Did anyone ever question your academic background/track record. Did anyone deny you funding and/or not work for you upon inquiring about your track record?

In absolute honesty, do you think achieving good grades makes sizable a difference to people wanting to work for you or investing in your company?

No one ever asked about my grades - coming from Yale probably helped a bit - but more importantly, Yale allowed me to meet my first co-founders.

Your list excludes what is probably the most common reason to start a startup, which is that someone thinks they're more competent than the 90% who fail, so they have a good chance of succeeding and making themselves rich.

There is uncertainty in business, but execution matters a lot. If you have good reason to think you can execute better than most, then a startup is probably the quickest route to financial independence.

Out of curiosity, if you're able to answer it:

Does YC now collect, or has it ever collected, (anonymized?) data/survey-responses from founders (YC alums or not) on their original motivations for starting the company, and attempt(ed) to correlate that with outcomes?

If so, are you willing/able to reveal any of the things YC learned?

If YC hasn't attempted to do this: why not?

No but we should - we are actually building a lot more data collection in the next year

please do :) P.S. I'd love to see a Q re. motivation and perseverance in the YC application form.

It wasn't totally clear to me in the post: did Yale take you back after your stint at UPenn? If so, how did that work? If not, how did you become friends with Justin Kan (who IIRC was at Yale) if you were at UPenn?

Yes they did :) - I became friends with Justin during my second senior year

Thank God for those senior year World of Warcraft sessions!

Years ago I saw a flyer of Justin.tv, thought it's an amateur college student TV project, and didn't see any potential. Now it's one of my favorite startup stories, due to the wild start and huge impact. Live broadcasting has become a red hot social medium, especially in red China.

Great post. Thanks. As CEO of the company how did you deal with the extreme stress during the most difficult days of Justin.TV/Twitch while at the same time keeping the team motivated?

Honestly I dont have a good answer - I don't think I dealt with it in the most healthy manner - although my girlfriend (now wife) helped a lot!

Thanks for being honest about it. I think founders are masochists. We have to put up with tons of struggles, uncertainties, rejections, setbacks, hypocrisies, backstabbing, betrayals, slanders, deceptions, agonies, burn-out, blood, sweat, and tears while trying to keep positive tone on the outside to keep the team motivated and stick to the vision and mission and not lose investor's confidence. Just thought I asked if you can share what worked in your experience. Thanks.

What's the origin of your desire to be better than all of your peers?

Because I realized that I could be better

In what ways? Sorry Michael, but I reject the idea that you can be 'better' than another person.

I should have said I realized I could be better at the game of high school student looking to get into a good college.