When we were at $15M ARR, Michael Seibel told us we were f*cked. No path to $1B ARR. We weren't delivering enough value to customers. Motion was just a “very nice to have.” Here’s what we did about it.

When Chander joined Motion 3.5 years ago to lead engineering, we both thought he'd quit by now - he'd always wanted to start his own startup. But today, Motion is his own startup, as a co-founder. This was not a light decision - the bar we have for any team member is insanely high, let alone a co-founder. The decision was made for one reason only: increase in Motion's probability of winning. And that delta is just as high for Chander, as for Ethan, Omid, and myself. Chander has the highest pain tolerance out of any human I've ever met. Yes - sometimes, that's not a good thing: he always wants to fly Spirit economy and gets f*ked with delayed flights. His pick of 2-star hotels for offsites is always veto'ed by me. But sometimes, the willingness to suffer more pain than our competitors is our moat. We are willing to grind the hours and go through pain no one else can tolerate. And that's why we are winning. Welcome Chander - to the next decade.

I hear a lot of founders and investors say that YC is not worth it: $500K for 7% implies too low of a valuation. What they are not understanding is: the (often brutal) advice from YC Partners can mean the difference between life and death for a startup. As a founder, you should pick the highest-orbit thing: do you wanna optimize for that $1B vs $0 outcome, or do you wanna optimize for a couple percentage points in extra dilution. Imo, the former is literally 100x more important than the latter. Motion would've been dead multiple times without @ycombinator, and people like @mwseibel, @aaron_epstein, @garrytan, and many more. We share with Aaron all the ways YC has saved us in the past 5 years. Motion has not succeeded yet - we are far from it, and I'm sure we'll be saved again by YC at some point in the future.

On Christmas Eve 2019, Michael Seibel, then CEO of YC, called me: “You might not be cut out to be a founder.” He was right. We had pivoted 20 times. I thought I could always return to my 7-figure quant job. That night, I realized: you commit or you quit. Fast forward: Motion raised $60M at $550M. Michael is now a personal investor.