21 ms·

YC’s Essential Startup Advice

825 points by craigcannon 9y ago

mwseibel 9y ago
Geoff and I are happy to answer questions in the comment thread. Our goal was to condense the advice we most often give to early stage founders. (Much of this advice was also given to me when I went through YC)
- jacquesm 9y ago
  The first two links are both 'do things that don't scale', is that correct or did you mean to link to something else in the first link? Also, unexplained reference to 'PB', Phineas Barnum or Paul Buchheit?
abalone 9y ago
> 007 – formidable (need this) What does this mean?
- daveguy 9y ago
  Second this question. This is the only place "007" or "formidable" shows up in the article. Also, no reference to James Bond in the article. Is need this a reference to needing to add it to the article or a statement that you absolutely must have it?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Quite a few loose ends in that piece.
  - beat 9y ago
    Launch early and iterate!
- snowmaker 9y ago
  We should edit the blog post to make this clear - thank you for pointing it out. But for the record, it refers to a piece of advice we sometimes give, to "become the 007 version of yourself". James Bond is always competent, cool, collected; even in the face of everything blowing up. Since as a founder, things are constantly going wrong, it can be helpful to think about remaining as calm as James Bond would be.
urs2102 9y ago
The term "launch early" can often get blurred. Dropbox famously had a landing page, and then a video, and then iterated to a product. Is Dropbox considered a product that "launched early", despite them waiting to receive feedback on a video before building software? Additionally, what tracks better: a good screencast or a bad useable demo (I imagine a good demo is obviously better than a good screencast)? Otherwise, great list, and thank you for putting it together.
- asah 9y ago
  "launch early" = MVP = no "gold plating" = the VERY least product that will get people to use the product __regularly__ (not just try it once).
- nathan_f77 9y ago
  This is really scary to think about when you're days or weeks away from launching an MVP. I'm building a service for developers. I really want to polish the design and get the UX perfect, and have really good documentation and client libraries for various languages. But I think I can launch without those. I really just need to record a screencast and get a demo online. But wow, the struggle is real. I really don't want to launch it yet.
  - urs2102 9y ago
    I was just curious on how other people think this through. It's a question I love hearing feedback on from other hackers who are building things to solve problems. A useful way I like to think about the MVP is : "if I removed everything, what's the last thing I could possibly remove without the solution no longer addressing the problem?" I try to stop just before that line. That being said, it's always easier said than done. DM me on Twitter/I just followed you! I'd love to try out your product when you're ready!
gnicholas 9y ago
> We often say that a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you. In other words, recruiting 10 customers who have a burning problem is much better than 1000 customers who have a passing annoyance. How does the possibility of being pigeon-holed affect this calculus, especially where stigmas are at play? My startup's technology is life-changing for many people with dyslexia or ADHD, but is also well-used by skilled readers (for whom it is augmentive, but not life-changing). If I focus exclusively on the accessibility community, many people who come across our website will be turned off by words like "dyslexia", and will assume that our technology isn't for them because they read well already. How do you suggest startups navigate these waters when there is a chance of being pigeon-holed in a way that evokes stigma?
- quaunaut 9y ago
  I'm not an expert, grain of salt, etc. But to me, this is the responsibility of different funnels. Have your most generic marketing info- your landing page, etc- apply to just about anyone, but make your resources that reach out to the accessibility community target them exclusively. They won't be offended/disturbed when they see that you can be used more generically, and if it's truly solving a need for them they'll sign up generally based on your targeted outreach anyway.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    We are actually in the process of redesigning our website (currently a single page) to have a generic landing page and three silos. This allows us to refer to educational/accessibility benefits when speaking to one audience and speed-reading benefits when talking to other audiences. Thanks for reaffirming this change, which we've poured a lot of time into!
pasharayan 9y ago
Thanks for this write-up mwseibel & Geoff! A question: What's the best way to keep ourselves accountable to the tasks of "talking to users", "do things that don't scale" and "writing code" every week? We write a weekly report, and set milestones to go for each week - but it doesn't feel like these things focus us our attention as well as they could be.
- quaunaut 9y ago
  It's the hardest part. Discipline. It requires creating your own system and constant reevaluation- every milestone/meeting should begin and end with how this is related to figuring out product/market fit. If possible, this is the general way milestones should be structured: 1. Who is this for? Be as specific as possible. At first this might even be someone's name. As you start solving their problems, they'll ask for more and you'll naturally start targeting others through those features. 2. What's the easiest way to solve this problem today? Do it that way. You shouldn't be saving them 30 seconds a day, and actually doing what they're doing now will help you realize the difference between an annoying thing and a real need. 3. From here, what your proposed solution really is. Make sure you really figure out what they want- don't just do what they say, try to get to the root of what they're asking for. 4. How you're going to go back, show it to them, and see how much they clamor for it. See how it changes their plans, schedules, etc. While going through this multiple times you'll probably even get mistaken customers. In this case, make sure you meet with them to just figure out what the hell is going on. They might be using it in a way you didn't realize and should maybe pivot toward- Segment is a good example of how there might be a big business right next to the problem you're solving today.
jacquesm 9y ago
This article looks a little rushed. > By the way, it is vital to remember that the money you raise IS NOT your money. But it isn't the investors money either. It is yours to allocate as you see fit but keep in mind that you should always do it to benefit the company and the shareholders. Beware of backseat driving shareholders or suppliers of convertible notes and other instruments of lending that then want to tell you how to spend their investment/loan (or even with whom), and never agree to spend all or part of an investment with a company allied with one of your investors. You are in charge, you decide. And beyond that, keep a good eye on your shareholders agreement which could very well place limits on the kind of things you can do with the money you raise, many of those have clauses which can severely constrain your ability to run your business such as being forbidden to move the company (even just to larger offices), hiring of C-level execs and other bits like that. So make sure you fully realize the consequences of entering into a shareholders agreement and do not fold too easily on 'standard clauses' that you feel will cramp your ability to run the company as you see fit.
- starshadowx2 9y ago
  i think the idea is that it's not your money, but the companies money. Like, it's not meant for you to spend on a new car or something. The next line, "You have a fiduciary and ethical/moral duty to spend the money only to improve the prospects of your company." seems to agree with this perspective.
- mceoin 9y ago
  There have been enough failed startups with hot tubs that this advice may seem heavy-handed, but necessary in hindsight.
  - mattmanser 9y ago
    Whatever happened to caveat emptor? Does it only apply to the plebs and not investors? Investors claiming that founders have some sort of moral obligation to spend money wisely is laughable. Otherwise a good article, but no idea how that bit of strange perspective ended up in there.
npgatech 9y ago
