Phill Mendonça-Vieira

Nota bene: I’ve had a rough 2025 so far. I’m worried that people who used to support, or at least tolerate me, will turn against me out of a desire to conform, to show their obeisance, to the current prevailing winds. I found myself writing this essay to explain why I’ve been feeling so miserable. I sent it to Paul before I published it here.

It was the summer of 2015, and we were attending Y Combinator, the premier finishing school for startup founders. It was a long and stressful summer, holed up in our apartment in Mountain View, and a great experience.

At Y Combinator, there was sort of a curriculum, but they didn’t teach you anything per se. You’re assigned mentors, who you meet weekly, and you are free to book office hours – thirty minutes at a time – with a rotating cast of partners, each and every one of them formidable people, near or at the top of the field.

Out of thousands of applicants, you had been chosen, plucked from obscurity, and flown out, and now you were here, in the centre of the (software) universe. They had invested in you, you personally, above and beyond your specific idea for a business.

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