Y Combinator

In the podcast episode "When Should You Trust Your Gut," Dalton Post-Michael discusses the nuanced advice necessary for startup founders at different stages of expertise and idea development. He outlines two common scenarios encountered at Y Combinator (YC): experienced founders who have developed a valuable tool within a company and want to productize it, and young, technically skilled individuals eager to start a business but unsure of what to focus on. Dalton emphasizes that generic advice does not suffice; instead, tailored guidance based on the founder's background and knowledge is crucial. Dalton elaborates on the concept of trusting one's gut, contrasting it with the extreme of seeking constant external validation. He uses the example of Steve Jobs, who famously relied on his vision and instincts rather than customer feedback, to illustrate the potential success of trusting one's gut when one has a clear and innovative vision. Conversely, he mentions the "mom test" as an extreme of relying solely on external input, which can lead to a lack of originality and personal investment in the idea. The discussion then shifts to practical advice for founders. For those with significant experience and a proven track record, such as having developed a widely used tool within a company, Dalton suggests that trusting their gut and leveraging their deep understanding and instincts can be advantageous. They likely have valuable insights into the needs and gaps in the market that less experienced individuals might not see. On the other hand, founders without deep industry knowledge or a clear vision should be more cautious about trusting their instincts. They should focus more on learning from potential customers and the market to build their expertise. Dalton and Michael conclude by discussing the importance of recognizing whether one is bringing expertise to a startup or needs to build it from the ground up. They advise that founders with deep knowledge should trust their instincts more, while those still acquiring knowledge should adopt a more open and exploratory approach. This tailored strategy ensures that founders can navigate the startup landscape more effectively, making informed decisions that align with their level of experience and understanding of the industry.

The podcast episode from Lightcone delves into the fascinating world of hard tech startups, particularly those incubated by Y Combinator (YC), known for its significant contributions to the tech industry through companies like Stripe and Airbnb. The discussion highlights the unique challenges and strategies associated with hard tech ventures, which unlike software startups, deal with physical products and high technical risks but often face lower market risks if they succeed. During the episode, the hosts discuss the advice given to hard tech companies in YC, emphasizing the importance of demonstrating commercial interest and securing letters of intent (LOIs) from potential customers, even if actual revenue isn't yet possible. This approach helps validate the market demand for groundbreaking technologies, such as asteroid mining or supersonic jets, which require substantial capital and carry significant technical challenges. The conversation also covers the journey of several YC-funded companies, illustrating the potential and real-world impact of hard tech startups. For instance, Boom, a company aiming to develop supersonic jets, managed to secure an LOI from Richard Branson's Virgin Airlines, proving significant commercial interest. Another example, Cruise, initially focused on retrofit kits for Audis before expanding into a broader vision, eventually leading to a rapid acquisition by General Motors. The hosts reflect on the broader implications of investing in hard tech, discussing how these companies, while risky, can achieve substantial returns and societal impact if successful. They encourage high-potential individuals to consider careers in hard tech, contributing to solving some of humanity's most pressing challenges rather than opting for more conventional paths in established tech companies. Overall, the episode paints an inspiring picture of the hard tech landscape, highlighting the blend of visionary engineering and strategic business acumen required to bring sci-fi-like technologies into reality. It underscores the transformative potential of these ventures, not only in terms of investor returns but also in their broader impact on society and industry.

The Light Cone Podcast episode titled "Building AI Models Faster And Cheaper Than You Think" delves into the advancements and possibilities of generative AI, particularly focusing on video generation. The hosts, Harj and Daniel, explore the capabilities of Sora, a cutting-edge AI that generates highly realistic videos based on prompts. They discuss the significant progress in AI's ability to accurately simulate real-world physics and the improvement in spelling and visual consistency in generated content. The episode highlights how foundational models like Sora combine transformer and diffusion models with a temporal component to achieve remarkable results in video generation. The podcast also sheds light on how startups, particularly those within the Y Combinator (YC) ecosystem, are building foundational models with limited resources. It showcases examples like Infinity AI, which creates deep fake videos, and SyncLab, which offers real-time lip syncing, demonstrating that it's possible to be at the forefront of AI innovation without massive budgets. The discussion emphasizes the importance of data, compute, and expertise in building these models and how YC companies have successfully navigated these challenges. Furthermore, the episode explores the broader implications of AI in various fields beyond entertainment, such as weather prediction, biology, and hardware design. It introduces companies like Atmo, which developed a more efficient and accurate weather prediction model, and Diffuse Bio, which focuses on generative AI for proteins. These examples illustrate the potential of AI to revolutionize industries by providing more efficient solutions to complex problems. The podcast concludes with a message of encouragement for aspiring AI innovators. It underscores that the field of AI is still new and accessible, and with dedication and the right resources, anyone can contribute to its advancement. The hosts remind listeners that many of today's AI pioneers started with little more than curiosity and determination, suggesting that the next breakthrough in AI could come from anywhere.

In the episode titled "Building Confidence In Yourself and Your Ideas" from the Dalton & Michael Podcast, the hosts delve into the common pitfalls that startups and founders face when trying to validate their business ideas and the importance of building conviction in their ventures. They begin by sharing a story about a YC company that decided to pivot after minimal effort in validating their idea, highlighting the low level of effort and lack of rigorous thinking that often plagues startups. The hosts argue that many founders, especially those trained as Product Managers (PMs) or in user research, struggle with selling their products because their skills are not directly transferable to acquiring first customers. The discussion then shifts to the concept of building conviction and how founders often pivot too quickly without fully understanding or believing in their own ideas. The hosts emphasize that the most important customer is oneself, and founders need to convince themselves that their idea is worth pursuing. They also touch on the importance of founder personality traits, particularly the ability to maintain high conviction despite challenges. The episode further explores the detrimental effects of fear on decision-making and the tendency of founders to rely on superficial validation methods, such as cold emailing or basing decisions on anecdotal evidence from social media. The hosts criticize the practice of pivoting based on insufficient data or feedback, referring to it as "pivotitis" and comparing it to a random walk that leads nowhere. They advocate for a more thoughtful approach to pivoting, where decisions are based on knowledge and a clear direction. Lastly, the hosts discuss the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and the importance of creating a product that at least the founders themselves would want to use. They argue that many startups fail to achieve even this basic step, leading to wasted time and effort. The episode concludes with advice for founders to set realistic expectations, avoid fear-driven decisions, solve their own problems first, and ensure that their efforts are akin to a "good rep" in exercise, focusing on form and learning rather than quick, unfounded pivots.

The Light Cone podcast episode titled "Where Is The REAL Cerebral Valley" delves into the transformation of San Francisco into a hub for technology and innovation, particularly focusing on its resurgence as a center for artificial intelligence (AI) development. The episode begins by exploring San Francisco's history as a tech epicenter, highlighting its recovery from the dot-com crash through the emergence of Web 2.0 companies like Stripe, Airbnb, and Dropbox. The hosts discuss the initial skepticism around basing startups in San Francisco, contrasting it with the traditional tech strongholds in the South Bay, such as Palo Alto and Mountain View. They attribute the shift towards San Francisco to the younger generation of founders seeking a vibrant urban environment and the communal spirit among builders and innovators in the city. The narrative then shifts to the impact of COVID-19 on San Francisco, describing how the pandemic and the rise of remote work led to a temporary exodus from the city and a questioning of its status as the tech world's nucleus. However, the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI marked a turning point, reigniting interest in San Francisco as a prime location for AI research and development. The hosts argue that the city's unique culture of ambition, long-term thinking, and inclusivity for misfits and innovators plays a crucial role in attracting and retaining talent in the tech industry. The episode also addresses the challenges San Francisco faces, including safety concerns, homelessness, and the high cost of living. Despite these issues, the hosts are optimistic about the city's future, envisioning it as a place where the brightest minds in technology can thrive and contribute to global advancements. They emphasize the importance of choosing the right neighborhood, like the Dogpatch, which has become a new center of gravity for tech startups, including Y Combinator's new headquarters. In conclusion, the podcast presents a hopeful outlook for San Francisco, suggesting that it has the potential to become the best city in the world for technology and innovation. The hosts envision a future where San Francisco continues to attract and nurture talent, leading to breakthroughs in software, hardware, biotech, and climate tech that benefit humanity. They believe that the city's unique blend of creativity, ambition, and inclusivity will fuel its ongoing transformation and ensure its place as a leading tech hub.

In the episode titled "Stop Innovating (On The Wrong Things)" from the podcast Dalton plus Michael, the hosts delve into the common pitfalls that entrepreneurs and startups face when they misdirect their innovative efforts. They begin by setting the stage in what they describe as the "innovation economy," where there's a prevalent belief among founders that innovation should be applied to every aspect of their business. This approach, however, is critiqued as spreading "innovation juice" too thinly across various problems, rather than focusing it where it's most needed. The hosts argue that the core miracle of a startup is finding product-market fit and creating something that people genuinely want. They caution against attempting to perform multiple "miracles" simultaneously, as this significantly lowers the chances of success. Instead, they advocate for concentrating innovation on solving real customer problems and adhering to best practices in other areas of the business. The discussion highlights how some founders get sidetracked by less relevant innovations, such as unconventional corporate structures or attempting to disprove established startup advice, which often does not serve the customer's interests. Specific examples of misguided innovation efforts include choosing unusual legal incorporations, like a Wyoming LLC instead of a Delaware C Corp, or making high-risk technology choices that complicate the business unnecessarily. The hosts also criticize the tendency to innovate in areas like business model and pricing in ways that confuse customers, emphasizing that clarity and familiarity can be more beneficial. The episode concludes with a broader reflection on the sources of advice that founders might follow, cautioning against applying principles from the branding world directly to technology startups. They suggest that successful tech companies often build on what's already proven to work, making incremental rather than radical changes. The overarching message is to prioritize the customer's needs and to save the more experimental innovations for after establishing a successful first venture.

In the episode titled "Stop Innovating (On The Wrong Things)" from the Dalton & Michael Podcast, the hosts delve into the common pitfalls that entrepreneurs and startups face when they misdirect their innovative efforts. The discussion begins with an observation of the current innovation economy, where there's a tendency among founders to spread their "innovation juice" across every problem they encounter, despite the finite amount of innovative energy a company can possess. The hosts argue that this approach often leads to innovating on the wrong aspects of a business, diverting focus from the core product or service that needs attention. The conversation highlights the miraculous nature of achieving product-market fit and the unlikelihood of replicating such success across multiple fronts simultaneously. The hosts emphasize the importance of concentrating innovation on solving real customer problems rather than getting distracted by less critical, innovative endeavors. They critique the tendency of some founders to prioritize personal preferences or contrarian bets over what is genuinely beneficial for the customer, pointing out that business should fundamentally be about serving the customer's needs. Specific examples of misguided innovation efforts discussed include unnecessary complications in corporate governance, such as choosing unconventional incorporation structures, and the pursuit of proving startup advice wrong as a principle. The hosts also touch on the folly of adopting idiosyncratic technology choices for the sake of novelty, using examples like startups that choose to write their own programming languages or adopt high-risk tech stacks without clear benefits to the product or service being offered. Moreover, the episode addresses the issue of startups complicating their business models and pricing strategies in an attempt to differentiate from competitors like AWS, only to confuse and alienate potential customers. The hosts argue that such innovations do not put the customer first and can hinder a startup's success. In conclusion, the podcast episode "Stop Innovating (On The Wrong Things)" serves as a cautionary tale for startups and entrepreneurs, urging them to focus their innovative efforts on what truly matters: creating a product or service that meets customer needs. The hosts advocate for adopting best practices in areas outside the startup's core innovation to avoid unnecessary risks and complications, suggesting that founders should save their more experimental ideas for future ventures once they have achieved success with their initial startup.

In the episode titled "Apple Vision Pro Startup Platform Of The Future" from The Light Cone podcast, the discussion centers around the implications of Apple's Vision Pro for startups and the broader tech ecosystem. The episode features Diana, a group partner at Y Combinator with a decade of experience in AR and VR, including a pioneering startup in the space, Escher Reality, which was acquired by Niantic. The conversation delves into the technical challenges and innovations behind augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), highlighting the Vision Pro's hardware and software advancements. Apple's approach, leveraging a pass-through video feed rather than an optical system for AR, simplifies some of the technical hurdles, enabling more immersive experiences. The podcast emphasizes the Vision Pro's potential to revolutionize productivity by moving beyond gaming-focused VR devices. Apple's focus on productivity, coupled with the device's advanced capabilities, such as eye tracking for variable rendering focus, positions the Vision Pro as a tool for professional and everyday use. This shift could pave the way for a new ecosystem of applications and interactions, much like the iPhone did for mobile apps. The discussion also touches on the importance of developers embracing this new platform, despite the initial challenges and uncertainties in adoption rates and market impact. Comparisons are drawn between the Vision Pro's launch and historical tech milestones, such as the iPhone and Tesla's product strategy, to speculate on the device's potential to be a transformative platform. The conversation concludes with insights into how startups and developers might navigate this emerging space, emphasizing the importance of genuine enthusiasm and innovation in creating applications that leverage the unique capabilities of AR and VR technologies. The episode suggests that while the path may be uncertain, the Vision Pro offers a fertile ground for the development of groundbreaking applications and experiences.