I am looking for startup advice for founders that don't want to build a billion-dollar company or need VC funding. How to efficiently target a local market? Or perhaps start a niche business that appeals to a small market. Every time I see a startup advice book, article, Stanford lectures, whatever it may be - it is always shooting for becoming the next Uber or Airbnb - including this article.
- uncle_d 9y ago
  Perhaps look at something B2B rather than consumer-facing, is the advice I have seen - along the lines of that advice in the YC piece that it's better to have 10 customers that love you (and are spending much more) than 1000 that are lukewarm and/or not spending much.
- Mz 9y ago
  https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/business-bootstrappers https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/business-bootstrap... I mostly post links to seemingly pertinent things from HN, but the intent is along the lines of what you describe.
- KZeillmann 9y ago
  Check out the Indie Hackers podcast (and website). It's made for exactly what you're looking for. Courtland Allen interviews founders who are excited about making $20k a month in MRR, and they don't necessarily need to become a $1 billion company. Most of the people featured are bootstrapped or had only a little bit of funding.
  - craigcannon 9y ago
    Yeah. Courtland was also on the YC podcast recently - http://blog.ycombinator.com/your-whole-goal-is-to-not-quit-courtland-allen-of-indie-hackers/ http://blog.ycombinator.com/your-whole-goal-is-to-not-quit-c...
- lpolovets 9y ago
  One of my friends runs a few small SaaS businesses in parallel. He really likes a conference called MicroConf (http://www.microconf.com/ http://www.microconf.com/) which focuses on bootstrapped businesses. That might be something to check out if you can make it. One book that's great, regardless of what scale of company you're trying to build, is Traction by Weinberg and Mares. It talks about how to pick marketing channels for getting traction + includes an introductory section on each of two dozen popular marketing channels. Very useful if you're trying to get traction for your product and not sure where to start. Finally, a lot of startup advice should apply to companies more broadly: focus on building something people want; it's better to have 100 customers that love you than to have 10k customers that like you; do things that don't scale at the beginning; etc.
uncle_d 9y ago
Any advice for people who would like to found their own company, but aren't sure what it should do?
- ladybro 9y ago
  Solve a problem that you or people around you have. I know It's frustrating to hear that over and over again, but you have to actively keep your eyes open to the inefficiencies around you ("live in the future") and eventually you'll discover a problem that needs solving. PG's essay on this is a good one that helped me choose what to work on: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
  - icebraining 9y ago
    My problem is that the people around me have no money to pay for the solution. How do you get around that?
    - Mz 9y ago
      That probably isn't literally true. If you come up with a solution that is worth more to them than the cost to them, people will find the money. And if it is literally true, then you look at uncoupling monetization from the end point user. There are a number of ways to do that. Historically, TV was supported by ads. Viewers bought TVs, but broadcast stations did not directly charge viewers for watching TV. Instead, they broadcast for free, but included ads. It is another layer of complication, but it isn't outright a charity model. Plenty of for profit businesses have a less direct monetization strategy than simply charging the end user for their use of it.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        If you come up with a solution that is worth more to them than the cost to them, people will find the money. Yes, that is true. Unfortunately, that essentially means competing with the things that cost them currently, and that's mostly rent and basic utilities, which are heavily regulated markets dominated by state-supported companies. You could sell to them, but then it's no longer "solve the problems of people around you" but solve the problems of huge corporations, which is quite different. You're still right, it's just a discouraging prospect. Plenty of for profit businesses have a less direct monetization strategy than simply charging the end user for their use of it. That's also very true. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with ads, since I dislike the concept, but recognize that I and many others who couldn't afford online services have greatly benefited from the redistributive effects of ads. Still, I wouldn't use them as my revenue source. Unfortunately, except for ads and a fremium model, I don't see many ways to do this decoupling.
mbesto 9y ago
Here's my Essential Startup Advice: Whenever someone gives you free advice (i.e. you don't directly pay them cash) try to understand the motivation to give you free advice. That should give you an idea of whether the advice is valuable or not.
- geoff 9y ago
  This is actually reasonable advice. For clarity: our motivation is because we want to see more successful startups in the world. We also believe and hope that some of those startups will be funded by YC.
  - Macsenour 9y ago
    Would you agree or disagree that YC looks for high value potential more than just a successful start up? I'm thinking of the top post here and that's prompting my question.
CalChris 9y ago
My brother and I were talking last night. We talked about mechanics, operations, for a VC fundable startup: Delaware C vs LLC IP assignment 83b election Xero Opening a Silicon Valley Bank account Capital One credit card vs SVB I don’t understand why YC or freaking Haas never walks people through startup best practices, especially in an ‘Essential’ guide.
- adpirz 9y ago
  Second this. Can anyone reference a guide that works through the logistics of actually starting up?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    I've written this, years ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mountain https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo... And just about forever I've had a kind of owners manual in draft for bootstrapping a startup but I lack the time to complete it, way too much on the go :(. That's a nice indication of how much time and effort go into bootstrapping a company.
  - wpennington 9y ago
    As phonon mentioned, Clerky is a service that can help with incorporation. Another service that is more comprehensive would be Stripe Atlas, which helps with everything from incorporation to setting up a SVB bank account to helping with tax issues and AWS credits. You also get access to the Atlas Forum and network of founders and advisors. https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas If you're not into the service, they still have a nice guide on the process here - https://stripe.com/atlas/guide https://stripe.com/atlas/guide EDIT/UPDATE: Worth mentioning that Clerky offers certain legal services beyond incorporation (e.g., hiring/on-boarding and fundraising). Didn't mean to imply that incorporation is their sole product, but rather was speaking w.r.t. the topic of basic startup mechanics mentioned by the parent. https://www.clerky.com/ https://www.clerky.com/
    - jjeaff 9y ago
jefferson123 9y ago
Does YC have enough time perspective to be truly convinced these principles actually hold? The only example in article is Airbnb, which is obviously an outlier. How well has this doctrine been working?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  It works well enough if the numbers are large enough from an investors point of view. It may very well be sub-optimal when looked at from the position of an individual company. This is un-avoidable, any kind of start-up advice will always be a distillate from experience across a portfolio and hence will maximize the chances for the holders of portfolios, not for the holders of stock in a single company.
  - geoff 9y ago
