[razvanr]

Many people ask me how I knew about YC back in early 2007. It was Founders at Work for me. It took me a few years to get my hands on a copy of the book (Amazon didn't deliver in Romania back then), but the content was incredibly useful and completely original.

Reddit also had a play in it. At the time it was the competing Digg Upstart, or that's how everyone saw it. I distinctly remember a blog post after Reddit was acquired by Conde Nast, where the founders said they went out for ramen and for the first time ever it didn't matter who picked up the check at the end of the meal. That pushed me to apply to the program.

It might have been the early days looking back -- but YC seemed like a big thing even back then if you were into the startup scene. Between Reddit, Stripe and Auctomatic (Founded by Harj Taggar and Patrick Collison, which to me meant european founders are welcome in the program) you could sense that everyone involved with the group was continuing the stories I read about in Founders at Work.