviously on top of, and involved in, everything. She was the primary point of contact for damned near everything for founders. So, it's an interesting phenomenon that even with such a preponderance of evidence, the story that gets told and re-told mostly leaves her out. Our industry has so many internalized prejudices that are invisible unless and until you're looking for them, it can seem perfectly normal for the story to be about a lone man building an empire with a few supporting characters. If the story were framed as building a "family", rather than a business empire, would Jessica's role be more prominent in the telling? I think one could tell it either way, but the tech industry doesn't have language for that, even though I think some of the best companies were as much a family as an empire (early HP, for example). Gender roles are weird, is what I'm trying to say, and the tech industry is more rigid than many.
Jessica 因激烈反弹而不再公开谈论女性创始人话题，这造成了宝贵的经验智慧损失。
“没有人比 Jessica 更懂女性创始人。但不太可能有人会听到她坦率地谈论这个话题。她之前试探过，反应极其激烈，于是她决定‘再也不’。”我想知道因为这个效应，我们失去了多少智慧。我觉得社会需要为有思想的人分享智慧创造更大的激励。今天你能获得地位和财富，但像 Jessica 这样许多有思想的人并不在乎这些。也许唯一的解决办法是以某种方式保护他们免受反向激励（来自网络暴民的反弹），但我不知道怎么做。
fairity查看英文原文
> No one understands female founders better than Jessica. But it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the topic. She ventured a toe in that water a while ago, and the reaction was so violent that she decided "never again." I wonder how much wisdom has been lost bc of this effect. I feel like society needs to create a much larger incentive for thoughtful people to share their wisdom. Today, you stand to gain status & wealth, but a lot of thoughtful people like Jessica don't care about that. Maybe the only solution is to somehow protect them from the disincentive (backlash from the internet mob), but I don't know how.
历次讨论
同类还值得读
开发者无薪坚持完成 Mac 图形计算器：一个秘密项目的故事
Dev stays without pay to finish Mac Graphing Calculator as skunkworks project
苹果 Mac 图形计算器（Graphing Calculator）开发者的亲述：在项目被砍后，几位工程师在没有报酬、没有正式授权的情况下，以“地下项目”方式偷偷留在公司把软件做完…
历史与人物上首页 6 次 · 2009–2022pacifict.com理查德·费曼与 Connection Machine
Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine
长文回忆费曼晚年参与 Connection Machine 并行计算机项目的经历：他分析路由器、用自创的并行 Basic 编写 QCD 程序，也涉足细胞自动机等主题。
历史与人物上首页 5 次 · 2010–2021longnow.org编辑精选负 2000 行代码
-2000 Lines of Code
folklore.org 上 Andy Hertzfeld 记录的一则苹果 Macintosh 开发轶事：Bill Atkinson 被问到写了多少行代码时，回答“-2000 行…
历史与人物上首页 4 次 · 2014–2022folklore.org编辑精选Dennis Ritchie 的第一版 C 编译器（约 1972 年）
Dennis Ritchie’s first C compiler (c. 1972)
这个 GitHub 仓库保存了 Dennis Ritchie 约 1972 年编写的最早 C 编译器源码，是 C 语言和 Unix 早期历史的一手材料。
历史与人物上首页 4 次 · 2013–2025github.com一位破解赛马密码的赌徒
A Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code (2018)
彭博社 2018 年的长篇特写，讲述数学家 Bill Benter 如何用统计模型和算法在赛马博彩中持续盈利、累计赢得近十亿美元的故事。
历史与人物上首页 4 次 · 2018–2024bloomberg.com