    This might be true if this were the sort of advice that argued that startups should always swing for the fences, or always take unreasonable risks, in the hopes that a portfolio of such startups will result in one or more big winners. In fact, this is not the case. Our advice is intended to increase the chances that every startup that follows it will be successful. Like any advice, you can surely find counterexamples where the advice will not be a good fit, but we would argue those cases are rare.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      I think your YC bias is blinding you to the vast arena of companies different than those that would normally apply to YC. So it is more along the lines of 'YC essential start-up advices for the kind of companies that would apply to YC'. Not for start-ups in general. • Launch now This works, if your product is something that is trivial or extremely easy to manufacture. Many products are not at all like that. • Build something people want Which you may only find out during the iterating process. • Do things that don’t scale That depends. Almost all of the examples in the article are from companies that eventually scaled very well, and the 'do things that don't scale' advice is only applicable to some specific examples that held true in extremely narrow domains. For the most part start-ups are trying to find each and every kink in the machine to automate it as soon as they can so they can stay lean while growing. I'd change it to 'do things that don't scale and then find a way to scale them anyway'. The first part is just to get a feel for the problem space, the next is where you will end up making or breaking the company. • Find the 90 / 10 solution The Pareto Principle at work, can't disagree with that in any way, it is good advice no matter what the context. Perfection can wait. • Find 10-100 customers who love your product Some very successful companies have only 3 or 4 customers, you'd never hear of them because they are not sexy in any way but they are critical and usually have a lock in on their customers that most start-ups can only dream of. • All startups are badly broken at some point I'd change that to 'Almost all companies are badly broken in some way'. This is after looking at many of them over the years. That doesn't mean they can not function, merely that almost every company that I've ever looked at had one or more pretty serious defects. • Write code – talk to users Not all start-ups revolve around writing code, in fact the best of them when it comes to 'changing the world' probably do not. • “It’s not your money” See comment elsewhere, it's not yours either, it is the company's money. • Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor Growth by itself should not be a goal, and in many cases growth would be a problem. I've written this before, if growth was good then cancer would be good. So if you grow fine but be in control and aware of what parameters drive that growth and don't be afraid to step on the brake if it looks as if your growth is going to outstrip your capacity to deal with it. • Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want Sensible advice, regardless of what kind of company you run. Could be generalized to: "do not fall for the premature optimization trap". • Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success I can't make much sense of company valuations in general and start-ups in particular, but I do know that even if the relationship does not hold in one direction, there does seem to be strong correlation between success in numbers and valuation. • Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can That 'if you can' is instrumental, anything involving enterprise sales is going to have that element. • Avoid big company corporate development queries – they will only waste time True, but they are sometimes also ways to bankroll the company without dilution. I've seen a couple of successes happen this way and it seems like an elegant way to grow a company. • Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers Agreed. Never went to a conference that I liked or that felt like time spent well. • Pre-product market fit – do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble Remaining small and nimble is good advice at any stage. VCs that push you to increase your headcount should be avoided at all cost. • Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time Strong agreement there, this goes for almost all the businesses I've looked at. I'd even consider a start-up that tries to solve more than one thing at the time as being more at risk than any of their competitors solving only one of those. You'd have to be very good at everything in order to change along more than one axis in more than an incremental fashion. • Founder relationships matter more than you think Again, strong agree. I've seen more start-ups tank or lose momentum because of founder issues than for any other reason or set of reasons combined. • Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you) But don't do it too early, make sure you drop them when you can afford to. • Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder That depends, there is one situation where being unaware of your competitors can be costly: If one of your competitors has picked up funding and they enter your market with a price war or giveaway when you are still selling your product. This makes keeping a cursory eye on your competitors a good investment as long as it does not occupy you or one of your colleagues more than an hour or so in a month. It can also help to keep you 'feature complete' in the eyes of potential customers if you are going head-to-head in the same market, as well as to stay informed about their pricing and models. • Most companies don’t die because they run out of money I disagree with this one, not sure what your reason behind writing that so definitively was, but in fact the majority of companies dying are due to bankruptcy. • Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk Agreed. In the same line: don't burn your bridges. • Get sleep and exercise – take care of yourself That's good advice for everybody including those people that do not work on start-ups. Thanks for posting all this by the way.
venantius 9y ago
What is your position on attacking regulated industries that require significant up-front capital (e.g. banking)? Domains like these face significant chicken-or-egg problems - you need financing in order to legally attack the problem, but without actually being in the market it's difficult to raise financing. YC seems invested in encouraging companies like these, but their domain necessitates a different approach than a traditional technology company.
ballenf 9y ago
When is it ok to outsource/offshore some/all of the software development?
- mwseibel 9y ago
  It’s often not good to do this
  - ballenf 9y ago
    Thanks. Any recommended reading on this?
- jpm_sd 9y ago
  When the software is not that important to the success of your startup. So, not most of the time.
- phonon 9y ago
  "outsource/offshore" or hire remotely?
asah 9y ago
great advice! esp "a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you" I'd add some additional qualification: "Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success" ==> capital-intensive businesses require suitable valuation Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder ==> yes, and!!! competitors are good: they help build awareness among customers, investors, etc. "Write code – talk to users" ==> for enterprise products, also talk to a few customers / decision-makers. If nothing else, make sure your fans have access to budget.
- alvis 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, I am wondering if entrepreneurs really worry too much on their competitors. Often I find articles saying the opposite -- they urge people not having a blind eye on their competition so that they can at least differentiate themselves from competition, lest that they're making another me-too product.
alvis 9y ago
"Do things that don’t scale" -- The essential of the essential IMHO. Intuitively, it sounds nonsense. After all, who what to build an unscalable business. But having been working on my super early stage startup for a while, I realise this is the biggest wisdom I gain during the process. Sometimes I feel stressed on spending too much time on things like manually solving problems for my potential customers and even helping my once potential co-founder, who now formed another startup of his own, with his problems. But now looking back, the time I spend is not in vain. I gained lots of hand-on experience on what things do and don't work. Not to mention, valuable feedbacks and friendship are something I think I won't get it if I focus on something otherwise.
Bretts89 9y ago
If anyone is interested I'm building an edtech startup which streams college classes. We have a a few courses from Stanford done in partnership with Y Combinator on building startups: https://www.podiumedu.com https://www.podiumedu.com
fragsworth 9y ago