The hosts start by clarifying that the vast majority of businesses should not and do not raise venture capital. Venture capital is meant for investing in companies that have the potential to grow exponentially in value, providing a large return for investors. Most businesses do not fall into this category. Even many software companies should not raise VC funding. The numbers show that only a very small percentage of all businesses started receive VC backing. They go on to explain that the whole debate around bootstrapping versus raising VC is somewhat manufactured. Very few people actually believe it is inherently better to start a VC-backed business. Raising VC funding is very difficult and not a reliable path to getting rich. Most wealthy people made their money in other ways like real estate, medicine, law, etc. Also, no one is forced into starting a VC-backed business. You can always choose to bootstrap initially and potentially raise VC later on if there is demand from investors. A key point they make is that no major trillion-dollar software company has ever been fully bootstrapped. So while you may be able to build a very successful business without VC funding, the track record shows you likely cannot build one of the most massive companies without that outside investment. They wrap up by clarifying that their argument is not against bootstrapping, which can absolutely be a great path. They just want founders to have realistic expectations about the pros and cons of both approaches. Raising venture capital enables some companies to exist that otherwise would likely not be possible. But it also comes with many downsides that founders should fully consider before deciding if it's the right path.

The Light Cone podcast episode explores the current state of AI startups. The hosts - Gary, Jared, Harj and Diana - are Y Combinator group partners who work with AI founders. They explain why so many of their recent batch companies utilize large language models (LLMs). Rather than YC seeking out AI startups, ambitious founders are choosing to build companies using this new technology. Many observers dismiss these startups as mere "GPT wrappers", but the hosts push back on that characterization. Well-designed user experiences still matter, even when leveraging LLMs under the hood. The best ideas solve specific problems with customized data and business logic, not just generic automations. As examples, they discuss startups parsing government contracts, improving sales workflows, and streamlining regulatory compliance. The hosts explore other promising spaces like data privacy tools for enterprises sharing sensitive data with LLMs. They also examine the tradeoffs between general foundation models versus custom trained models tailored to niche use cases. Overall there is a proliferation of new ideas to build companies thanks to recent advances in AI. However, the hosts warn entrepreneurs to avoid "AI tar pits" - ideas that sound exciting but have little actual product-market fit. The AI copilot concept draws interest but many customers struggle to find practical uses. Broad promises to fine-tune open source models also rarely retain customers. The most durable startups solve concrete problems for specific customers. In closing, the hosts reflect on how this AI boom mirrors prior technological revolutions. Once again the earliest pioneers are hardcore technologists dismissively labeled as "geeks" - yet history suggests they may build the next generation of iconic companies. For entrepreneurs willing to search for valuable problems hidden in plain sight, it is an unprecedented time full of opportunity.

Title: How To Build A Tech Startup With No Technical Skills Summary: The podcast is aimed at aspiring founders without technical skills who want to start a software company. The hosts argue that the best thing these business founders can do is recruit an amazing technical co-founder. This distinguishes great business founders and gives them the best chance of success. Without a strong technical co-founder, software companies are very unlikely to succeed. The technical co-founder needs to care as much as the business founder and be committed to the venture. They should be seen as an equal partner, not just an employee to execute the business founder's ideas. Many business founders use excuses like not knowing any good engineers personally or having unrealistic requirements. The hosts encourage being more open-minded about potential technical co-founders. A good approach is to think of the best engineer you've worked with previously and try to recruit them by focusing on the adventure of building a company together. The best business founders are excellent recruiters who can attract and inspire great technical talent to work with them as co-founders. This distinguishes them from most other business founders. If you want to maximize your chances of success, you need to have this ability as well.

Title: Key Startup Metrics with Tom Blomfield Why Metrics are Important - Help make better decisions, like instruments in an airplane - See how user growth and retention are trending - Impressive when founders understand core metrics like DAU/WAU, revenue per user Warnings About Metrics - Don't track too many metrics early on, focus on 4-5 key ones - Don't constantly change metric definitions to make numbers look better - Don't overly rely on metrics; still critical to talk to customers Picking Key Metrics - Revenue is best core metric for B2B companies - Also track burn rate (costs minus revenue) and runway - For consumers, focus on growing active users first Retention - Critical to track cohort retention over time - Goal is flat retention curves over time - High retention builds revenue layers over time Net Dollar Retention - Metric for tracking revenue growth of cohorts - Benchmark is >100% for early stage SaaS - Below 100% signals churn problems Gross Margin - Revenue minus cost of goods sold - Important not to scale negative gross margin businesses - Have plan to improve margin over time The summary covers the key points from the podcast without using verbatim quotes, and is structured into logical sections with descriptive headings instead of just bullet points.

The hosts of the podcast discuss why they are optimistic about the future of technology. They acknowledge that in their work they see many startups fail on a daily basis. However, when zooming out and looking at the big picture, they highlight all the ways technology has improved dramatically in just the past few decades - the availability of information via the internet and sites like YouTube, communications technology like smartphones that allows free calling and messaging globally, transportation innovations like ride sharing and self-driving vehicles, improvements in healthcare and standards of living across the globe, and the abundance of entertainment options available instantly online. The hosts note that it's easy to be pessimistic if you just focus on the negative news stories about technology. However, they argue that you have to have perspective and acknowledge that progress comes with tradeoffs. The pacing of innovation is also uneven across industries. Just because some problems persist doesn't mean we shouldn't be excited about solutions happening in other areas that will have meaningful impacts on people's lives. They express optimism not only because of how much better things have gotten so recently, but also because of the innovations they see coming in the near future - satellites providing internet access globally, mature self-driving vehicles that will drastically reduce accidents, continuing advances in renewable energy. The hosts are particularly excited about innovations that will allow faster transportation across the globe. Ultimately, they are optimistic because they see how much technology can continue improving their kids' lives in the coming decades. They argue if you want to create positive change in the world, it's better to have an optimistic mindset focused on solutions rather than just criticism.

Jake Heller is the co-founder of CaseText, a legal technology company that uses AI to help lawyers do legal work faster. CaseText was recently acquired for $650 million, demonstrating the huge opportunity in applying AI to traditional industries. Jake started off on a traditional legal career path, working at a big law firm and clerking for a federal judge. During this time, he saw how technology was making basic consumer tasks very easy, yet legal work was still extremely tedious and time-consuming. He would spend late nights manually searching for key information that could determine the outcome of billion-dollar lawsuits or criminal cases. This motivated Jake to start CaseText in 2013 to bring modern technology to the legal industry. Initially, CaseText focused on crowdsourcing and early natural language processing to build features like automatically recommending relevant case law. They signed some large law firms as early customers. However, over time Jake realized that not all law firms have the same needs or appetite for adopting new technology. After some ups and downs, in 2022 CaseText got early access to the GPT-4 language model. This allowed them to build a transformative product called Co-Council that acts as an AI legal assistant. Co-Council can take on complex legal tasks like reviewing contracts or documents and provide analysis at a level comparable to a human lawyer. This creates tremendous time savings - tasks that would take days can now be done in minutes. CaseText started rapidly adding millions in monthly revenue as law firms saw tremendous value in the product. This represented true product-market fit. Jake emphasizes that while the raw AI models are incredibly powerful, a lot of work goes into building an applied product on top that solves real customer needs. Jake believes we're just at the beginning of tapping into these large language models to compress traditional human work down to software. He sees it as a fundamental platform, like cloud computing, that startups can build on top of to create magical products across industries. Jake encourages entrepreneurs to start companies now and take advantage of these opportunities unlocked by AI.

The podcast "How To NOT Get Screwed As A Software Engineer" aims to provide advice to technical people who may find themselves exploited in their roles. The hosts, Dalton and Michael, address several common situations where engineers can get taken advantage of. They first discuss equity splits at startups. A problematic but frequent scenario is when a non-technical founder retains a much larger equity share (e.g. 90%) compared to the technical co-founder (e.g. 10%). There is often no reasonable justification for such an imbalanced split, beyond the business founder having "sharper elbows" in negotiations. The hosts argue technical co-founders should have close to equal equity as they will take on equal responsibilities and effort as the company grows. Similarly, early technical hires/first engineers at startups often get less than 1% equity despite providing co-founder level work. The hosts advise these employees should still get a meaningful stake so they are properly incentivized - if the company succeeds, their equity should be "life-changing" money. The hosts discuss other signs technical talent is being exploited, like not having a seat at the decision-making table and being left out of key business meetings. Another red flag is if the technical person is working extremely long hours while counterparts in non-technical roles work more reasonable schedules. Technical staff shouldn't be treated solely as "code writing machines" without a voice in strategy. The hosts emphasize that positive situations do exist where engineers get fair deals. Signs of a good environment include the technical person feeling privileged to work at the company, getting ample opportunities for learning/career development, and having properly set expectations on effort/responsibilities required. The hosts conclude with advice if someone finds themselves potentially exploited - consider other jobs/companies where your skills may be better valued, directly ask for more equity/decision-making involvement, or take calculated career risks to improve your long-term prospects.

Title: Should You Quit Your Job At A Unicorn? Summary: Dalton and Michael discuss when it may be time to leave your job at a unicorn startup. There are now 1400 unicorn startups valued over $1 billion. Realistically, only about a third will successfully IPO. For the other two-thirds, employees' stock options will likely be worthless if the valuation falls. Employees have the best insight into their startup's performance. Look at metrics like revenue and product engagement to gauge success. Founders may seem checked out or give misleading positive messaging if things aren't going well. Evaluate the talent around you - are people engaged or just biding time? Consider moving to an earlier stage startup with solid metrics. You can get more responsibility, equity, and a lower strike price. Don't job hop too quickly. Make an informed decision based on your own analysis, not outside hype. If your unicorn seems strong, you may want to double down and gain more equity. With so many unicorns, the label alone doesn't guarantee success.

Title: Should You Quit Your Job At A Unicorn? Summary: Dalton and Michael discuss when it may be time to leave your job at a unicorn startup. There are now 1400 unicorn startups valued over $1 billion. Realistically, only about a third will successfully IPO. For the other two-thirds, employees' stock options will likely be worthless if the valuation falls. Employees have the best insight into their startup's performance. Look at metrics like revenue and product engagement to gauge success. Founders may seem checked out or give misleading positive messaging if things aren't going well. Evaluate the talent around you - are people engaged or just biding time? Consider moving to an earlier stage startup with solid metrics. You can get more responsibility, equity, and a lower strike price. Don't job hop too quickly. Make an informed decision based on your own analysis, not outside hype. If your unicorn seems strong, you may want to double down and gain more equity. With so many unicorns, the label alone doesn't guarantee success.

The most productive founders focus intensely on understanding their customers' problems and building solutions, rather than getting distracted by less impactful tasks. They consciously prioritize the one or two most important things to move their business forward. The best founders have the self-awareness to delegate tasks they aren't good at to others who have complementary skills. Avoid productivity porn, extreme lifestyle hacks, and fake work that feels productive but doesn't actually move the needle. Instead, be intentional about your schedule, carving out blocks of uninterrupted time for deep work. Use maker schedules with long stretches focused on creation versus manager schedules filled with meetings. Focus comes from relentlessly saying no to less critical tasks and opportunities. The most productive founders are extremely judicious about protecting their time and avoiding distractions. Multitasking is a myth - hyperfocus and single-tasking is key. At the end of the day, outsourcing and life hacks can't replace hard work. The most successful founders simply put in the hours required to understand customers, build products, and grow businesses.

Surbhi Sarna founded Envision Medical, a biotech company focused on early detection of ovarian cancer, when she was just 24 years old. As a teen, Sarna had a health scare when she developed ovarian cysts that doctors feared could be cancerous. This experience motivated her to improve women's healthcare. Despite having only a bachelor's degree, Sarna was determined to start her own company. She faced many rejections from investors but persevered and eventually raised seed funding. Sarna built an impressive team and raised $20 million more in venture capital funding. Envision Medical developed a device that obtained FDA clearance for collecting cells from the fallopian tube to test for cancer. After successful clinical trials, Boston Scientific acquired the company for $275 million. Following the acquisition, Sarna became a partner at Y Combinator. She now helps healthcare and biotech founders build their startups, drawing on her own experiences as a young female founder in biotech. Sarna hopes to back founders working on meaningful healthcare problems, regardless of their credentials.

Episode Title: Office Hours Group Partners Share Their Investor Horror Stories - Raising money can be challenging. Investor meetings can go very wrong and leave founders demotivated. - Investors sometimes play power games, like making founders wait for hours or conducting distracting conversations during pitches. This wastes valuable pitch time. - Some investors ask inappropriate personal questions or make incorrect assumptions about founders' relationships. This crosses professional boundaries. - Founders should prepare for many "no's" and not take investor rejection personally. Building the business and solving problems for users is what matters most. - Having a strong pitch and clear strategy is key. Founders shouldn't let investor opinions overly influence product direction. Stay focused on solving real problems. - The goal is to build a great company, not just raise money. Have realistic expectations about the fundraising process. With preparation, founders can navigate challenging investor meetings.

Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell discuss whether startups need to be located in San Francisco. Though they have different personal preferences on living in the city versus the suburbs, they agree that the San Francisco Bay Area offers unique advantages for startup success. The Bay Area attracts ambitious founders because of the network effects - the connections, chance encounters, and community of people trying to build top startups. Though anecdotes of successful startups elsewhere exist, statistics show the Bay Area offers the best odds for startup success over time. They note that living in the city center is not required to gain these advantages. Many successful founders live throughout the Bay Area and commute in. Overall, they recommend startups locate in the Bay Area to increase their chances of greatness, unless there are compelling personal reasons not to. Though different lifestyles can flourish in the region, the network effects make the Bay Area the premier location for ambitious startups.

Office Hours Group Partners Reveal Their Favorite Pivot Stories - Pivoting is changing your startup idea when you realize your current idea is not working. Many successful companies had to pivot before finding product-market fit. - Brex originally tried building virtual reality headsets before pivoting to payments for businesses. - GOAT was originally a site for organizing group dinners before realizing the founders were passionate about sneaker collecting and turning into a sneaker marketplace. - Monzo originally tried group payments before realizing recurring business payments was the better idea, becoming the company GoCardless. - Clipboard Health spent years understanding hospital needs before realizing they should focus on nurse staffing and building an agency. - It's important to find a problem you understand well before building a solution. Interact with users to find product-market fit. - Pivot hell is constantly changing ideas without gaining traction. Successful pivots build on what you've learned. - Having clear metrics helps determine if you should pivot. Focus on the main metric that indicates success. - The founders are the "location." You can change ideas but the team needs persistence and learning. - Pivoting is part of the process. The market will teach you if you listen and stay focused on solving a real problem.

Episode Title: Will OpenAI Kill All Startups? Summary: - OpenAI and other companies are trying to build artificial general intelligence (AGI), not just narrow AI applications. The hosts don't want to debate whether AGI will happen soon. - Major innovations like farming, electricity, and the internet have enabled many new businesses and advantaged startups over incumbents. The same could happen with AI. - Some founders are cargo-culting AI just to raise money, while others are using AI to build features that improve products and retention. The latter is real progress. - AI will likely be as impactful a tool as mobile, open source, and cloud computing. It would be foolish not to consider how to use AI to benefit users. - OpenAI was created as an enabling nonprofit technology so startups could flourish. The goal was not for OpenAI to make all the AI products itself. - Unless you believe AGI is imminent, OpenAI won't kill startups. Current AI tools could enable an explosion of new startups and innovation like after the mobile revolution.

The podcast discusses the concept of "cargo culting", which refers to superficially copying something without understanding why you're copying it. This is often done in the startup world, where founders copy successful companies without thinking through whether those tactics actually make sense for their own business. Some examples discussed: - Copying Google's office culture, like open floor plans and free snacks, without realizing these perks were not the key to Google's success. - Trying to go viral like Facebook without considering that most products don't get used for hours per day like Facebook did, so different tactics are needed. - Expanding to multiple cities quickly and spending aggressively like Uber, without looking at whether unit economics actually support that expansion. The hosts argue that blind copying often fails because it ignores the deeper reasoning behind a successful company's strategy. What works for a Google or Facebook isn't necessarily right for every business. They suggest starting with the user - understand their needs, see what they currently use and pay for, and learn from companies successfully serving that user. With that lens, founders can thoughtfully adapt and integrate ideas, rather than blindly copying. Superficial startup posturing, like fundraising announcements, press, and vanity metrics, can drive cargo culting of unproven, often unsuccessful companies. But real success comes from providing genuine value to users.

Divya Bhat discusses how early stage startups should set key performance indicators (KPIs) and prioritize work to reach product-market fit faster. She explains why prioritization and choosing the right KPIs are crucial - you want to run fast, but in the right direction towards product-market fit. Bhat advises startups to focus on revenue growth as the primary KPI. Other metrics like signups can be vanity metrics that feel good but don't indicate progress. She shares examples of startups like Super Daily that aligned on the right growth KPIs early. To prioritize, identify the biggest bottleneck to your primary KPI, like a conversion rate issue. Focus on high-impact tasks to move that KPI, not busywork. Avoid traps like perfectionism. Set ambitious growth targets, both long-term and week-by-week. Audit your task list to ensure you're working on the most important things. Bhat challenges listeners to write down their primary and secondary KPIs, set targets, and share with others to get feedback. Aligning on the right metrics and priorities is crucial to reach product-market fit faster.

The podcast discusses how founders need to confront the reality of potential failure in their startups in order to avoid actually failing. The host shares a personal story of how his startup Postures experienced strong growth for two years before suddenly plateauing in 2010. However, the host refused to accept that his startup was going to fail. He looked for data that indicated things might improve while lying to himself, employees and investors that success was still achievable. The podcast explains that founders need to change their beliefs and models when confronted with evidence that contradicts their assumptions. Just like in the movie The Truman Show, founders are often blind to the reality that their understanding of the world might be completely wrong. Overcoming the fear of a startup dying allows founders to see the truth. The host points out the confusing aspect of this is that founders also need to believe in their startup dreams to make them happen. But this dreamland shouldn't be the only perspective. Founders must bridge dreamland and reality by surrounding themselves with smart people who challenge their assumptions. This allows more robust mental models to develop through experimentation and criticism. In summary, the podcast emphasizes that founders should immerse themselves in both dreamland and reality in order to create success. Having an individual dream is not enough - you need to test that dream against the reality through a process of falsification and feedback from others. This allows you to turn your dream into actual change in the real world.

Tracy Young's parents were refugees who escaped the Vietnam War. They crammed onto a small fishing boat with hundreds of others hoping to find freedom. After being rescued by an oil rig and dropped at a refugee camp, they were sponsored by a Lutheran priest to come to the United States. Arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tracy's parents worked difficult jobs in Silicon Valley, eventually saving enough to start their own restaurant distribution business. As the child of immigrants, Tracy saw her parents struggle to build a better life. This gave her a grit and determination that helped her succeed as a startup founder, co-founding PlanGrid which sold for $875 million. Tracy didn't initially see people who looked like her as startup founders. But she realized being an Asian American woman didn't preclude her from success in Silicon Valley. Immigrant stories like Tracy's exemplify the opportunity in America for social mobility across generations. Immigrants play an important role fueling economic growth, even as some promote anti-immigrant views. Tracy is grateful for a country that allowed her refugee parents to build a new life and enable their children to thrive. Her story shows the human capacity for love is much bigger than often acknowledged today. Immigrants working hard to build better lives are an essential part of the American story.

The Role of the Technical Founder - A technical founder is a partner in the startup journey, not just a developer. They lead building the product and talking to users. - In early stages, the role is like a lead developer - making all the tech choices and doing whatever it takes to get the product to work. Building in the Ideation Stage - Goal is to build a prototype quickly (days) to demo to users. - Keep the prototype simple to convey the product vision. Building the MVP - Goal is to build quickly (weeks) to get to launch. - Use clever hacks and shortcuts to launch faster. - Restrict features and scope to simplify the initial product. - Choose technologies based on your expertise and speed of iteration. Post-Launch Iteration - Goal is to iterate towards product market fit. - Use analytics and user interviews to guide iterations. - Continuously launch new features and improvements. - Balance new development with tech debt; some jankiness is okay. The role evolves after product-market fit to focus more on scaling the technology and team. But the main principles remain moving quickly and focusing on customer needs.

The main idea of this podcast is that early stage founders can learn a tremendous amount about their customers' problems and how to solve them by spending time with and caring about their customers. The Airbnb founders helped their hosts get professional photos for their listings, even though they knew the hosts would also use those photos on competing sites. By doing this gesture of goodwill, the founders built trust and a host invited them in for coffee. During this meeting, the host shared his detailed notebook containing 10 years of insights from renting out his apartment. This exemplified how caring about customers and spending time with them can provide unique learning opportunities. Similarly, the Brex founders pivoted their startup to focus on serving other startup founders after realizing they best understood that customer segment. By getting to know founders personally and asking about their pain points, Brex learned about the challenges of obtaining corporate credit cards and tailored their product to specifically address those needs. Again, caring about their personal network yielded valuable customer insights. At Justin.tv and later Twitch, the founders had a troubled relationship with their users who were streaming unauthorized content. But when they started reaching out to individual gaming streamers, asking about their needs, and implementing simple improvements like higher video resolution, they built trust. This eventually led to conversations where the founders learned that streamers would create better content if they could make money doing so. This insight was core to the Twitch platform. Overall, these examples demonstrate that founders can accelerate learning by caring about customers, spending time with them, and having empathy to understand their problems. This hands-on approach yields insights that surveys or hired consultants cannot.

Title: The Student's Guide To Becoming A Successful Startup Founder - The startup world will still be there when you are ready, so take your time to prepare and don't rush. - Learn to code - it's a critical skill for founders and gives you power inside a software company. - Develop design skills and learn to use basic design software like Photoshop. - Launch small projects and products to get experience releasing something and going through the startup motions. - Improve your social skills and learn how to connect with people. Everyone feels shy sometimes. - Learn how to truly help people and care about users. Empathy is key for startups. - Understand how credentials like college degrees work as a system you can utilize. Don't fully reject or blindly follow credentials. - Distinguish fads from technology and ideas that create real, lasting value. - Maintain optimism about technology despite negative press. Focus on the progress. - Develop personal honesty with yourself first. The startup world runs on trust. - Be ready for long games. Success takes years of patience and persistence. The core message is to follow your ambitions, develop your skills, and keep your dream alive over time through hard work. The rewards will come to those who persist.

In 2005, Y Combinator was founded by four people with the goal of helping startup founders succeed. By bringing together talented technologists and providing them with funding and a strong community, YC aimed to give founders a huge advantage. The first YC batch included startups like Airbnb that went on to become massively successful. YC has funded hundreds of companies at a time, producing many generational startups like Stripe, Airbnb, and Coinbase repeatedly. YC is the most powerful startup community in the world. At YC, founders can learn to move at the speed required for success. For example, Airbnb's founders Brian Chesky said they worked nonstop for 3-4 months during YC, allowing them to focus and create momentum. The reason YC exists is to accelerate startups. For three months, everything is focused on helping founders succeed. The group partners, fellow founders, alumni, and speakers all provide support. This acceleration is unmatched. YC is the best place to achieve product-market fit, where a startup transitions from an idea to a validated concept. Skills like pivoting, listening to customers, and finding product-market fit are what YC excels at. Over 90 YC companies have reached billion dollar valuations. At YC, being surrounded by experienced founders enables magic to happen. Founders get dedicated group partners who have seen hundreds of startups. Partners can spot patterns and prevent mistakes. Fellow batchmates are smart founders learning alongside you. Alumni numbering 9000+ globally can provide expertise in any sector or geography. YC's private social network Bookface connects this community. YC also provides programming, recruiting services, and $500k in funding. With so much support for early teams, there's no such thing as too early to apply. YC has created more prosperity than perhaps any other organization by changing founders' lives.

Episode Title: How Startup Fundraising Works with Brad Flora - Fundraising is challenging but doable. It's a grind of having lots of 1-on-1 meetings, not a glamorous shark tank experience. - You don't need to impress investors, just convince them you're building something worthwhile. Make a simple product, get some users, and explain your vision. - Don't wait to raise money before starting your company. Build a basic prototype first to prove the concept. - Raising money is fast and cheap these days thanks to standardized documents like YC's SAFE. You can raise a seed round in weeks without lawyers. - Seed rounds give founders lots of control. You don't give up board seats or shares, and have no reporting requirements. - Don't bootstrap forever - take the fundraising pain upfront. Raise enough to focus on delighting customers. - You don't need a fancy network or pedigree. Investors care about making money. If you build something good, they'll want in. - Rejection is normal. Even great startups get rejected at first. You just need a few believers, not universal acclaim. Overall, fundraising is very doable nowadays if you make something worthwhile. Don't be intimidated - just start building.

The key to building a successful minimum viable product (MVP) is to launch something quickly that you can put in front of users, learn from them, and rapidly iterate on. Surveys and extensive planning often lead founders astray - real learning happens once users interact with a product. MVPs don't have to be perfect or solve every problem. They just need to resonate with a small group of early adopters who are eager for a solution. Successful companies like Airbnb, Twitch, and Stripe started with very basic MVPs that appealed to a niche user base. Their initial products had major limitations but solved a pressing problem for some users. This allowed them to gain feedback, improve the product, and expand to more customers over time. When building your MVP, move fast and don't get bogged down trying to build the perfect product upfront. Focus on the minimum set of features, get something in users' hands quickly, and plan on iterating based on their feedback. The goal is to start learning as fast as possible, not to launch an amazing product on day one. Embrace releasing an MVP that might feel embarrassing but will get you valuable user insights.

