Qasar Younis Named Y Combinator’s First COO: TalkBin Founder and CEO Will Lead Incubator in Growth

ycombinator-y-300x200-220x146Y Combinator has named partner Qasar Younis, who has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University and an MBA from Harvard, as its inaugural chief operating officer. As Y Combinator grows into more than just a traditional incubator, the company sought more structure and leadership around operations, creating the COO opportunity for Younis. Younis will remain an investment partner and startup advisor, as well as managing YC’s events, operations, finance, and legal functions.

sam altman“I’m delighted to announce that Qasar Younis will be YC’s first COO. Qasar will help scale our organization and operations as we tackle bigger and more ambitious projects–we’ve grown quite a bit in the past few years and now have a lot to do on the operations side. Along with his new responsibilities as COO, Qasar will primarily continue to invest in and advise companies,” blogged Y Combinator President Sam Altman.

The Pakistani-born founder and CEO of TalkBin, which was funded by Y Combinator and acquired by Google, later became the product lead for business facing product at Google. Younis joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner in 2013 and full time in the 2014.

Qasar YounisYounis told Venture Beat that one of his most important metrics of success is: “Every single founder should feel that when they leave Y Combinator, the staff and partners have worked hard to make their experience successful.” Along the same lines, Younis told Fortune,  “Our guiding star is that every founder should leave Y Combinator thinking that unequivocally, this time changed the trajectory of the company.”

The current value of the companies that have graduated from the program is $65 billion, according to Y Combinator. Among the alum, 40 companies are worth $100 million and more than 8 companies worth at least $1 billion, including Reddit, Stripe and airbnb.



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