I take major issue with this: > By the way, it is vital to remember that the money you raise IS NOT your money. You have a fiduciary and ethical/moral duty to spend the money only to improve the prospects of your company. I think this is unethical. YCombinator is taking advantage of a lot of founders by discouraging them from paying themselves a reasonable salary with the money they raise. There is a lot of confusion about this issue, mostly because YCombinator founders are young and naive, and they think because they own most of their company that they should be working for free the entire time, and can spend years trying to make their company work while eating through what little savings they have. That's not the case. Founders should be doing one of the following: 1) You should pay yourself a reasonable salary with the money you raise. 2) Otherwise you should be diluting the investors over time by the amount you are getting underpaid.
- csomar 9y ago
  I think you just need to be reasonable person. If you raised $250k and you pay yourself a salary of $150k, it is not acceptable. If you raised a $30million round, then it is.
  - fragsworth 9y ago
    Well, if you could be earning $150k at any other company, and you are only paying yourself $50k at yours, then you should be earning an additional $100k/year worth of shares over time to dilute the investors. You are investing that missing $100k. And you're missing the main point that many of these founders simply aren't getting paid at all, because they think it is unethical to do so with someone else's money. The original article is exacerbating this problem.
    - rgrieselhuber 9y ago
      This is a bit naive. I can sympathize but it's just not how things work. Nobody is forcing you to start a company and the equity you're building and convinced investors buy into should be your main focus. That being said, I do believe in founders paying themselves a liveable salary.
thinbeige 9y ago
> launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product. Yes, yes and yes. But this is so easy said but still a struggle and need to be put into perspective. Let's say we do a super simple business, eg a resume writing service on scale (just for the sake of having a simple example). To be ready to reach out to first customers we need to... - Setup a landing page, takes ten minutes with Squarespace but to get all the copy and visuals right or least good enough for some first testing, min one day, rather three to five - Setup and prefill all social media channels, should take half a day incl getting the first 25 likes in order to save the name - Create the first ads and iterate to some ads which actually convert at good CTRs/CPCs take multiple days because you need to let a campaign run at least for one day; so lets assume another five days So just to test this stupid-simple agency business properly we need already two weeks. Now imagine, you do something a bit more sophisticated, an actual app/SaaS/game/bot/whatever, you still need minimum two weeks for the 'Marketing' stuff before plus the time for the actual app. And being mediocre doesn't work in highly competitive markets. So, if you are able to (1) build a first testable thing in 2-4 weeks you are very good. And you are even better if (2) you have the power and positivity to do 12 tests per year because you need more than one shot.
- briandear 9y ago
  I agree so much! My little company does mental health practice management and communications yet it’s incredible hard to “start small” because your being judged against all the incumbents. Even if you have some clever tech (we do,) nobody wants to use it if you don’t at least compare somewhat to the existing competition. If I were building photo sharing in 2006, maybe that small, sloppy and iterative approach would work great, but when you’re taking on entrenched incumbents, it’s hard, especially in a space related to health. I guess you could build one feature and be really great at it, but users are rarely shopping for that specific feature, especially if it’s novel and they don’t realize they need it yet.
  - erispoe 9y ago
    > it’s incredible hard to “start small” because your being judged against all the incumbents Then you're probably addressing the wrong market. I found _The Innovator's Solution_[1] by Clayton Christensen pretty useful to understand that. You want to address a market that is underserved or not served at all by the existing big players. Often, it's by providing a service that is much simpler, much less powerful, but cheaper and/or more accessible than the existing solutions. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1422196577 https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaini...
CM30 9y ago
This is especially relevant if you're trying to setup a social networking site: > Many startup advisors persuade startups to scale way too early. This will require the building of technology and processes to support that scaling, which, if premature, will be a waste of time and effort. I see all these social media services started up by folks who've spent weeks coding fancy platforms hosted on cloud services with a whole team of engineers on standby with all the best graphics design work money can buy... While no one's actually using the service. Best to focus on the community and getting people using it than the tech stack. No point trying to make a super complicated site that scale to Facebook levels when you've got about a hundred people actually posting on it.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
  I have leaned towards scaling too early in the past too and I think there’s a tendency to do that for professional software developers turned founders because that’s the expectation we have when interviewing for a corporate role. It’s hard to unlearn.
- TACIXAT 9y ago
  I totally did this. I got my stuff up on AWS with a Cassandra backend. I launched that site and realized how silly it was. My mentality has definitely shifted to build something simple and get users.
jorgemf 9y ago
> Get sleep and exercise – take care of yourself This should be the first advice, how are you going to take care of something if you don't take care of yourself first?
moron4hire 9y ago
I am always disappointed at the lack of effort put into discussing what "launch early" really means. For example, let's say you're making a Word Processor[0]. Surely, putting up nothing more than a download page where people can Stripe their $10 for a copy is not sufficient. There must be a lot more to the story, because there are a lot of projects that have done just that and have gone nowhere. It's always made to sound like you can "just launch now". But there must be some sort of apparatus in place to promote the product and take advantage of the attention given to the product. Constructing this apparatus must be a significant undertaking, or else more people would do it. So one can't "just" launch. There is still significant work to do up front, it just might not necessarily be programming of your product. [0] Just for example. Call it, "consumer-oriented software", rather than any sort of SaaS or open-source library or any other sort of software offering.
- nathan_f77 9y ago
  I agree that it's certainly possible to launch too early, especially if your product doesn't exist, or it's full of bugs and unusable. But this is still good advice for me. I'm just about to launch a service, and I think I've already gone way beyond "MVP" status. I was even planning on doing a big redesign of the whole product, but now I've decided not to do that, because it works fine as it is. I could easily keep working on this product for another 6 months before I was comfortable launching it, but now I think I'm going to set a deadline for early next week, and only work on the most important things.
  - staticelf 9y ago
    What is the product? You should always link to your product if possible when you're talking about it. It got me interested even if I just want to take a look.
ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
One area I’d love to be discussed/expanded further in another post is about techniques around taking to users. Even getting people who have signed up or are existing customers to talk to you is surprisingly difficult. There are probably pearls of wisdom to share in this area. Taking and listening to customers is so important but with the noise nowadays I find it’s harder to get them taking, even as I say they’re already using the product.
neerkumar 9y ago
I never find advice on how to grow when your customers are heavily competing with each other and, therefore, they are very unlikely to recommend your product no matter how much they love you. I feel this is a very common situation and I never heard YC talk about how to deal with it.
- danieltillett 9y ago
  We have a similar situation where our customers actively prevent us even mentioning that they use our products. It is a grind.
shamino 9y ago
For people just coming out of college, the advice given by YC might seem very "groundbreaking". But honestly, these are not new ideas. I listened to Sam's lectures at Stanford, and listened to Brian Tracy's business books, and they are the same advice. Not to hate on YC, but I just wanted to keep it 100.
