Y Combinator has named partner Qasar Younis as its inaugural chief operating officer. In this role, he’ll be responsible for managing the day-to-day affairs of the program, including demo days, Startup School, the Female Founders conference, and more.
Younis has been a partner at the program since July 2014, but has been associated with it for much longer. In July 2010, he started TalkBin, a messaging tool to connect consumers to businesses through text and mobile apps. That company went through Y Combinator’s program and subsequently was acquired by Google in April 2011. Following that, he went on to lead business-facing products inside of Google Maps.
Earlier, VentureBeat spoke with Younis ahead of an article about Y Combinator. He shared that he applied to Y Combinator in fall 2010, but was discouraged by friends who told him that it “wasn’t a smart thing to do.” At the time, Younis said, “there wasn’t a clear indication that Y Combinator was beneficial across the board … now you have a lot of social proof and 2,500 founders that have gone through the program.”
As a partner in Y Combinator, Younis said 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.”
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Younis will still be an investment partner, but now he’ll be tasked with managing all of the program’s events, operations, finance, and legal functions, as well as advising startups.
He’s a graduate of Harvard University and Kettering University.
