Welcome Geoff

Is there anywhere to read more about Geoff's Rocketmail experience?

In Founders at Work, Sabeer Bhatia (who co-founded Hotmail) paints a pretty awkward picture of Four11. According to the interview, Rocketmail started out as a directory service (I guess, hence "Four11"). They were Hotmail's partner, providing them with a searchable directory of other users. But then through the partnership Four11 found out how many users Hotmail was getting and decided to compete directly by making Rocketmail. Things were apparently especially awkward because both Hotmail and Four11 were funded by DFJ!

Anyway, it would be really interesting to hear the other version of events. (Hotmail and Rocketmail were competitors after all.) Obviously, being in webmail rather than directory services was the right call, but how did Four11 decide to switch and what were the interpersonal and business dynamics really like?

This is great news, congrats Geoff!

Having had the pleasure of working with Geoff, I really appreciate his ability to quickly address the flaws in your product, strategy, presentations, etc.

He groks things almost instantly and gives really constructive criticism that might sting a bit at first but adds a lot of value. Most valuable advice isn't what you wanted/expected to hear, but you come away in a better position after hearing it. He's really good at giving it.

He'll be a great addition to the team.

Geoff Ralston is the man. He was one of our YC mentors and is now an investor in Earbits. He took the time to meet with us long before any formal YC meeting, simply because he knew we were involved in music. His insights were amazing and he doesn't bullshit you about anything. He's fun to work with and brings a wide array of experiences to the startups he works with. YC just got better - is that possible?!

Geoff was one of my favorite partners at YC, so awesome to see him come on full time. He has this intensity that really gets to the root of a problem, I learnt a lot from him.

Congrats Geoff and YC!

I've only known Geoff for a short while now, but this will be a huge benefit to YC. Geoff has a great eye for product development and can really strip an idea down to its core elements.

Ycombinator must really be an wonderful place to be in, with all these smart people around.

I wish I knew how to get there from halfway around the world.

Geoff was great during office hours. Very high-energy and he would give really valuable actionable feedback. Once when we complained about the volume of suport email and time spent on customer support he strongly recommended that we invest some time in building out a great FAQ. For some reason or the other up to that point we had kept pushing it off, but his advice motivated us to tackle the problem head on.

He would constantly make quick small suggestions like this, possibly even obvious things, but his enthusiasm and excitement when he made the suggestions, encouraged us to carry them out and it definitely helped us out.

Congrats Geoff and YC!

Hey Geoff -- that's awesome!

Our company dwells in a weird business that sometimes defies logic. But Geoff had two golden pieces of advice for us after listening to our story for only two minutes in an office hours session. He's a stalwart sounding board. Big addition.

http://ycombinator.com/people.html needs updating. There are at least 3 people missing.

I would like to know if YC has data mining/analytics specialist that reviews YC applications and helps people.

Congrats to Geoff! We're looking forward to working with him at ImagineK12 to build out our edu product. In two offices hours so far, he's given us some hard hitting feedback about our customer development progress, so we've taken that to heart and "left the building" to talk to our potential users, not just relying on phone/email/social media like we were before.

I hope YC doesn't steal away -too- much of his attention ... =)

Congratulations Geoff!

Geoff is an incredible product guy, and an even more incredible person. Every office hours we had with him during ImagineK12 he gave us a good old-fashioned hustling...prepare yourselves, YC.

Welcome Geoff, I have nostalgic memories of RocketMail!

Can a startup do YC and Imagine K12 in parallel?

I was huge fan of Rocketmail as it had a much cleaner interface than Hotmail or Juno. Congrats to Geoff!

Wow, you guys are on a roll with bringing in new folk! Congrats to everyone

My name is Geoff and I've found this to be a strange thread.

Grats Geoff!