- mwseibel 9y ago
  Let’s be clear the goal wasn’t to break new ground in fact it’s the opposite. To condense all the accumulated pieces of advice that we give in one place and provide links to dive deeper if needed.
  - shamino 9y ago
    I agree you are trying to do that with this post. But YC startup information sometimes markets itself as knowing what others don't know when it comes to growing a business, and say they know best since they've seen so many startups in their cohorts. It comes across as revolutionary ideas, even if those words aren't exactly used.
    - shamino 9y ago
      For instance, all your reference links are to yourselves. Are there no data points outside your own findings that could be useful ?
- TACIXAT 9y ago
  Even if it is not groundbreaking, people need to learn it somewhere. I've learned a ton from YC posts. Maybe they are things that people running businesses already know, but that is not me. I may look at an application and say it is not innovative technology, but if they are solving someone's problem and making money it is hard to argue with it. YC is definitely educating people who don't know these things and in that sense, the information is very insightful.
- dzonga 9y ago
  The guys at Basecamp have preaching this stuff for years.
jtmarmon 9y ago
This is a bit of a meta question but I've found that I've almost never learned anything from reading posts like this. I've scanned them over and nodded in agreement, only to make the mistakes I've been warned against and then I finally understand what people were telling me all these years. Does YC have an approach on how to actually get founders to take advice to heart instead of just understanding at a surface level?
- adventured 9y ago
  > Does YC have an approach on how to actually get founders to take advice to heart instead of just understanding at a surface level? I've been building Internet companies non-stop since the mid 1990s. The only means I've seen or personally experienced to accomplish that, is personal suffering (only half joking). That is to say, going through it for yourself. The difference between book knowledge and hands on experience. Taking a punch to the gut (so to speak) provides an intimate, emotional, personal lesson in a way that reading about taking a punch to the gut simply never can. Your brain subconsciously makes a special effort to take note (forms of pain learning mechanisms) and ingrain lessons that it will not (and I would argue, can't) from reading about it alone. It's almost like something getting etched into your DNA, versus just having a surface tattoo. When you actually go through it, you acquire a kind of automated discipline (courtesy of said pain) that you can't have just from reading or being told; children and pets learn the same way from touching hot things.
  - dyarosla 9y ago
    I imagine that the best thing to extrapolate from this is to learn from your own failures, but make those punches hurt only a little. So that if you mess up, you can still move on. Advisors could say what things to avoid, but then offer a path of- but if you don't want to listen to me, try this (small) experiment to see what happens.
    - adventured 9y ago
      The kind of advice that you pick up from articles like those routinely linked here on HN, in my opinion, can help you limit mistakes slightly and can help you learn slightly faster; basically, improve the outcomes somewhat. It probably also compounds nicely with actual experience, as reinforcement. I don't think there's any good substitute for doing, as a means to learn how to do start-ups, and more broadly understanding how companies should operate. That naturally includes working for other successful companies first for a couple of years, which is a tremendous way to learn as much as possible about the fundamentals of how companies run before striking out on your own.
alyhuss 9y ago
On YouTube, "How To Start A Startup" has a list of videos that talks about various stages a startup will encounter. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg
pascalxus 9y ago
Great post: I especially like the description he gave: "find customers who have their hair on fire". If anyone wants to solve the Satiety problem, I'd be willing to bet there's millions if not billions of people with their hair on fire with that problem!
graycat 9y ago
That seems like a lot of excellent advice except in cases where "it depends" and the advice is not good or some other advice would be better. > If we invest in you, your group is expected to move to the Bay Area for January--March 2018. You can of course leave afterward if you want, but it's a good place for a startup to be. IMHO it's a horrible place to be, way too expensive, and anyone not really wealthy should get the heck out ASAP. It's the state of Governor Moonbeam and the district of Nasty Nancy, "The San Francisco Treat". > we expect you to work out of wherever you find to live. I agree with that. IIRC, some places there can be zoning and insurance issues operating a business out of residential housing. > At each dinner we'll invite an expert in some aspect of startups to speak. Biggie problem: For the startups that are really wanted, eventually worth $10+ billion, there are not many experts from the past and many fewer for the next dozen such in the future. Indeed, for the next $10+ billion startups, a guess is that they will be different from last $10+ billion startups, mostly need to be something quite new in some of problems solved, technology used, market, and customers served. Then the new stuff might be from field crossing and not from what is in Silicon Valley or computer science now. > Most successful startups change their idea substantially. Not very good news. > The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have funded many of them now. But notice the advice > It turns out most companies fail fast because founders fall out. Right. And the obvious solution is to be a sole, solo founder where > We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, For > Make something people want. Yes, but at first, nearly no one knew they wanted a telephone, a Ford Model-T, a PC, Google, or Facebook. > the guidance below will help most startups find their path to success But "most startups" will be at most a minor success. So far we get another Google only about once each ten years. So, the advice that works for "most startups" doesn't have to work for the next Google or even the next 10 startups worth $10+ billion. > The first thing we always tell founders is to launch their product right away; That is good advice for some startups, but for other startups there is the issue of "You only get one chance to make a good first impression." > ... for the simple reason that this is the only way to fully understand customers’ problems and whether the product meets their needs. Again, that's good advice for some startups, but we would hope that the situation was: (A) The startup has picked a problem currently solved at best poorly where it is totally, 100%, completely utterly clear that the first good, a much better, or an excellent solution will just thrill enough users/customers with enough revenue per each to make a really successful business. The great example would be a cheap, safe, effective one pill taken once to cure any cancer. Believe me, once someone has such a cancer pill, no way will they then be out talking to customers for feedback about, say, the color (white or yellow) or shape (round, oval) of the pill. Instead, as soon as that pill is known to exist, desperate customers will literally be banging on the doors to get one. (B) The challenge is not at all having the first good solution thrill the users/customers but just being able actually to construct that solution. That is, as for that cancer pill, the reason there is no solution now is that so far no one has been able to find one. So, the solution will need something new, some secret sauce in some important respects too difficult for others to discover. Then hide the secret sauce, say, in a server farm, with good security. > Surprisingly, launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product. Sure. And "The perfect can be the enemy of the very good." But the > talking to customers and iterating is not very good for all startups. > Once launched, we suggest founders do things that don’t scale (Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham1). Okay, but how did that little photography experiment lead to "a vibrant marketplace"? Maybe you are saying that the photography experiment said that pictures are important. Then the scalable, production version was to