Research Y Combinator Advice

• It’s much easier to build when you’re optimistic. - YouTube
  • Cool people may say everything is bullshit but it is better to be optimistic
  • None of your heroes were people complaining
• What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? - YouTube
  • The hardest part of management if making sure everyone understands what you understand.
  • People do not have the same context you have.
  • You can always get better at explaining things clearly and concisely.
• Tech startups live and die by their speed of shipping software. - YouTube
  • I was the one business guy on 4 person team, the three devs built everything
  • Ideas are a dime a dozen
  • More business people need to embrace the idea that great software companies are built by great software engineers.
• Talk about doing things that don’t scale. From Doordash’s YC app in 2013. - YouTube
  • We interviewed 100 small business owners to find what they want
  • Doordash found that delivery drivers had a lot of time
  • We, the software engineers, were also delivery drivers
• Go with what you can get started on most quickly. And get that first user. - YouTube
  • How to find what to focus on?
    • What can you get started with most quickly?
    • What can get you a customer more quickly?
    • Get going with something easy
    • Forcing yourself to launch with one user
  • I see people start an idea and abandon it before they get a single user
• What do you do to help yourself prioritize and focus? - YouTube
  • If you have 10 projects, you will only do top 3, actually fuck it just do 1
  • A lot of stuff is really a distraction
  • People have too much stuff on their TODO list
  • WHAT IS YOUR ONE THING
• The most successful startups have technical talent on the founding team. - YouTube
  • The best business founders recruit the best technical co founders
• Startups take on the personality of its founders, so work on getting yourself right. - YouTube
  • It took years of therapy to learn how to deal with conflict effectively
  • Startups end up taking on the personality of their founders
  • When you have unexamined demons inside of you, what happens to your startup
  • Therapy is good ROI
• Know what you’re worth. - YouTube
  • Technical people know your worth.
  • Nice people get ripped off the most.
  • Use our checklist because you have this amazing skill.
  • Business people, when your tech guy leaves, you fucked
• The biggest red flags in YC interviews - YouTube
  • Signals that people are not telling the truth
  • Signals that the people on the team do not like each other
  • People cut corners in their past
• Empathy and knowing the problem you're solving are core to design (and making something people want) - YouTube
  • We think of products as machinery, it is really about throwing the best possible party you can.
• What do bad startup ideas have in common? - YouTube
  • New Niche Social Networks,
    • Why Now?
    • What's Different
• These are the questions you should be asking at a late-stage startup. - YouTube
  • Do you have product market fit?
  • What is user retention like?
  • Do users like the product?
  • Are we charging as much as we could?
  • Answer questions,
    • What are the Customers doing?
• Biggest waste of time for startup founders - YouTube
  • Spending too much time consuming advice, when you can do the thing
• Biggest mistake first time founders make? - YouTube
  • Waiting too long to do the thing
  • Actually build the thing and get one user.
  • With one customer, you are in the top 10%
• Simply caring about customers is how you give your startup a competitive advantage. - YouTube
  • People can tell if you care.
• Determination is the most important trait for a startup founder. - YouTube
  • Determination > Intelligence
• Ignore the haters, and keep on building cool stuff. - YouTube
  • Dropbox is a wrapper on top of S3
  • Doesn't matter just create something that people want
  • Focus on solving customer problems
• What they forget to mention about "overnight success" is the years of work it took to get there. - YouTube
  • You just need to keep launching over and over again
  • The Startup is the opposite of a Movie Premiere
• It's all about talking to your users. - YouTube
  • People think ideas come up randomly on Sunday or a late night coding session.