Title: How To Earn Customers For Life Many founders make the mistake of not caring about their users and just trying to force their product on them. This comes from a mindset of caring more about raising VC funding than actually helping customers. Successful founders view customers as real people and build genuine relationships with them. This starts with liking your users and caring about their problems. Even if you don't love the industry, you can care about helping another person succeed. When founders personally engage with customers, apologize for mistakes, and go the extra mile, it builds loyalty. Customers remember when a founder directly helped them. This personal touch is something big companies can't replicate. Caring about your customers is a competitive advantage. It's very difficult to beat a competitor who cares more about customers than you do. The customer can sense it if you don't actually want to solve their problems. As a founder, use caring about your customers as a superpower. Build real relationships, learn about their lives, and view your software as helping real people. This will lead to happier customers, more sales, and more fun for you.

Title: The REAL Potential of Generative AI Paragraph 1: Large language models like ChatGPT can engage in conversation and generate content, but customization is key to building differentiated products. Startups like Humanloop enable developers to fine-tune models and train them on unique data to create tailored applications. The possibilities are vast and limited more by imagination than technology. Paragraph 2: Challenges using pre-trained models include hallucination and getting things confidently wrong. Humanloop helps address this by incorporating factual context into prompts. Fine-tuning also customizes tone and personality for different audiences and use cases. Paragraph 3: For developers building their first LLM app, key problems are prototyping, evaluating performance, and customizing the model. Humanloop assists with experimentation, capturing user feedback, and fine-tuning for differentiation. The goal is to accelerate development and create something users prefer over base models. Paragraph 4: Looking ahead, LLMs will augment developers initially by accelerating work. Long term, more grunt work may be automated, with developers acting more as product managers. Impact on society is uncertain but potential benefits are huge if steered carefully. Close collaboration between ethics and technology will be critical.

Title: The Hard Conversations Founders Don't Want to Have - Hard conversations are challenging but necessary for founders to have in order to get honest feedback and advice. - Founders often come to office hours having already made a decision, just seeking validation. It's better to dig into the real question behind why they want validation. - When founders have unrealistic expectations about funding or growth, it's best to get them to temper expectations while maintaining optimism. - Founders should have robust, constructive disagreements with co-founders and employees, not avoid conflict. Avoiding hard conversations builds pressure that eventually explodes. - The key is finding the right way to disagree without damaging relationships. It's a skill that takes practice. - With employees, be open to the idea that a person may not be the right fit. Good startup employees want transparency and honesty in order to impact the outcome. - The main takeaway is that avoiding hard conversations helps no one. Advisors should jump into the well with founders to help them through challenges, not pretend to have all the answers.

The Best Way To Launch Your Startup with Kat Mañalac - Launch your startup as soon as possible (ASAP) to get real user feedback. Don't spend months perfecting your launch. - Launching gives you the chance to test and refine your idea. You can iterate based on how people respond. - If no one cares about your initial launch, that's okay. Keep iterating and launch again. - Have a clear, concise 1-sentence pitch describing what your company does. Avoid marketing jargon. - Share your MVP with friends, family, online communities, and strangers to start getting feedback. - Launch continuously, not just once. Use different channels and communities to launch your product, features, etc. - Build your own engaged community and share news of your launches with them. - Don't rely on press coverage for launches. Focus on organic growth. - Keep launching, iterating and building your community. Don't give up if initial launches fail.

Title: Advantages Of A First-Time Founder Summary: - First time founders can take more risks on ideas since they have no reputation to uphold and no one to impress. They are more likely to build something they are genuinely interested in. - Second time founders often get too much expert advice from startup friends rather than talking to actual users and customers. This can slow down decision making. - First time founders experience the highs and lows more intensely which can be very motivating. For second timers, the highs aren't as high. - First time founders tend to be more resource constrained so they have to build a great product to raise funding and get users. Second timers can sometimes get lazy and rely on their reputation. - It's harder for second time founders to get honest feedback from investors and friends who want to maintain the relationship. - However, second time founders do have some advantages like financial independence and fundraising abilities for capital intensive businesses. Deep expertise in a domain can also help repeat founders. - But first timers shouldn't be discouraged - many hugely successful companies have been built by first time founders.

The Cult of Conformity in Silicon Valley In the early days of tech and startups, the people who were interested tended to be non-conformists - those who didn't want to follow the typical path of high-paying, structured jobs like finance, consulting, law, or medicine. Startups were considered very uncool, attracting only the weirdos and nerds who liked computers. Today, tech has become mainstream and conformists now want jobs at big tech companies like Facebook and Google for the status, money, structure, and leveling. CS majors have exploded not because more people want to build things, but because they see it as a path to these coveted jobs. Many conformists are also now entering startups, but are doing so to impress investors rather than to build something new. This shift leaves non-conformists without an obvious home. Places like YC aim to provide a community for people who want to build and test themselves, not play status games. Signs of a non-conformist include not caring about tech celebrity gossip, being okay with minimal structure, and believing they can learn whatever they need to accomplish their goals. The takeaway is that it's good to be a non-conformist. Surround yourself with similar people, join an early stage startup instead of a big tech company, and focus on building rather than status.

Title: Don't Make These Hiring Mistakes Summary: - Pre-product market fit startups should be cautious about hiring too quickly. Most hiring advice is for post-product market fit companies, but applying that same advice too early can accelerate failure for an early stage startup. - Founders often want to hire because they think more people will help get more done faster. However, hiring specialists too early doesn't solve the core problems a startup faces in finding product-market fit. - Hiring is not a marker of progress. Customers and investors may be impressed by headcount growth, but hiring too fast can lead to excessive burn and runway issues down the road if not done carefully. - Founders often want to hire executives too soon before product-market fit because it seems like what successful startups have. However, executive hires are often better after product-market fit when the business model is clearer. - The best founders have high hiring standards and realize managing people can be draining. Toxic hires can ruin culture and cause burnout. Limiting team size early allows founders to maintain focus. - Post product-market fit, hiring fast is advisable. Pre product-market fit, stay lean and focused. Good hiring takes experience - build those muscles later once the core business is proven.

Keys To Successful Co-Founder Relationships with Cat Li & Divya Bhat A co-founder is someone who starts a company with you, typically with at least 10% equity. Having a co-founder can help you be more productive, creative, accountable, and supported. Most successful companies have multiple founders. You can find potential co-founders among friends, classmates, colleagues, and through founder matching platforms like YC's. Meet in person if possible to get a sense of compatibility. Work on a small trial project together first. Important things to align on early: goals/values, communication styles, finances, commitment levels. Skills are less important than compatibility. Split equity equally by default. To evaluate a co-founder, have open conversations about expectations for work hours, salaries, timelines, etc. Build trust by giving them space, meeting commitments, and spending time together. Define clear roles and responsibilities. For good communication, align on expectations early. Discuss in advance things like work hours, finances, timelines to avoid issues. Build trust by trusting them first, allowing failures, and being physically together. To work well together, have regular 1-on-1s and give feedback. Don't delay hard conversations. Get a coach if needed. Avoid personal attacks and normalize failure. Ultimately, remember you share the same goal.

Founders often psych themselves out worrying about competitors, especially big companies. But competitors are likely struggling too. Success isn't zero-sum. There can be multiple winners in a market. Founders shouldn't assume competitors know something they don't. Competitors' marketing is carefully crafted to seem like they're doing great, even if the reality is very different. Founders are intimately aware of their own struggles but see competitors' exterior image. Land grab situations are overhyped. Focus on your own growth metrics, not competitors' fundraising or press. If customers aren't talking about competitors or choosing them over you, you're probably fine. Saying you have no competitors is a red flag. Understand what solutions customers currently use and why yours is better. But sometimes a competitor really does have better product-market fit. Pay attention if competitors take your own users. Structural advantages like distribution can trump product quality. But big companies often fail to build great products despite their structural edge. So build the best product you can. Great products can still win against platforms wanting to compete directly. Competitive intelligence is useful, but don't let it deflate you. Building a better product for your users is hard yet extremely powerful. Focus energy on that, not land grabs or press.

Title: The Secrets To Setting Smarter Goals - Setting goals that are too aggressive or unrealistic often leads to failure and demotivation. Goals should be challenging but achievable. - Using "fake metrics" like vanity metrics or easy-to-hit metrics prevents you from truly measuring progress. Focus on metrics that reflect real value like revenue. - Don't compare your company's goals to other companies' based on superficial similarities. Evaluate goals based on your specific context. - "Sandbagging" goals by setting easy targets can backfire when you're working for yourself instead of a big company. Stretch yourself. - Accomplishing goals by "cheating" or taking shortcuts ultimately harms you. The right way is harder but more rewarding. - Don't make excuses when you fail to reach a goal. Analyze, learn, and set a new goal. Excuses waste energy. - Stupid goals lead to stupid prizes: loss of control from raising too much money, layoffs from overhiring, lawsuits from defrauding users. - Good goal setting is a learnable skill. The best founders become extremely adept at setting and accomplishing smart, meaningful goals.

YC Group Partners often find themselves repeating the same advice to founders who have been rejected by investors. When a founder gets a "no" from an investor, they tend to overly trust the investor's expertise and the reasons given in the rejection email. However, investors rarely have deep insight into a startup's space. Their knowledge is surface level at best. Investors also have an incentive to appear confident in their opinions, even if they lack expertise. Founders shouldn't take investors' reasons for rejection as gospel. The stated reasons are often polite excuses, not the real reasons for rejection. The real reasons are more likely fundamental issues like lack of a technical co-founder, poor finances, building a non-software product, or simply lack of progress over time. Investors also often reject startups because the founder doesn't seem capable of building a large company long-term. When pitching investors, founders should take notes on feedback but not internalize rejections deeply. If founders hear the same rejection reason from multiple investors, they should consider it but not necessarily believe it. The only way to get an accurate signal is to pitch many investors. Rejections are usually because the founder doesn't fit the investor's pattern for success or doesn't rank highly compared to other founders in their pipeline. The best thing founders can do after being rejected is make concrete progress on their startup, not attempt to convince investors through words alone. Investors are most swayed by traction and progress. YC sees this often, as 60% of startups they fund were initially rejected. The key is that those founders made significant progress between applications. Overall, founders should stay confident when fundraising and focus on building their startup, not obsessing over individual investor rejections.

Title: When to Launch Your Startup and When to Wait Summary: - YC partners often have to repeat the same advice to founders: launch early and move quickly. Founders tend to delay launching because they want a "perfect" launch, but this is usually misguided. - Launching early with an MVP allows you to get real user feedback and iterate rapidly. You can launch many times - it doesn't have to be a singular precious event. - Founders are often afraid of bad reactions at launch, but playing out worst-case scenarios shows the risks are not so bad. A launch is not like the Oscars - no one may even notice at first. - There are rare exceptions like Rippling that took time to launch, but this is only advisable if you have incredibly rare domain expertise like Parker Conrad did from building Zenefits. - Most founders only know 5% of the story. Look back at early days of successful companies to see their launches were scrappy MVPs, not polished products. - The key advice is to launch early and move fast, unless you are the rare exception who has already built a very similar billion dollar business before.

How to Get Your First Customers with Gustaf Alströmer Gustaf Alströmer discusses strategies for getting your first customers when launching a startup. He emphasizes the importance of founders doing sales themselves early on rather than outsourcing it. Key takeaways: - Do Things That Don't Scale - This concept from Paul Graham is critical. You need to manually recruit customers early on, not just rely on marketing. - Founders Must Do Sales Initially - Learning sales teaches you about your customers. Don't hire a sales team until you know how to sell the product yourself. - Understand the Sales Funnel - Outreach, meetings, demos, pricing discussions, and onboarding. Use a CRM to track conversion rates. - Prioritize Your Easiest Customers First - Sell to people you know and startups. Most people are not early adopters so you need large outreach. - Charge From the Beginning - Don't offer free trials. Use money-back guarantees instead. Increase pricing until customers complain but still pay. - Work Backwards From Your Goal - Know your sales funnel conversion rates. You likely need more outreach than you expect to hit customer goals. - Transition to Scalable Growth Later - Sales, SEO, SEM, referrals etc. still require manual customer recruitment initially.

Title: Startup Business Models and Pricing with Aaron Epstein Summary: - There are 9 proven business models that nearly all billion-dollar companies use: SaaS, transactional, marketplace, hard tech, usage-based, enterprise, advertising, e-commerce, and bio. Startups should copy a proven model rather than try to reinvent the wheel. - Analysis of the top 100 YC companies shows: 31% are SaaS, 22% are transactional, 14% are marketplaces. These 3 models make up 67% of the top companies. - Marketplaces and transactional models are most likely to build huge winners because they benefit from network effects and being close to the transaction flow. - Recurring revenue models like SaaS are most likely to reach top 100 because of predictable revenue. Advertising, services, and affiliate models rarely become big winners. - On pricing, startups should charge from the beginning to test willingness to pay. Price based on customer value, not costs. Most startups undercharge at first. Pricing can be adjusted over time as more value is added. Keep pricing simple and clear.