tell the AirBnB associates that they needed to hire an okay or better photographer to take pictures, e.g., much as in the experiment. > Talking to users usually yields a long, complicated list of features to build. Maybe. But Google has hardly changed their home page in years. > a 100% solution that takes ages to build. Creating unique, powerful, valuable, crucial core "secret sauce" is, say, some applied math research, and that by the right person commonly can be done in hours, days, or weeks. Then write the darned code, dirt simple code, and go for it. E.g., I worked out the main parts of my Ph.D. dissertation research in my head in an airplane ride. The resulting dissertation had some nice improvements but was always well within what I first worked out. This "ages to build" stuff suggests finding another problem to solve. > As companies begin to grow there are often tons of potential distractions. By far the worst I found was contacting VCs. I'll never do that again. It'd be better to start a grass mowing service than trying to get equity funding. Besides, now, for an information technology startup based on software, the computing hardware, software infrastructure, and Internet data rates are so cheap that a solo founder, with a good startup selection, can bring his work to the traction equity funders want that will put him into nice profitability and ability to grow just from retained earnings. The equity funders are asking for too much: By the time a solo founder has what the equity funders want, that founder will no longer need, want, or accept an equity check. > chasing after press coverage That can be one of the most important sources of publicity and users/customers. Remember: You want your story told, and the press desperately wants a story to tell. > the most important tasks for an early stage company are to write code and talk to users. That's true for some startups, but such a startup is usually going to be in a sad situation. Instead, the founders should already have a good problem to solve. By the time the customers see the good alpha test, the company should be in quite good shape with very little more code to write until, say, much bigger scale is needed. > For any company, software or otherwise, this means that in order to make something people want: You must launch something, talk to your users to see if it serves their needs, and then take their feedback and iterate. This advice can hold for some companies, but not all. Instead, some startups have already selected a good problem and found a good solution. > These tasks should occupy almost all of your time/focus. For great companies this cycle never ends. Again, Google has hardly changed their home page in years. > Similarly, as your company evolves there will be many times where founders are forced to choose between multiple directions for their company. Again, Google has hardly changed their home page in years. > When it comes to customers most founders don’t realize that they get to choose customers as much as customers get to choose them. We often say that a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you. Sometimes, yes. E.g., does an auto company go for the Rolls Royce, Mercedes, BMW, Chevy SUV, Ford F-150, etc. market? > YC is sometimes criticized for pushing companies to grow at all costs, but in fact we push companies to talk to their users, build what they want, and iterate quickly. That talking and iterating stuff only works for some startups. > It is very difficult as a new startup founder not to obsess about competition, actual and potential. It turns out that spending any time worrying about your competitors is nearly always a very bad idea. We like to say that startup companies always die of suicide not murder. There will come a time when competitive dynamics are intensely important to the success or failure of your company, but it is highly unlikely to be true in the first year or two. Again, that doesn't apply to all startups, but it's good news, and I can believe it often applies. > A few words on fund raising (A Guide to Seed Fund raising by Geoff Ralston9). The first, best bit of advice is to raise money as quickly as possible and then get back to work. Better advice: (A) Pick a problem and solution so that you, as a solo founder, won't need equity funding. (B) If you contact 20 VC firms and don't get a check, then give up on VC at least for a while. (C) Do "get back to work". > It turns out most companies fail fast because founders fall out. So, as above, be a solo founder. So, pick a pair of a problem and good solution that you as a solo founder can bring to nice profitability alone without equity funding.
pbiggar 9y ago
I think this advice is great, but the wording they use causes people to miss the point. Specifically the word "launch". You don't need to have a big marketing launch, you don't need to do ads, you just need to get it in front of customers and validate your business by whatever means you can (whether checking whether consumers come back or asking people to pay, or whatever). The struggle is that people think "oh, this needs Slack-level design" or 'just another feature', but if they thought of it not as "launch" but instead "put this in front of customers now and get feedback", it would be more obvious that this was a good thing.
johnrob 9y ago
I found a typo: "copy written" should be "copyrighted".
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ilaksh 9y ago
All great advice, but realize that you cannot just do one or two of them, or incorrectly execute some of them, and expect to be successful. For example, you cannot take the 'imperfect MVP' and 'iterate quickly' advice as an excuse for poor testing and ignore the part about a narrow focus or listening to customers. I will admit that I have worked on several projects where something like this was the case. It may just be that some of the projects I have worked on have not been so great (because it is much easier to get those contracts), or maybe this is common -- but what I have seen is startups or dev teams that are iterating quickly on programs that fundamentally do not work or cause their users great frustration. Part of the problem is that people often underestimate the technical difficulty (or perhaps almost infeasibility in some cases) of certain features or impracticality of some UX, etc. The user frustration one was a government contract so the users couldn't switch to another program. What happened was we built a program for utility workers that required a ton of data entry in the field. Due to slow loading screens or just a ton of extraneous fields or an issue of keeping laptops clean or something else, it was impractical, so they switched to doing data entry in the office on based on paper forms. And then someone decided to give all of those forms to one poor lady in the office. One day I was permitted to visit, and found that due to some bugs we had not been told about and the sheer volume of work, the lady was literally going insane. They were still iterating quickly and adding tons of features on that project when I left. Here is an example where a project manager may have been using something like the idea of an imperfect MVP as an incorrect rationale for perhaps not evaluating core functionality carefully enough. The product was a home server device. A core feature that was supposedly complete when I came onto the project was a relay/proxy system that would allow multiple connections to come into this device through one port while it was behind NAT. Or something close to that -- it was a few years ago so I don't remember perfectly. But I was initially given the task of working on some lighting animation and only coincidentally discovered that this proxying system and other core networking was not even close to working. I did eventually get a multiplexing thing working for it but they never delivered the system to the initial customer so it was never fully tested. On another project, it started out as another case of an 'MVP' that actually didn't do the thing it was supposed to do. It mostly did it most of the time, but due to the nature of the project, without an automatic way to detect and correct the 5% of cases where it didn't work, it could not possibly make any significant amount of money. So when I came on, I wasted quite a bit of time trying to make this supposedly already working MVP work, but it had been 'iterated on quickly' and had unmaintainable code and no tests, so I ended up rewriting it.
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Naushad 9y ago
Matches with a lot of practical thoughts shared by dhh and jason in "Re-work"
- staticelf 9y ago
  I really, really loved that book. It resonates so well with how I think and view the world.

