Justin Kan: I'm starting a new startup incubator, Zero-F
Justin has been amazing for YC and has done a great job promoting entrepreneurship on social media. I wish him all the best. To help everyone better understand this move I transcribed the answers given by Justin in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;askwhale.com&#x2F;q&#x2F;23caaa" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;askwhale.com&#x2F;q&#x2F;23caaa</a><p>Q: What&#x27;s the mission behind Zero-F?<p>A: Empower entrepreneurs to start amazing startups and get back into building companies more hands-on which I haven&#x27;t been able to do as much as I&#x27;d like to in the past couple of years. I am particularly interested in startups in industries where technology hasn&#x27;t been applied yet. I think a lot of easy wins have already been taken and my goal is really to focus on industries where you can use tech to innovate their processes and improve efficiency. That&#x27;s what gets me up every morning and that&#x27;s what I&#x27;m excited about.<p>Q: Did you raise money for Zero-F?<p>A: Didn&#x27;t raise money for it, it&#x27;s fully self funded right now. So we&#x27;ll see, maybe one day I&#x27;ll run out of money and I&#x27;ll have to beg Nick for an investment. (Asks Nick) What do you think Nick, want to be my first LP?  Nick: I think we&#x27;re in trouble if I&#x27;m your first LP.<p>Q: Can you share with us if you will be the sole investor for all ideas in 0-F or there are others too? Only consumer software or enterprise too?<p>A: So for new companies that we start through Zero-F, we generally raise money from other funds of mine, other investors that I have a connection with, when it&#x27;s the right time. That&#x27;s definitely something we do. It&#x27;s a mix of startups, not just enterprise or software startups. I have an idea for an enterprise startup right now in the legal space that I&#x27;m currently thinking about. So we&#x27;re always looking for new investors to partner with.<p>Q: What will you do differently at Zero-F that you couldn&#x27;t do at YC? I.e. Why leave YC to do this? And why would they invest if you are competing with them?<p>A: Zero-F is not in competition with yC, we&#x27;re not opening up applications for start ups. Zero-F is more about a vehicle for me and Nick to co-found start ups with some of my friends, people in my extended networks, people who have worked for me or my friends before, and basically start one or 2 startup opportunistically a year. So there&#x27;s no program, there&#x27;s no $150,000, there&#x27;s no demo day. It&#x27;s really just about starting startups that I&#x27;m interested in industries that I think are interesting where there&#x27;s innovation to be had by applying technology and so it&#x27;s very different from 
YC or 500 Startups or anything like that. I love YC, I think I could work there forever, it was basically like being an university professor and I think it was a really exciting challenge for me but what I really really wanted to do is go back to starting companies myself and so that&#x27;s why I left.<p>Q: What are you hoping to enjoy most in this next stage of your journey? Any particular focus on the startups?<p>A: I think there are 3 things I know I really like in startups and I&#x27;m hoping that in this next stage I will get to focus on those 3 things particularly. Number 1: I love learning about new industries and thinking about how technology can be applied to improve them. Number 2: I really like seeing numbers go up, it doesn&#x27;t matter what but I like iterating on a product or company and seeing something improve wether it&#x27;s revenue or users. And number 3: I like working closely with a small set of founders to build a business and then mentor them on growing a company over a long period of time. And so I&#x27;m hoping with Zero-F, my new vehicle for creating startups I&#x27;ll be able to focus on those 3 things, and only those 3 things and that&#x27;s what I&#x27;m really excited about.<p>Q: Why start another incubator? The market seems pretty saturated and YC dominates the market. How will Zero-F differentiate? Also, explain the name!<p>A: So YC is not an incubator, in fact, PG always hated that whenever anyone would call it an incubator. YC is a seed fund that invests in early stage startups and it takes applications and gets founders from all over the world. What I&#x27;m imagining for Zero-F is a really company that help start companies with friends of mine, people in my extended network for ideas that are mine or theirs. It&#x27;s not a public facing incubator like YC or 500Startups or Techstars, really it&#x27;s just a vehicle start a few startups opportunistically, probably just one or two a year and mostly things that I&#x27;m interested in and interested working on. So I think it quite different from what else is out there, it&#x27;s more like a startup lab, something like Expa or Betaworks, but even smaller scale, it&#x27;s just me and Nick over here.