Great founders talk to users throughout the company's lifetime to get honest feedback. Identify target users through personal/professional contacts, coworkers, LinkedIn, forums, events. Conduct video/phone interviews, build rapport, listen without introducing your idea too soon. Ask open-ended questions about problems, not solutions. Don't ask if they'll use your product or what features to add. Take thorough notes. Organize user feedback into problem categories. Formulate a hypothesis for a solution. Determine if the problem is valuable by seeing if people pay for solutions now and are unsatisfied with current options. Test your MVP prototype with users by having them use it while thinking aloud. Keep users engaged through a private Slack/WhatsApp group to preview new features. Implement their feedback quickly to build trust. Talking to users throughout the process will provide key insights to build the right product.

Title: How to Get and Evaluate Startup Ideas with Jared Friedman - The most common mistakes founders make with startup ideas are: building something that doesn't solve a real problem, getting stuck on "tar pit" ideas that seem good but are actually very hard to execute successfully, and jumping into an idea without evaluating if it would make a good business. - To evaluate if an idea is good, ask questions like: Does your team have founder-market fit? Is it a big market or rapidly growing market? How acute is the problem you're solving? Do you have competition? Do people you know personally want this? Has something changed recently to create this opportunity? Would you want to work on this idea for years? Is it a scalable business? Is it in a good "idea space"? - Ideas that seem bad but are often good: ideas that are hard to get started, ideas in a boring space, ideas with existing competitors. These are less likely to attract other founders so you face less competition. - The best way to get startup ideas is to notice them organically through your life and work. But you can also systematically generate ideas by starting with your expertise, problems you've faced, things you wish existed, changes in the world, successful companies to model, and talking to people. - The only way to truly evaluate an idea is to launch it and see if people want it. So don't overthink it - start building and testing your idea with real users.

Harj Taggar, a Y Combinator partner, provides advice for people considering starting a startup but who don't feel ready yet. He breaks down the decision into two parts - figuring out if you're suited for founding a startup, and how to prepare yourself to start one in the future. Taggar notes there's no simple test to determine if someone will be a good founder. He's seen surprising results from people who struggled or excelled at startups. The most important quality is resilience and perseverance. Confidence doesn't necessarily equate to resilience. To determine if you should start a startup, ask yourself what's the worst case scenario and if you can live with that. The experience itself is valuable learning. Consider the opportunity cost of not pursuing other career options in the short term. To prepare, seek smart people to discuss ideas with. Your co-founder often emerges from these conversations. Start turning ideas into small side projects to get experience making ideas real. Pay attention to if you enjoy the process and working with collaborators. When you find someone you really enjoy collaborating with on side projects and you both want to start a company, consider making the leap. Don't overthink your initial motivations, being curious about startups is enough. If you can handle the worst case scenario, take the risk and gain valuable experience.

Title: Avoid These Tempting Startup Ideas Dalton and Michael discuss "tar pit" startup ideas - ideas that attract founders but often lead to failure because founders don't pivot away from them quickly enough. Tar pits resemble freshwater ponds so animals are drawn to them, but get stuck in the tar and die. Similarly, tar pit startup ideas seem appealing but lead to failure. Most tar pit ideas are consumer ideas - products marketed to individual people rather than businesses. Founders often default to consumer ideas because those are the startups they know from the media. However, consumer startups have a very high bar for success. Iconic successes like Google and Facebook were instantly loved by users from day one, with no marketing needed. Timing is also key for consumer startups. It was easier to gain traction in the 2000s when the technology was new and exciting. Now, consumer startups face much more competition for people's attention. Some examples of current tar pit ideas are discovery apps to find new restaurants or events, gambling/sports betting apps, and generic social networks. These spaces seem big and underserved, but thousands of startups have failed trying to execute on these ideas. The root issue is the supply/demand imbalance. Many founders want to work on "hot" ideas like social networks that sound fun to build. But the market demand for an unproven solution is low when incumbents already exist. The best pivots move into spaces with less competition from other startups and real urgency from customers. In summary, know that tar pit ideas are alluring but risky. Do your research on the competitive bar and consider pivoting to an idea with better supply/demand characteristics to improve your odds of startup success.

Title: The Truth About Y Combinator - YC founders didn't fully understand what YC was before joining. Many thought it was just a 3-month program and didn't know about the ongoing support, hiring help, fundraising help, etc. - There are misconceptions that YC will do all the work for you. In reality, you have to do the work and YC provides resources, advice, and access. - People who criticize YC often haven't gone through the program themselves. Feedback from alums is overwhelmingly positive. - You don't need traction or revenue to get into YC. Many companies join with just an idea. YC prefers brand new startups with a clean cap table. - Fundraising through YC is very different than normal early fundraising. YC companies run an auction, set their own terms, and get inbound interest. - Before YC, founders often get bad advice or get ripped off by investors. After YC, they are shocked at how easy fundraising is. - Seeing founders in person this batch was amazing. YC has evolved a lot over the years as a "product", not a static program.

The Two Mindsets That Can Kill Your Startup Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the importance of balancing optimism and pessimism as a startup founder. Being too optimistic leads to "magical thinking" where you believe things will work out despite evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, being too pessimistic causes you to give up too quickly at the first sign of trouble. The overly pessimistic founder sees any minor setback as catastrophic. The overly optimistic founder ignores reality and believes their startup will succeed through sheer willpower. Employees suffer under both as they lose trust in leadership. Examples of magical thinking include believing a chance encounter will lead to funding, that a new hire will single-handedly solve all problems, or that following the latest fad will bring automatic success. The best founders can hold two conflicting ideas at once. They remain optimistic about the potential of their startup but pessimistic about the difficulties ahead. This "cognitive dissonance" is uncomfortable but allows them to be realistic yet motivated. In the end, balance is needed. Don't give up at the first failure but also don't ignore reality. With the right mindset, founders can thrive even in difficult circumstances.

The podcast discusses the difference between zero-sum games and positive-sum games. In a zero-sum game like gambling, one person's gain directly comes from another person's loss. The total value in the system stays the same. In contrast, positive-sum games create new value. For example, two people collaborating to build a house creates something of lasting value. The hosts reflect on how zero-sum mentalities like gambling can be addictive and exploit human tendencies. They point out that many questionable financial practices resemble gambling, like banks selling bad debt to unsuspecting customers. Overall, zero-sum practices may benefit individuals in the short-term but degrade society in the long run. The hosts advise founders and employees to focus on positive-sum games that create real value. Even in tough economies, companies solving real problems can endure. Legacy and making a positive impact matter more than short-term wins. The hosts encourage playing "the game the right way" and contributing to society's progress. In relationships and startups, look for situations where one plus one equals three. Avoid zero-sum thinking, which can trap you when markets change. The key is to build things of lasting value, not just extract value from others. Making this mindset shift can improve your life in ways you can't imagine.

- Successful founders often have good lifestyle habits that help prevent and recover from setbacks. This includes getting enough sleep, eating well, exercising, and having a supportive home environment. - Be careful about your information diet. Limit social media and news if it negatively impacts your mental state. - Set reasonable salaries and equity splits to properly motivate and compensate founders and employees. There's no one formula, use good judgment. - Learn to have hard conversations with co-founders. Different personality types handle conflict differently, have empathy. - When bad things happen, don't act immediately. Sleep on decisions. Take time off if needed. - Surround yourself with people who have healthy habits when things go wrong. Avoid unhealthy coping mechanisms. - Consider therapy and medication if clinically appropriate. Mental healthcare is destigmatized. - Not every setback is fatal. Examine the facts objectively. Know when perseverance is futile. - Failure does not mean you are a failure. Learn from the experience and bounce back.

The "midwit meme" illustrates how overthinking as a founder can be detrimental. The "naive" founder takes simple, direct action while the "midwit" gets stuck over-analyzing and trying to construct the perfect plan. Examples discussed: - Elon Musk has succeeded by starting with simple, beginner's mind ideas like trying to buy rockets from Russia or that electric cars are cool. - Don't overthink your MVP - just build and launch something quickly rather than trying to make it perfect. - For fundraising, focus on raising the amount you need rather than constructing the perfect round. - For finding a co-founder, don't get stuck on finding the perfect person - work with someone you know or who can contribute in some way. - For applying to YC, just submit the application rather than obsessively perfecting it. - You'll know when you have product-market fit based on demand, not complex metrics. However, "trap door" decisions like legal, regulatory, or health issues do require more thinking. Overall, avoid overthinking unimportant things and focus energy on core startup activities. Maintain a beginner's mindset.

The podcast discusses how software companies have used hacks and shortcuts, or "things that don't scale", to get their products to work when they didn't have time to build things the right way initially. The hosts discuss how Paul Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, used an existing Google Groups product to view his own email before building out features like writing emails and inviting other users. This "dirty hack" allowed him to launch and spread Gmail within Google before they had fully built out the infrastructure and features people expected from email. They also discuss how early Facebook launched each university on completely separate code, databases, and servers to avoid having to scale one giant database. Users would have to go to harvard.thefacebook.com versus stanford.thefacebook.com. It took Facebook years after launch to build one unified database for all users globally. Justin.tv, the precursor to Twitch, also used hacks to deal with scaling live video. They built the ability to turn high traffic pages into static pages to avoid crashing servers. They also pre-populated video streams across their video servers based on website traffic before officially launching the stream to viewers. Other examples are shared from iMeme, Friendster, Google and more. The hosts conclude that the best product decisions are often made quickly, when you just "turn on the water" and see what breaks, instead of over-engineering a perfect system. The imperfect hacks allow startups to build something users want so they eventually earn the privilege to later build more scalable systems.

Title: Mutiny on AI and the next era of company growth Guest: Jaleh Rezaei, founder and CEO of Mutiny Key Points: - Mutiny uses AI to identify ideal customers, optimize website conversion, and generate copy to turn visitors into customers. It started at YC in 2018. - Jaleh founded Mutiny based on challenges scaling customer acquisition and reducing CAC payback time at her previous company Gusto. She realized optimizing conversion was crucial. - Mutiny aims to serve as the "world's growth team" and help companies solve the conversion problem to grow more quickly. It collapses the long process of ideation, prioritization, and building into a quick no-code platform. - Mutiny has progressively leveraged AI over time to make parts of the conversion optimization process easier - from benchmarking playbooks to automated recommendations. It uses customer data to train AI like GPT-3. - When using AI as a startup, focus on solving a customer problem first rather than the technology. Think through long-term defensibility. - Mutiny acquired Intellips for its team's AI and engineering expertise to accelerate the product roadmap. Vetted thoroughly for culture fit. - AI is becoming more accessible and productized so founders can leverage it as a tool while building products they are passionate about. It will automate tedious optimization.

Why Investors (including YC) Can't Fix Your Company Dalton shares an example of an investor asking for 5-year financial projections from a pre-product/market fit startup. This shows how some investors with finance backgrounds default to money-related solutions. Investors with big company experience are great at scaling but may not understand the early stage hustle. They focus on processes and hiring but take for granted that getting any users is hard. Investors who got rich in other industries like real estate may treat startups too much like a franchise, wanting more control and stressing about losing their money. Junior investors are optimistic and encourage fundraising because they need wins quickly in their career. They don't want to look weak by admitting problems. Influencers offer promotion in exchange for equity but this rarely drives as many users as founders hope. Founders look for silver bullets when the solution is talking to users and iterating. Founders as investors give advice based heavily on their own experience. This can be limited if they've only seen one path. Extremely young investors repeat trends and advice without the experience to customize it. No one can give founders the silver bullet. The best investors point out problems, not solutions. Founders who succeed do so by believing in themselves, not blindly following any advice.

What Does It REALLY Mean To Do Things That Don't Scale The podcast discusses the concept of "doing things that don't scale" which was popularized by Paul Graham's essay in 2013. This refers to founders doing very manual, "unscalable" work in the early days of their startup instead of focusing on building scalable processes. Examples are provided such as Reddit's founders manually submitting fake content to make the site look populated and DoorDash's founders personally doing all the deliveries in the beginning. The benefits of this approach are that founders learn critical lessons, delight early users, and show commitment. It's emphasized that this stage is very difficult with no one else to rely on. Founders must embrace the "shit work" despite being made fun of. Big tech company experience can ingrain bad habits around only building scalable solutions. Maintaining motivation is critical but expectations need to be set properly. It may take years to gain traction. Criticism should be expected. The goal at first is just to get one customer, one delivery, etc. - achieving basic milestones indicates potential. Overall, doing things that don't scale means being scrappy, getting your hands dirty, and not emulating competitors' strategies.

Doing research before starting a company is critical. Many founders make the mistake of not doing enough research on previous companies and lessons learned in their space before writing code. Even just a basic Google search can uncover critical insights. It's easy to think your idea is novel when in reality similar ideas have been tried before. Just because you haven't heard of something, doesn't mean it hasn't been done. Look back through the dot-com bubble, the 2000s, 2010s for examples. Platforms change faster than human problems. You may be using new technology but often trying to solve an old problem. Study how others have tried to solve it before. Experts can provide useful information but be wary of bias. Those burned before may be overly negative while those less familiar may be overly optimistic. Get perspectives from a diverse set of experts and synthesize the information. The best founders understand the motivations and incentives of all parties involved before trying to change the world. You have to get all the little things right. Changing the world is like uprooting a tree - you have to understand the roots.