  • Great founders talks to future customers before they even build something
  • Founders keep talking to their customers as well
• Tracy Young on the importance of representation and recognizing unconscious bias. - YouTube
  • Making Money and Impact are not the same thing
  • Legacy makes you feel good about yourself not money
  • There are a stack of people that progress society and others that don't
• For founders, it's critical to be honest with yourself. - YouTube
  • You gotta bridge reality and your dream world
  • Dealing with not knowing is a skill
    • Hire independent thinkers to disagree with me
  • Experimentation and Criticism is key to sucess
• Don't get caught up in the current fads and "doing what's cool." - YouTube
  • If you start a video conference fad during Covid you retarded, you should be thinking about the post covid world
• Beware of startup tarpit ideas. - YouTube
  • Tarpit is where you find fossilized remains
    • Animals think Tarpit is like water
    • The smell of the dead animal attracts more animals
    • More animals fall in
• 3 common YC interview mistakes - YouTube
  • Founders can not concisely tell them what they are building, lots of rambling
  • When founders can't articulate who they are solving this problem for
  • Sleek marketing answers people have rehersed
• The secret to better product demos - YouTube
  • Great demos focus on the user not the demo
  • BAD
    • Demo, Dashboard, feel like walking from room to room
  • GOOD
    • Tell a story about your user
    • The product is a prop to solve a problem
• Learning is so much easier when you care about your customers. - YouTube
  • Just read the title
• Reasons to do YC. - YouTube
  • Honest Feedback
  • Take Responsibility
  • Not get fucked over by investors
  • If someone says YC is bad, they need to explain why they are better
• Being accessible is one of the major advantages startups have over big companies. - YouTube
  • People like to talk to the founder and the developers
• The "Most Money Raised" game - YouTube
  • Lose control of your company
  • Burning Money, people who gave it to you
  • People think they working for next google
  • Makes it harder to pivot
• Change the way you think about launching. - YouTube
  • Launch something and no one will care
  • Always be shipping
  • Launching is something you do continuously
• Your outreach emails should probably pass this test before you hit send. - YouTube
  • Outreach emails with template
  • Ask yourself would you respond to this email
• Doing these things might feel good, but they won’t derisk your startup. - YouTube
  • The collecting of mentors and advisors is a bottomless pit of time suck
  • 1. Talk to customers
  • 1. Build and Launch Product
• How do you prioritize your tasks? - YouTube
  • My TODO list comes first, then check email and stuff
• Investors don’t validate your startup — users do. - YouTube
  • Some people get rejected over and over
• What are some things you’ve had to unlearn? - YouTube
  • Nothing in your job translates to a startup
• How do you structure your schedule to be most productive? - YouTube
  • If you program in hour increments you are fucked
  • A makers schedule is like an 8 hours of uninterrupted time
  • Email can be done in 20 minute increments
• Hedging your bets while starting a startup? - YouTube
  • Don't hedge bets
  • Be real with yourself and take some risks
• Launch quickly, and iterate. - YouTube
  • Don't do 600 user interviews
  • You only learn about your user when you put a product in front of them
• Hiring a FAANG engineer won’t miraculously save your startup - YouTube
  • Sebastionism
  • Don't hire the Google Engineers
• Real vs. Fake progress - YouTube
  • IMPORTANT
  • Talk to users, build and iterate your product
  • Cringe
    • Attending Conference
    • Focusing on winning awards
    • Events
    • Optimizing wrong metrics
  • Don't startup startup vanity, deliver value
• Could your side project become a startup? - YouTube
  • Create a product that a few people love rather than one a lot of people are indifferent towards
• Did you know that these companies had more than one founder? - YouTube
  • You need a cofounder
• Startup founders have to do a lot of… everything. - YouTube
  • The Founders should do the shit work
  • Be personally accountable for everything
• Growth = Product Market Fit - YouTube
  • No other signals really matter
• Beware of fake progress. - YouTube
  • KPI
    • Revenue
    • Active Users
  • Do
    • Talk to Users
    • Iterate the Product
  • Fake
    • Lots of advisors
    • Press announcements
    • Pitch competitions
    • Twitter activity
    • Meeting Famous People
• The best way to have startup ideas is to just notice them organically. - YouTube
  • Notice them organically
    • 70% of YC companies
  • Advice
    • Become an expert in something valuable
    • Work at a startup, become expert in what that startup does
    • Build things you find interesting
• Adulting (and running a startup) is hard. - YouTube
  • You might have to adult more than the people around you
  • My room mates don't do this so why do I have to
    • Maybe you need to be better than the people around you