825 points by craigcannon 9y ago

Geoff and I are happy to answer questions in the comment thread. Our goal was to condense the advice we most often give to early stage founders. (Much of this advice was also given to me when I went through YC)

jacquesm 9y ago
The first two links are both 'do things that don't scale', is that correct or did you mean to link to something else in the first link? Also, unexplained reference to 'PB', Phineas Barnum or Paul Buchheit?

abalone 9y ago

> 007 – formidable (need this) What does this mean?

daveguy 9y ago
Second this question. This is the only place "007" or "formidable" shows up in the article. Also, no reference to James Bond in the article. Is need this a reference to needing to add it to the article or a statement that you absolutely must have it?
jacquesm 9y ago
Quite a few loose ends in that piece.
- beat 9y ago
  Launch early and iterate!
snowmaker 9y ago
We should edit the blog post to make this clear - thank you for pointing it out. But for the record, it refers to a piece of advice we sometimes give, to "become the 007 version of yourself". James Bond is always competent, cool, collected; even in the face of everything blowing up. Since as a founder, things are constantly going wrong, it can be helpful to think about remaining as calm as James Bond would be.

urs2102 9y ago

The term "launch early" can often get blurred. Dropbox famously had a landing page, and then a video, and then iterated to a product. Is Dropbox considered a product that "launched early", despite them waiting to receive feedback on a video before building software? Additionally, what tracks better: a good screencast or a bad useable demo (I imagine a good demo is obviously better than a good screencast)? Otherwise, great list, and thank you for putting it together.

asah 9y ago
"launch early" = MVP = no "gold plating" = the VERY least product that will get people to use the product __regularly__ (not just try it once).
nathan_f77 9y ago
This is really scary to think about when you're days or weeks away from launching an MVP. I'm building a service for developers. I really want to polish the design and get the UX perfect, and have really good documentation and client libraries for various languages. But I think I can launch without those. I really just need to record a screencast and get a demo online. But wow, the struggle is real. I really don't want to launch it yet.
- urs2102 9y ago
  I was just curious on how other people think this through. It's a question I love hearing feedback on from other hackers who are building things to solve problems. A useful way I like to think about the MVP is : "if I removed everything, what's the last thing I could possibly remove without the solution no longer addressing the problem?" I try to stop just before that line. That being said, it's always easier said than done. DM me on Twitter/I just followed you! I'd love to try out your product when you're ready!

gnicholas 9y ago

> We often say that a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you. In other words, recruiting 10 customers who have a burning problem is much better than 1000 customers who have a passing annoyance. How does the possibility of being pigeon-holed affect this calculus, especially where stigmas are at play? My startup's technology is life-changing for many people with dyslexia or ADHD, but is also well-used by skilled readers (for whom it is augmentive, but not life-changing). If I focus exclusively on the accessibility community, many people who come across our website will be turned off by words like "dyslexia", and will assume that our technology isn't for them because they read well already. How do you suggest startups navigate these waters when there is a chance of being pigeon-holed in a way that evokes stigma?

quaunaut 9y ago
I'm not an expert, grain of salt, etc. But to me, this is the responsibility of different funnels. Have your most generic marketing info- your landing page, etc- apply to just about anyone, but make your resources that reach out to the accessibility community target them exclusively. They won't be offended/disturbed when they see that you can be used more generically, and if it's truly solving a need for them they'll sign up generally based on your targeted outreach anyway.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  We are actually in the process of redesigning our website (currently a single page) to have a generic landing page and three silos. This allows us to refer to educational/accessibility benefits when speaking to one audience and speed-reading benefits when talking to other audiences. Thanks for reaffirming this change, which we've poured a lot of time into!

pasharayan 9y ago

Thanks for this write-up mwseibel & Geoff! A question: What's the best way to keep ourselves accountable to the tasks of "talking to users", "do things that don't scale" and "writing code" every week? We write a weekly report, and set milestones to go for each week - but it doesn't feel like these things focus us our attention as well as they could be.

quaunaut 9y ago
It's the hardest part. Discipline. It requires creating your own system and constant reevaluation- every milestone/meeting should begin and end with how this is related to figuring out product/market fit. If possible, this is the general way milestones should be structured: 1. Who is this for? Be as specific as possible. At first this might even be someone's name. As you start solving their problems, they'll ask for more and you'll naturally start targeting others through those features. 2. What's the easiest way to solve this problem today? Do it that way. You shouldn't be saving them 30 seconds a day, and actually doing what they're doing now will help you realize the difference between an annoying thing and a real need. 3. From here, what your proposed solution really is. Make sure you really figure out what they want- don't just do what they say, try to get to the root of what they're asking for. 4. How you're going to go back, show it to them, and see how much they clamor for it. See how it changes their plans, schedules, etc. While going through this multiple times you'll probably even get mistaken customers. In this case, make sure you meet with them to just figure out what the hell is going on. They might be using it in a way you didn't realize and should maybe pivot toward- Segment is a good example of how there might be a big business right next to the problem you're solving today.

jacquesm 9y ago

This article looks a little rushed. > By the way, it is vital to remember that the money you raise IS NOT your money. But it isn't the investors money either. It is yours to allocate as you see fit but keep in mind that you should always do it to benefit the company and the shareholders. Beware of backseat driving shareholders or suppliers of convertible notes and other instruments of lending that then want to tell you how to spend their investment/loan (or even with whom), and never agree to spend all or part of an investment with a company allied with one of your investors. You are in charge, you decide. And beyond that, keep a good eye on your shareholders agreement which could very well place limits on the kind of things you can do with the money you raise, many of those have clauses which can severely constrain your ability to run your business such as being forbidden to move the company (even just to larger offices), hiring of C-level execs and other bits like that. So make sure you fully realize the consequences of entering into a shareholders agreement and do not fold too easily on 'standard clauses' that you feel will cramp your ability to run the company as you see fit.