Title: Simple Products That Became Big Companies - Start with a simple product that solves one core problem really well before adding more features. Complex products with lots of broken features are infinitely worse than a simple product that works. - Don't assume product-market fit just because an idea worked somewhere else. You need to talk to local customers and iterate based on their specific needs. - Investors often fund "simple thesis" companies, but they frequently fail after raising money because they didn't achieve true product-market fit. - Hardware crowdfunding campaigns often fail because founders have no experience manufacturing and don't know the true cost and timeline. This leads to angry customers when expectations aren't met. - Taking money upfront from customers brings accountability. If you don't deliver what you promised, they will hold you accountable, often aggressively. - Focus on building a simple software product first before getting into complex hardware manufacturing. The key takeaway is to start with a basic product that solves one core customer problem really well. Don't scale or add features until you have product-market fit. Talk to local customers and be wary of assumptions based on different markets.

The podcast discusses where successful startup ideas come from, using Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe as examples. Three common themes emerge: First, timing was important. For each company, there were pre-existing competitors but an opportunity to make something 10x better. Second, most people thought the ideas were bad initially, either too difficult to execute or just bad ideas overall. Third, the opportunities turned out bigger than even the founders anticipated. With Airbnb, services like VRBO existed but had friction with payments. Airbnb solved this by facilitating payments. Most people thought renting a room in a stranger's home was unappealing. With Coinbase, buying bitcoin was difficult. Existing services were seen as sketchy or frequently hacked. Coinbase made it simple to buy bitcoin safely. But many saw bitcoin as a bubble and getting a bank to work with them seemed impossible. Stripe dramatically simplified accepting credit card payments online. Before Stripe it was difficult, time-consuming and expensive to set up. But many thought online payments were crowded and startups couldn't compete with large players like Paypal. In all three cases the founders ignored conventional wisdom and executed well to provide a dramatically better product in an area with pre-existing solutions. The markets proved larger than almost anyone anticipated. The overarching theme is successful founders often have to ignore criticism and persist despite a contrarian viewpoint.

Successful founders are willing to accept rejection and test their core hypotheses, even if it makes them feel bad. Many founders avoid talking to real users because it threatens their ego and exposes them to rejection. But customer conversations are critical for validating product ideas early on. The best salespeople focus on learning and filtering out bad prospects quickly. They ask questions upfront to disqualify customers, instead of trying to convince everyone. Founders often struggle with this because they see sales as convincing people, not rapid learning. Being a founder means dealing with unfiltered feedback from users and the market. Unlike employees who are shielded from direct criticism, founders have to embrace feeling bad regularly. But reality without filters is ultimately more rewarding. Successful founders are mentally prepared to handle rejection and direct market feedback.

Title: Don't Follow Your Passion, Find Problems to Solve - Many founders start companies around exciting new technologies without a clear problem to solve. This "solution in search of a problem" approach often fails. - Passion comes from solving real problems for real customers, not from abstract ideals. Successful founders are intrinsically motivated by the work itself. - Having paying customers and revenue creates positive feedback loops that drive passion and motivation. Focus on making money from the start. - Work on problems you care about, even if they seem uncool or niche. Solve problems you actually experience, not hypothetical global issues. - Build startups around people and relationships you enjoy, not strangers or investors. Working with friends provides intrinsic motivation. - Set up metrics like revenue goals that give you frequent positive feedback. Create motivational frameworks that push you forward every day. - Most extrinsically motivated startups fail. The weird founders solving real problems tend to succeed long-term, even if they grow slower at first.

Founders should pay as much attention to the terms of a funding deal as they do to valuation and economics. Investors can include rights and terms that disadvantage founders, even at high valuations. Investors who regularly invest in startups are more experienced at negotiations than first-time founders. Using lawyers experienced with startups can help prevent bad terms. Some investors structure deals assuming a small exit, which may not incentivize huge outcomes. International investors in particular may not have experience with billion dollar companies. Investors with a track record of big exits are more likely to optimize for large outcomes. Investors may offer a high valuation but low investment amount, forcing the founder to find additional funds. This ties up the founder without committing the investor. When investors say they want to invest alongside a lead, it often means a polite no. If the founder had a lead, other investors would likely want the whole round. As the investor landscape professionalizes, misaligned incentives emerge between founders building companies and investors selling money. Investors want founders to raise more money to hit their desired ownership targets. Smart founders understand investors have their own incentives and goals, which may not fully align. Founders should evaluate investor motivations, not blindly believe their pitches.

The Google founders still have control over the company today because they were not desperate for cash and had leverage when fundraising early on. They built traction with Google before raising any money. Facebook was also always profitable, even as just a small college network, so they never had to take poor terms in fundraising. As a founder, focus on pleasing customers, not investors. Spend 80-90% of your time talking to customers and building product. Don't see investors as teachers you have to impress to get an "A" of money. Raise only what you need, don't stockpile cash. Having too much money makes you spend it unnecessarily and bloats your company. Stay lean. Successful companies' "oxygen" comes from revenue, not fundraising. Compare yourself to companies with $100M+ revenue, not other startups. Learn from the fundraising stories of highly successful companies, not from peers who just raised at high valuations. Choose your heroes and peers wisely.

Episode Title: #159 - YC Founder Firesides Gusto on building for new verticals Key Points: - Gusto announced making it easier for software providers to integrate compliant payroll through new embedded payroll features. This allows vertical SaaS partners like restaurants and laundromats to offer payroll. - Payroll is complex with tax calculations, filings, and compliance flows. Gusto is providing the backend software, operations, and service to enable partners to build payroll products quickly. - Gusto started with startups as the initial target customer segment because they were easy to reach, had an important payroll problem, and the product solved their needs. - When expanding to SMBs, Gusto focused on maintaining customer love by ensuring the product quality was ready before expanding and listening to adjacent customer segments. - For new vertical SaaS companies, Gusto recommends going deep on a specific vertical to understand needs and build tailored products rather than horizontal solutions. - Gusto pursued developers to enable partners to build better vertical payroll products through APIs and embeddable workflows that have Gusto's compliance expertise built-in. - For embedded finance, connect the dots of a customer's full journey to provide an end-to-end solution. Focus on sustainable unit economics, not just user growth.

Title: Gusto on building for new verticals - Gusto started by serving startups in CA, iterating quickly to improve payroll and get product-market fit - They expanded to SMBs once they could maintain high customer love and solve core problems for that segment - Vertical SaaS is the next wave for SMBs; catering end-to-end for each vertical with tailored products - Gusto is now enabling developers to embed payroll via APIs, driven by their belief in vertical SaaS integration - They made the hard choice to build embedded payroll despite success in acquiring SMBs directly - For customer-focused products like payroll, quality and compliance are critical and can't be compromised - Gusto brings compliance knowledge into product development early, enabling innovation within constraints - For new verticals, focus on core product insights, quality, and the full customer experience - In embedded finance, build for end-to-end customer needs but ensure sustainable economics

The episode discusses common co-founder mistakes that can kill startups and how to avoid them. Key points: - Have a co-founder agreement in writing to avoid conflicts over equity split, vesting, etc. - Choose a co-founder you get along with rather than just someone with complementary skills, as skills can be learned but personality conflicts are hard to resolve. - Take arguments seriously - pressure test the relationship before starting a company together. Understand how your co-founder deals with stress. - If the relationship deteriorates, the CEO may need to accept breaking up is inevitable and focus on separating effectively. - Try to split equity equally to avoid conflicts. Consider giving the CEO 1 extra share to break ties. - Bring on co-founders early and build the idea together for collective ownership rather than later as an employee. - Invest in the co-founder relationship early through good communication and setting expectations to survive inevitable fights. A great co-founder can be a superpower.

Title: Dealing With Setbacks And The Startup Gut Punch Summary: - Setbacks are inevitable for startup founders. You can't avoid punches, but you can control your reaction to them. - Fundraising often leads to painful rejections. The best founders persist and learn from the experience. - Co-founder disputes can be deeply personal. Having a strong relationship helps you survive the friction. - Getting a big deal or launch often doesn't provide the success you expect. Real life is not like the movies. - Lawsuits and legal issues are common. Don't let the first angry letter make you quit. - Remember that respected founders you admire have dealt with much worse. This is just part of the game. - Do an inventory during setbacks. Assess if things are truly disastrous or if you can recover. - Your reaction sets an example for your team. Stay calm and keep perspective. - Over time you can develop resilience and get better at taking punches. This is a valuable skill well beyond startups.

The podcast episode discusses the concept of "default alive" vs "default dead" startups. A default alive startup has a high enough growth rate that it will become profitable before running out of cash, even without raising more investor money. A default dead startup will die in a few months if it does not raise more funding. The hosts explain why many founders ignore thinking about whether their startup is default alive or default dead. Founders often assume they will be able to easily raise more funding. They feel it hurts confidence to question this assumption. Also, the metrics founders use to pitch investors focus on growth, while the metrics needed to judge sustainability focus on burn rate and profitability. The hosts emphasize that most startups are default dead. Raising funding gets harder each round as the pool of possible investors shrinks. Founders should not rely on being acquired as a backup plan if fundraising fails. Acquisitions almost never happen when a startup is low on cash and close to bankruptcy. If a startup realizes it is default dead, tough decisions are required to become default alive. This usually involves cutting costs, especially by reducing headcount. Founders also need to cut advertising spending if it has a low return on investment. Finally, startups often need to raise prices, even if it means lower growth. The hosts share examples from their personal experience. One host had to have an embarrassing meeting telling employees the startup had to rapidly get profitable or die. The employees rallied, costs were cut, and revenue increased. This experience gave them time to eventually find product-market fit. The key takeaways are that startups must survive before they can thrive, and profitability should come before rapid growth. Founders are ultimately in control, not investors, and must make tough decisions to steer away from the "mountain" of bankruptcy.

Episode Title: #158 - Same, Same but Different with Vanta and Zapier Key Points: - Christina Cacioppo, co-founder of Vanta, and Wade Foster, co-founder of Zapier, both took a disciplined approach to fundraising early on. Rather than raising money to enable growth, they focused on controlling spending and growing the business efficiently. - Vanta went through YC in 2018, raised a small seed round, and bootstrapped until 2021 when they raised a $50M Series A at $10M revenue. This allowed them to achieve product-market fit without dilution. - Zapier went through YC in 2012, raised $1.3M at seed, and never raised another equity round. They focused on organic growth and achieving profitability early on. This allowed them to maintain control and avoid dilution. - Both faced hiring challenges without VC backing, especially in the Bay Area. But both found ways to attract talent by highlighting traction and opportunity. - Remote work gave Zapier a competitive edge in hiring before the pandemic leveled the playing field. Vanta started remote due to COVID but now has hubs. - Direct customer feedback was crucial for both companies to iterate towards product-market fit in the early days. This can't be short-circuited by fundraising. - In the current environment, efficient growth and positive unit economics are key. Focus on delighting customers profitably rather than investor priorities.

Many technical founders and potential founders mistakenly believe working at a FAANG company is essential before starting their own company. They think FAANG will provide unique experience working on hard technical problems at scale that can't be gained elsewhere. In reality, most FAANG jobs don't provide this type of experience. Many employees work on small parts of projects that get cancelled or unimportant features. The skills learned at FAANG don't necessarily translate to a startup. FAANG companies have engineered systems to retain employees through gamification, equity vesting schedules, and peer pressure. The equity vesting schedules incentivize staying longer so you don't lose unvested equity. Peers pressure each other to maintain expensive lifestyles. This makes it hard to save money to eventually leave and start something new. If you are deeply unhappy and dream of quitting daily, it's probably time to leave your FAANG job. For founders who take a FAANG job first, have a plan for how long you'll stay and what you want to get out of it. Avoid soul-crushing work that will make you cynical. Keep your personal spending low so you can save. Remember you can always come back if starting something new doesn't work out.

Paragraph 1: The podcast discusses how future billionaires structure their time and habits to be productive. Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel emphasize the importance of adopting tools to manage your to-do list rather than just using a notebook, as well as maximizing large blocks of uninterrupted time to work on your core tasks. Paragraph 2: They highlight the difference between a maker schedule, which involves long stretches of focused time, versus a manager schedule, which involves context switching between meetings and emails. As a founder, it's important to structure your day to allow for maker time on your critical tasks. Paragraph 3: To be productive, focus on your to-do list first before meetings and email. Stare at your key metrics constantly to internalize your progress. Schedule sales and customer outreach in long blocks of maker time. Avoid time wasting activities like social media and collecting unnecessary advisors - be "abnormally aggressive" about protecting your time. Paragraph 4: Don't try to hedge your bets across multiple options. Fully commit to your startup rather than keeping other options open. If you fail, don't view it as a true failure - be proud that you tried something ambitious. An unhedged team that commits 100% will always beat a distracted, hedging team.

Title: #157 - Diego Saez Gil - Diego Saez Gil is the co-founder of Pachama, a company that helps other companies offset their carbon emissions through verified reforestation projects. - Pachama uses remote sensing and AI to monitor and verify how much carbon is stored and captured in forest projects. This facilitates the certification process and provides transparency. - They are also building a marketplace to connect carbon offset buyers directly with forest conservation projects around the world. - Reforestation and forest conservation have huge potential for carbon removal but currently receive little funding from carbon markets. Pachama aims to help drive more funding to these nature-based solutions. - Diego has an entrepreneurial background, previously founding a mobile app for booking hostels and a smart suitcase company. He was motivated to tackle climate change after visiting the Amazon rainforest. - Investors are very interested in climate change startups, seeing it as a big opportunity. Pachama had a successful fundraising process. - Diego encourages people, especially engineers, to contribute their skills to climate change solutions whether by starting companies, joining startups, or working for organizations already active in this space.

Episode Title: #156 - Amber Atherton and Iba Masood Guests: - Amber Atherton - Founder and CEO of Zyper - Iba Masood - Co-Founder and CEO of Tara AI Key Points: - Amber and Iba both recently raised Series A rounds for their companies after going through YC. - They discuss their fundraising processes, including how long it took, how they evaluated partners, and the differences between seed and Series A. - For her Series A, Amber joined YC's dedicated Series A program which helped streamline the process. Iba's round took only 9 days start to finish. - They share advice for founders on getting in the right mindset, building confidence, and not compromising on finding the right partners. Conviction in your vision is key. - Post-fundraise, they focused on building strong teams and company culture. Don't bring senior executives on too early. - Running effective board meetings is an important new skill after raising a Series A. Leverage your board members' expertise. - Their single most important piece of advice: thoroughly vet potential partners, use backchannels, focus on fit over brand names. The individual relationship is key.

Episode Title: #155 - Laks Srini - Laks Srini is the co-founder and CTO of ZeroDown, a company that helps people buy houses with no down payment. - The idea for ZeroDown came from Laks' co-founder Abhijit, who despite having a good tech job could not afford a down payment on a house in the Bay Area. - They spent 18 months researching the mortgage industry and talking to other failed mortgage startups to understand the challenges. - To test the idea, they tried to help Abhijit buy a house through their model but ultimately started ZeroDown instead. - ZeroDown buys the house for the customer upfront, then the customer makes monthly payments. As they pay, they earn "purchase credits" equivalent to equity in the home. After 2 years they can buy the home from ZeroDown. - The company operates both a tech platform and a property investment fund to buy and hold the homes. The fund creates protections for the customers if anything happens to ZeroDown. - They focus on tech workers and others with healthy, stable incomes who can't afford a down payment. The process is fast - customers can move in within weeks. - They plan to expand to more cities soon starting with Seattle and Austin. Educating consumers on the model is a key challenge. - The team heavily focuses on customer research and feedback to improve the product experience across search, financing, services, etc. - Laks believes home ownership should be more flexible and liquid, and wants to enable more people to buy homes.

- Matt Cutts was an early employee at Google, joining in 2000 as employee #71. Google was a fast-paced startup then, with everyone working long hours and weekends. - At Google, Matt worked on projects like SafeSearch, AdWords, and leading the web spam team. He helped Google combat web spam and maintain high quality search results. - Matt stayed at Google for nearly 17 years before leaving to join the U.S. Digital Service in 2016. The USDS was created after the Healthcare.gov debacle to bring technology best practices into government. - As head of the USDS, Matt helps fix and improve critical government digital services. This ranges from short emergency projects to multi-year initiatives across agencies like VA, DOD, DHS. - The USDS brings in technical talent from the private sector for tours of service in government, usually 2-4 years. The goal is to transfer knowledge and make an impact before rotating back out. - On encryption, Matt personally believes backdoors are risky. But as a government employee, he provides technical advice and then follows the eventual policy decision. - Matt encourages tech talent interested in social impact to consider government service, whether through USDS, other agencies, or roles like the FTC tech policy job.

Title: #153 - Cory Doctorow and Joe Betts-LaCroix - Adversarial interoperability is when a company makes their product compatible with a competitor's without their permission, in order to make the competitor's customers into their own customers. Historically this has led to important innovations like cable TV and web browsers. - However, today there are more legal barriers to adversarial interoperability, like software patents, copyright law, and terms of service violations. This makes it harder for new companies to challenge tech monopolies. - Conspiracy theories may be on the rise because there is less trust in institutions and truth-seeking processes. When systems seem corrupted, people look to individuals they agree with rather than official sources. - Sci-fi writers like Cory Doctorow don't predict the future, but they explore potential futures based on society's hopes and fears about technology. This inspires real innovations. - We're at a tipping point in recognizing climate change risks. Founders should think about building tools for societal resilience and recovery, not just luxury bunkers for the elite. - Recent court decisions suggest web scraping major platforms may now be legally safer for startups. This could enable new competitors to be built.

Title: Geoff Ralston's Parting Advice for Startup Founders Y Combinator President Geoff Ralston shares parting advice for Startup School founders on grit, determination, and benevolence. He recounts stories of startups overcoming adversity like Airbnb's founders selling cereal to survive early on. Ralston advises founders to take action amidst problems, to not get sad or depressed. Build something people want, measure progress, and hire great people. Aspire to build an epic, benevolent company that does good broadly - for employees, customers, investors, and the world. Be determined and resourceful. Focus on what matters. The path to startup success is hard but fulfilling.

Ali Rowghani's Lecture on Leadership: - There is no single archetype for a great leader. Leaders come in all personalities and styles. The key is to be authentic. - However, great leaders share 3 attributes: 1) Clear communication 2) Good judgement about people 3) Integrity and commitment - The best leaders build trust in all directions - with employees, investors, customers, users, etc. Kevin Hale and Adora Cheung on Startup School 2019 By the Numbers: - Over 40,000 founders and 30,000 startups participated in Startup School 2019. - Startup School participants had a 6.6% higher chance of getting a YC interview. - 106 Startup School companies got into YC batches - many with no traction or funding yet. - The best way to replicate their success is to clearly explain what you're working on in 78 words or less. - Launching early leads to the biggest improvements in key metrics. Most Startup School participants took too long to launch. - Practicing pitching in group sessions improved founders' ability to explain their idea and excite others about it. - Talking to users, even just 3 a week, dramatically improved founder morale and happiness.

Title: #150 - Startup School Week 9 Recap - Carolynn Levy on Modern Startup Financing and Jared Friedman’s Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders Carolynn Levy's Lecture: - Early stage startup financing has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Startups now often use convertible securities like SAFEs for their first fundraising instead of priced equity rounds. - Priced equity rounds like Series A still happen but later, after using convertible instruments first. This allows startups to focus on building the company instead of spending months on financing paperwork. - SAFEs and other convertible instruments are faster, cheaper, and more flexible than priced rounds. But founders must still track dilution carefully. Jared Friedman's Lecture: - Hard tech companies require lots of time and money to build products, with uncertainty if it's even possible. But it's easier to generate interest in ambitious hard tech ideas versus traditional startups. - Common hard tech problems are needing millions to build a product and proving market demand. Smart founders find low-cost ways to make initial progress and get customer commitments. - Hard tech companies should fundraise in small increments with concrete milestones to complete before raising the next round. This approach is better than seeking a huge round upfront.

Adora Cheung's Lecture on Prioritizing Time - Time is precious when working on a startup. Prioritize tasks that will have the biggest impact on your primary KPI (key performance indicator), which is usually revenue or active users. - Focus on "real startup progress" - activities like talking to users and building/iterating your product. Avoid "fake progress" like optimizing vanity metrics. - Keep a spreadsheet of potential tasks and rank them as high/medium/low impact and easy/medium/hard complexity. Do high-impact, easy tasks first. - Review your weekly goals and updates to ensure you're making real progress. Are you learning quickly? Avoiding low-value work? Completing tasks efficiently? - Structure your schedule thoughtfully. Block time for focused work like coding versus meetings. Avoid constant context switching. - Move fast, make decisions quickly, and learn from mistakes. Speed is important. Kevin Hale's Lecture on Evaluating Startup Ideas - A startup idea is a hypothesis for fast growth based on the problem, solution, and insight. - Communicate ideas clearly and concisely. Help investors understand, get excited about, and want to work with you. - Lead with what you're making, not why/how. Be clear and reproducible. Include the key nouns - what you're making, the problem, the customer. - Use an "X for Y" model sparingly and correctly. X should be a huge success, Y should want X, and Y should be a big market. - Concision shows deep understanding of your idea and efficiency as founders. But don't sacrifice critical details. - Help investors evaluate your idea efficiently. Be clear, concise, and compelling.

Title: #148 - Startup School Week 7 Recap - Kevin Hale on Conversion Rates and Pricing Kevin Hale's first lecture on improving conversion rates: - The knowledge spectrum framework helps solve any user interface problem by closing the gap between user knowledge and target knowledge needed to use a product. - Imagine a "one button interface" and determine what information you need to put on a page to get someone to click the button. - Go through 7 key questions for each page: call to action, what is this, who is this for, is it legit, who else uses it, how much/what's the catch, where can I get help. Kevin Hale's second lecture on pricing: - Pricing optimization gives the most bang for your buck for growth, but is often neglected. Use pricing thermometer (cost, price, value) to set prices. - Early adopters care more about benefits than price, so don't underprice innovative products. Price for the right customer segment. - Do simple price testing with different prices and measure conversion, sales volume, revenue. Don't overcomplicate. - Your price point determines what acquisition strategies you can use. Higher prices allow more spending. - Use 10-5-20 rule: 10x value over price, raise prices 5% until losing 20% of deals.

Tim Brady's Lecture on Culture: - Company culture is the implicit set of behaviors that inform employees on how to act. Getting the culture right early on makes it easier to scale later. - Be proud of the problem you are solving. This gives purpose and energy to the work. - Create an inspiring long-term vision to attract the right people to your company. Don't just describe the work, talk about its purpose. - Have a conversation with your co-founder about the values and behaviors you want to cultivate. Use this as a hiring filter. - Focus the culture outwardly on customers, not just inwardly on how you treat each other. - Discuss diversity early on. Homogeneous environments are hard to change later. - Put a hiring process in place from day one and iterate on it. You want it tested before you scale up. Dalton Caldwell's Lecture on Pivoting: - Pivoting just means changing your idea, which should feel lightweight early on. Constantly iterate. - The main reason to pivot is opportunity cost - putting more time into an idea not working rather than trying something new. - Good reasons to pivot include lack of excitement, no growth, relying on external factors, and running out of ideas. - Don't pivot to avoid hard work or just because something new seems hot. See it through fully first. - To find a better idea, get excited about solving a problem and believe you can. Make your strengths align with the idea. - Launch quickly and talk to customers to get evidence for whether to pivot. Multiple quality attempts increase your odds.

Kirsty's Lecture: - Cash flow is critical for startups - know your bank balance, money coming in, and money going out. Calculate burn rate, runway, and growth rate. - Review your finances frequently - at least weekly, if not daily. Know your numbers cold. - Don't underestimate future expenses - your own time investment, hiring, paid acquisition costs. Model worst case scenarios. - Don't outsource financial oversight completely. Founders must still review reports and question anything that looks off. - Hire carefully and fire fast if needed. Optimize revenue per employee. - Get to product-market fit before scaling hiring and other expenses. - Always assume you'll never raise money again. Have a path to profitability. Start fundraising early. Kevin's Lecture: - Founders must optimize their relationship for the long-term, like a marriage. Learn from marriage research. - Divide responsibilities clearly to avoid defensiveness. Define success and failure conditions. - Know your and your co-founders' attachment styles. Tailor communication accordingly. - Have a documented process for disagreements when emotions are low. Follow it when issues arise. - Use nonviolent communication: observations not evaluations, feelings not thoughts, universal needs. - Pay down emotional debt frequently via level three conversations on goals, roles, performance.

Kat Mañalac's Lecture: - Don't think of launching as a one-time event. Launching should be an ongoing process as you continuously improve your product. - There are many types of launches you can do even before your product is ready, such as a "silent launch" with just a landing page, launching to friends and family, launching to strangers by engaging potential customers, and launching in online communities. - Launching repeatedly will help you refine your pitch, get feedback on your MVP, determine if you're targeting the right users, and start building your own community. Gustaf Alströmer's Lecture: - Focus on product-market fit and retention before growth tactics. Growth won't help if people don't want your product. - Measure retention over time as the best indicator of product-market fit. Other metrics like surveys and vanity metrics can be misleading. - Once you have product-market fit, the main growth channels are improving your product experience, paid advertising if you have revenue, SEO if you're addressing rare behaviors, and virality if applicable. - Most successful companies rely heavily on only one or two key growth channels, not all of them. - A/B testing is important at scale to make data-driven decisions, but most startups don't need to worry about it early on.

- Anu Hariharan gave a lecture on the 9 most common startup business models and key metrics investors want to see for each: 1. Enterprise - Track bookings, number of customers, and revenue. Don't confuse bookings and revenue. 2. SaaS - Track MRR, ARR, revenue churn, and CAC. Make sure you have true recurring revenue. 3. Subscription (consumer) - Track MRR, monthly growth, and unit churn. Focus on user volume metrics. 4. Transactional - Track gross transaction volume (TPV), net revenue, and user retention. Don't confuse TPV and revenue. 5. Marketplace - Track GMV, net revenue, monthly growth, and user retention. Carefully track paid CAC. 6. Ecommerce - Track monthly revenue, growth, gross margins, and CAC. Account for all costs in gross margins. 7. Advertising - Track daily and monthly active users and % logged in. Clearly define an active user. 8. Hardware - Similar to ecommerce, track revenue, growth, margins, and CAC. 9. Services - Track bookings, revenue, and number of customers. - In a Q&A, Anu and Adora discussed how investors evaluate startups. Key points: - Investors focus on team, product-market fit, and market size. Team and clarity of vision are most important early on. - Progress and learnings matter more than absolute traction. Show you can build quickly. - Remote teams are increasingly common. Execution is more important than location. - Solo founders can impress investors with their vision and ability to build a strong team. - Only raise as much money as you need to hit the next milestone. Stay focused. - For enterprise sales, show progress through pilots with early customers. - When fundraising, have a clear plan on how you will use the capital.

Michael Seibel's lecture on MVPs: - The goal of a pre-launch startup is to launch something basic quickly, get initial customers using it, get feedback from them, and then iterate based on that feedback. - Most startups should build a very lean MVP - something that can be built fast, with limited functionality, as the first thing users see. The MVP is just the starting point. - Don't get caught up in the idea of a big, perfect launch. Just focus on getting any customers using the product. Adora Cheung's lecture on KPIs: - Set one key metric as your "primary metric" that indicates if you're delivering value to customers. This is usually revenue or active users. - Set a small number of "secondary metrics" across acquisition, engagement, and monetization to get a 360 view of company health. - Growth of the primary metric week over week is key - set an ambitious but achievable goal. Ilya Volodarsky's lecture on analytics: - Use analytics to understand your acquisition, retention, and monetization funnel. Set goals on metrics for each. - Track events from your product to measure funnel metrics. Add properties to events to segment users. - Display real-time TV dashboards of metrics to drive accountability and focus.

This episode recaps the first week of Y Combinator's Startup School program. It includes condensed lectures from two YC partners, Kevin Hale and Eric Migicovsky. Kevin Hale's lecture is about evaluating startup ideas. He explains that startups aim to grow quickly, so founders need to construct a hypothesis for rapid growth. This hypothesis has three parts - the problem, the solution, and the insight. Good problems are popular, growing, urgent, expensive, mandatory, and frequent. The solution should directly address the problem rather than being a "solution in search of a problem." The insight explains why the solution will succeed. Eric Migicovsky's lecture covers how to talk to users. He stresses that founders should maintain a direct connection with users throughout their company's lifespan. The goal is to extract information, not pitch ideas. Avoid hypotheticals and focus on specifics from users' lives. Listen more than talk during interviews. He suggests five questions to ask users: about the hardest parts of their problem, the last time they encountered the problem, why it was hard, what they've done to solve it, and what they don't like about existing solutions. Talking to users is critical at the idea stage, prototype stage, and during iteration towards product-market fit. In summary, evaluating startup ideas requires identifying a growing problem, matching it with an effective solution, and having an insight about the solution's advantage. User interviews should extract specifics about real experiences rather than pitches or hypotheticals, in order to drive development and growth.

Title: #141 - Diana Hu - Diana Hu co-founded Escher Reality, an augmented reality (AR) startup that went through YC in 2017. Escher Reality was acquired by Niantic, so she now leads their AR platform. - AR brings together many disciplines like computer vision, graphics, systems engineering, hardware, and optics. Diana has experience across these areas. - AR is currently in the "installation" phase - building the core infrastructure so future AR applications can be built. Games like Pokémon GO are helping drive this installation phase. - Key technology trends like improved mobile components, more efficient processors, and faster wireless data are enabling consumer AR. 5G in particular will provide huge bandwidth improvements. - As an AR startup founder, focus on core infrastructure over applications for now. Find investors who believe in the long-term vision. - Escher Reality showed early AR demos (like AR Pong) to generate excitement. The YC brand helped them raise funding. - After being acquired by Niantic, Diana has been focused on integrating cultures and learning new skills for hypergrowth. She feels like a Niantic employee now. - Diana immigrated from Chile to the US for high school. She crunched to catch up academically and graduated college early. Her immigrant experience gives her a unique perspective. - For YC founders - use the batch to focus, get seed funding, and build relationships. Do high-leverage activities big companies wouldn't.

- When fundraising, focus completely on building your product and getting early customers for a set period of time, then switch to fundraising mode. Trying to do both simultaneously is ineffective. - When reaching out to investors, send short, customized emails showing your progress and traction. Ask for a specific meeting or ask to discuss an investment. Avoid big attachments unless requested. - Schedule investor meetings in rapid succession, like during a demo day period. This allows you to pitch multiple investors at once before they can spread negative impressions. - Tell investors a story of how you will rewrite the future and capture a huge market, not just solve a specific problem. Show a believable path from your current traction to an ambitious vision. - When evaluating seed investors, understand their incentives based on where their money comes from. Be wary of undisclosed LPs or backers. - For Series A, build relationships with target investors over time. Share limited metrics and progress to remain a “Schrödinger's cat” they want to keep engaging. - After demo day, remember most of your startup journey is still ahead. Don't get complacent or despondent based on short term outcomes. - Consider the tradeoffs between startup success and personal/family life. Balance and sacrifice will be required at some point. Talk to others for advice.

#139 - Jay Reno Jay Reno is the founder and CEO of Feather, a furniture subscription service that was part of the Y Combinator summer 2017 batch. Feather allows people to subscribe to furniture rather than buying it outright. Jay started Feather after realizing people, including himself, were constantly moving and needing new furniture that fit their new spaces. He also saw a problem with furniture waste as people buy cheap disposable furniture when moving, only to throw it out and buy new furniture at their next place. Jay first tested the idea by building a simple MVP website with a few pieces of furniture. He took orders from friends and delivered the first pieces of furniture himself. This validated that people were interested in furniture subscription versus buying. Originally called Rent Feather, Jay later tweaked the model and messaging to be more of a flexible subscription where payments go towards ownership, but people can return items anytime. This change from "rental" to "subscription" improved the business. Since going through YC and raising funding, Jay has focused on respecting the logistics and operations side of the business. He's built software and processes to make the complex furniture delivery and pickups work smoothly across Feather's markets. Jay has also had to balance his skills with new management skills as the company grew. He's focused on providing vision and support to his team leads, while also driving the business forward. Overall, Jay has loved building Feather into a real business that provides value to customers by giving them flexibility and reducing waste.

Episode Title: #138 - Russ Roberts - Russ Roberts discussed the non-financial motivations that founders often have, such as wanting recognition from their parents or making a mark on the world. He said this desire for meaning goes beyond just making money. - On the topic of measuring wellbeing, Roberts said focusing only on quantifiable metrics can cause you to forget about important non-quantifiable factors like dignity. Surveys about happiness tell you about survey responses, not necessarily about true wellbeing. - Roberts emphasized the importance of unintended consequences and asking "and then what?" when considering policies or actions. Thinking through indirect effects is crucial. - He explained how our emotional attachment to things we create, like companies, makes it hard to let go of control. But founders often have to hand their "baby" over to someone new, which is difficult. - Roberts talked about his goal with the book How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life - to highlight the overlooked wisdom in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments and apply it to modern life. A key insight is that we desire not only to be loved, but to be lovely. - When asked what he worships, Roberts said his religious faith helps him cope with life's mysteries. He also worships human striving, creativity, and dignity in the face of suffering. Appreciating the drama of the human experience moves him.

The podcast is a preview of the Startup School podcast, featuring a lecture by Kevin Hale on how to evaluate startup ideas. A startup is designed to grow very quickly. Investors are interested in evidence that shows a startup can grow quickly. Startup ideas have three components: 1. The Problem - What are the initial conditions that allow fast growth? Good problems are popular, growing, urgent, expensive, mandatory, and frequent. 2. The Solution - Don't start with the solution first. Start with the problem. Figure out the problem people have and use whatever is necessary to solve it. 3. The Insight - What is your unfair advantage that will make you grow faster than others? Types of advantages include founder expertise, market growth, 10x better product, free acquisition channels, and monopolistic properties. To evaluate an idea, go through these components and look for holes. Figure out what you need to prove and work on to make your startup grow quickly. The idea is a hypothesis that needs validation.

Title: #136 - Anu Hariharan on Managing a Board - Managing a board can be anxiety-provoking for founders, especially when forming a board for the first time after a Series A round. - Typical board composition before Series A is just the founders. After Series A, the investor who leads the round joins the board as an outside director. As the company raises more rounds, more investors join the board. - Closer to IPO, independent board members are added for industry expertise and to form required committees. At IPO, board expands to 7-9 people. - Many founders now add a deeply trusted independent board member earlier, around Series B, to provide honest feedback as the company scales. - Ideal board meeting has structured agenda, with only brief time on status update. Main focus should be 1-2 strategic topics where the board's input is sought. - Bringing in executives for portions of the meeting can be valuable, but also good to have time for closed session with just the board. - Conflicting opinions are good - the board is there to push thinking, not just agree. CEO makes final decisions and important to clearly explain rationale. - If there is an unproductive board member, first give them constructive feedback. If no change, work with other board members or escalate within VC firm for potential replacement. - Look for trust, fundraising/M&A capabilities, network for hiring, and strategic thinking as core traits in long-term board members. Industry expertise can be added later or through advisors.

- Transitioning from an IC to a manager is a big change. It's important for new managers to get comfortable with management routines like 1-on-1s. Having regular 1-on-1s builds trust and helps surface issues early. - A common mistake for new managers is trying to solve problems by jumping in and writing code themselves. It's better to take a step back, see the bigger picture, and unblock the team in other ways. - Another mistake is avoiding dealing with interpersonal issues on the team. These won't go away on their own and it's a manager's job to address them. - New managers often feel overwhelmed with responsibility. It's important to learn to delegate, drop non-essential tasks, and ask for help when needed. - To stay technical as a manager, have technical IC friends to talk to, review designs and docs, and ask good questions. You don't need to write code yourself. - Good management requires leadership skills - providing clarity, vision, and getting people to follow you. But not all leadership roles require management. - Giving specific, thoughtful praise and creating opportunities for peer recognition helps motivate teams. Understand how individual team members like to be praised. - Promoting shared cultural values and addressing mismatches directly helps teams with different backgrounds gel. Make clear what behaviors are expected.

Episode Title: #134 - Sarah Nahm and Holly Liu Guests: Sarah Nahm (CEO and co-founder of Lever) and Holly Liu (visiting partner at YC) Key Points: - Sarah grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and was the first person from her high school to go to college west of the Mississippi in years when she went to Stanford. She didn't see herself becoming a founder initially. - After college, Sarah got a job at Google through a serendipitous signup sheet and ended up becoming a speechwriter for Marissa Mayer. This gave her experience creating something from nothing and figuring things out on the fly. - Sarah left Google not to start a company but to gain more experience. She worked with several early stage teams including her Lever co-founders before officially founding Lever. - Lever focuses on modern recruiting software. The idea came from seeing that companies were limited by their ability to hire talent. Sarah saw knowledge work eating the world. - Lever struggled at first to find product-market fit, but kept focused on listening to customers and holding themselves accountable to users. This led them to pivot. - Lever fundraised their Series A in October 2014 after proving traction and team fit. Sarah became CEO shortly before closing the round. - Lever took an offsite to design their hiring process and think about their candidate experience before scaling hiring after the Series A. - Lever is proactive about recruiting, going beyond networks to meetups, Eventbrite, GitHub etc. The key is building relationships over time. - Lever focuses on motivation fit in early interviews to understand candidates' career goals and patterns of success/failure. - Job descriptions at Lever focus on impact in the role rather than tasks/requirements. This attracts top talent and is more inclusive. - On remote hiring, Lever benefited from staying together early on to build culture fast but is now experimenting with more distributed teams. - Lever has worked to build an inclusive culture from the start, before having a diverse team. This meant addressing issues like equitable dish duties. - Management coaching and leveraging employee resource groups are some of the structural things Lever does to foster inclusion. - Sarah's advice to startups in the YC batch is to recognize your culture is your people. Invest in recruiting and building your team.

Episode Title: #133 - Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale Summary: - Kevin Hale provides updates on Startup School 2019, including: - Shorter 20 minute lecture videos focused on practical, tactical advice - Helping single founders connect and find co-founders through group matching and meetups - Hosting meetups in 18 cities around the world so international founders can meet partners - Focusing content on evaluating and developing ideas for early stage founders - Signups open until July 22nd, program starts in late July - In office hours, Kevin discusses: - Getting to product-market fit through excellent customer service and word of mouth - Finding opportunities in unsexy markets with big potential - Being frugal and not overspending on growth experiments - Vetting co-founders like dating partners through small tests of working together - The keys for Startup School success are completing weekly updates, practicing pitches in group sessions, and having an open mindset to learn and get better.