starshadowx2 9y ago
i think the idea is that it's not your money, but the companies money. Like, it's not meant for you to spend on a new car or something. The next line, "You have a fiduciary and ethical/moral duty to spend the money only to improve the prospects of your company." seems to agree with this perspective.
mceoin 9y ago
There have been enough failed startups with hot tubs that this advice may seem heavy-handed, but necessary in hindsight.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  Whatever happened to caveat emptor? Does it only apply to the plebs and not investors? Investors claiming that founders have some sort of moral obligation to spend money wisely is laughable. Otherwise a good article, but no idea how that bit of strange perspective ended up in there.

npgatech 9y ago

I am looking for startup advice for founders that don't want to build a billion-dollar company or need VC funding. How to efficiently target a local market? Or perhaps start a niche business that appeals to a small market. Every time I see a startup advice book, article, Stanford lectures, whatever it may be - it is always shooting for becoming the next Uber or Airbnb - including this article.

uncle_d 9y ago
Perhaps look at something B2B rather than consumer-facing, is the advice I have seen - along the lines of that advice in the YC piece that it's better to have 10 customers that love you (and are spending much more) than 1000 that are lukewarm and/or not spending much.
Mz 9y ago
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/business-bootstrappers https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/business-bootstrap... I mostly post links to seemingly pertinent things from HN, but the intent is along the lines of what you describe.
KZeillmann 9y ago
Check out the Indie Hackers podcast (and website). It's made for exactly what you're looking for. Courtland Allen interviews founders who are excited about making $20k a month in MRR, and they don't necessarily need to become a $1 billion company. Most of the people featured are bootstrapped or had only a little bit of funding.
- craigcannon 9y ago
  Yeah. Courtland was also on the YC podcast recently - http://blog.ycombinator.com/your-whole-goal-is-to-not-quit-courtland-allen-of-indie-hackers/ http://blog.ycombinator.com/your-whole-goal-is-to-not-quit-c...
lpolovets 9y ago
One of my friends runs a few small SaaS businesses in parallel. He really likes a conference called MicroConf (http://www.microconf.com/ http://www.microconf.com/) which focuses on bootstrapped businesses. That might be something to check out if you can make it. One book that's great, regardless of what scale of company you're trying to build, is Traction by Weinberg and Mares. It talks about how to pick marketing channels for getting traction + includes an introductory section on each of two dozen popular marketing channels. Very useful if you're trying to get traction for your product and not sure where to start. Finally, a lot of startup advice should apply to companies more broadly: focus on building something people want; it's better to have 100 customers that love you than to have 10k customers that like you; do things that don't scale at the beginning; etc.

uncle_d 9y ago

Any advice for people who would like to found their own company, but aren't sure what it should do?

ladybro 9y ago
Solve a problem that you or people around you have. I know It's frustrating to hear that over and over again, but you have to actively keep your eyes open to the inefficiencies around you ("live in the future") and eventually you'll discover a problem that needs solving. PG's essay on this is a good one that helped me choose what to work on: http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
- icebraining 9y ago
  My problem is that the people around me have no money to pay for the solution. How do you get around that?
  - Mz 9y ago
    That probably isn't literally true. If you come up with a solution that is worth more to them than the cost to them, people will find the money. And if it is literally true, then you look at uncoupling monetization from the end point user. There are a number of ways to do that. Historically, TV was supported by ads. Viewers bought TVs, but broadcast stations did not directly charge viewers for watching TV. Instead, they broadcast for free, but included ads. It is another layer of complication, but it isn't outright a charity model. Plenty of for profit businesses have a less direct monetization strategy than simply charging the end user for their use of it.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      If you come up with a solution that is worth more to them than the cost to them, people will find the money. Yes, that is true. Unfortunately, that essentially means competing with the things that cost them currently, and that's mostly rent and basic utilities, which are heavily regulated markets dominated by state-supported companies. You could sell to them, but then it's no longer "solve the problems of people around you" but solve the problems of huge corporations, which is quite different. You're still right, it's just a discouraging prospect. Plenty of for profit businesses have a less direct monetization strategy than simply charging the end user for their use of it. That's also very true. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with ads, since I dislike the concept, but recognize that I and many others who couldn't afford online services have greatly benefited from the redistributive effects of ads. Still, I wouldn't use them as my revenue source. Unfortunately, except for ads and a fremium model, I don't see many ways to do this decoupling.

mbesto 9y ago

Here's my Essential Startup Advice: Whenever someone gives you free advice (i.e. you don't directly pay them cash) try to understand the motivation to give you free advice. That should give you an idea of whether the advice is valuable or not.

geoff 9y ago
This is actually reasonable advice. For clarity: our motivation is because we want to see more successful startups in the world. We also believe and hope that some of those startups will be funded by YC.
- Macsenour 9y ago
  Would you agree or disagree that YC looks for high value potential more than just a successful start up? I'm thinking of the top post here and that's prompting my question.

CalChris 9y ago

My brother and I were talking last night. We talked about mechanics, operations, for a VC fundable startup: Delaware C vs LLC IP assignment 83b election Xero Opening a Silicon Valley Bank account Capital One credit card vs SVB I don’t understand why YC or freaking Haas never walks people through startup best practices, especially in an ‘Essential’ guide.

adpirz 9y ago
Second this. Can anyone reference a guide that works through the logistics of actually starting up?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I've written this, years ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mountain https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo... And just about forever I've had a kind of owners manual in draft for bootstrapping a startup but I lack the time to complete it, way too much on the go :(. That's a nice indication of how much time and effort go into bootstrapping a company.
- wpennington 9y ago
  As phonon mentioned, Clerky is a service that can help with incorporation. Another service that is more comprehensive would be Stripe Atlas, which helps with everything from incorporation to setting up a SVB bank account to helping with tax issues and AWS credits. You also get access to the Atlas Forum and network of founders and advisors. https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas If you're not into the service, they still have a nice guide on the process here - https://stripe.com/atlas/guide https://stripe.com/atlas/guide EDIT/UPDATE: Worth mentioning that Clerky offers certain legal services beyond incorporation (e.g., hiring/on-boarding and fundraising). Didn't mean to imply that incorporation is their sole product, but rather was speaking w.r.t. the topic of basic startup mechanics mentioned by the parent. https://www.clerky.com/ https://www.clerky.com/
  - jjeaff 9y ago

jefferson123 9y ago

Does YC have enough time perspective to be truly convinced these principles actually hold? The only example in article is Airbnb, which is obviously an outlier. How well has this doctrine been working?

jacquesm 9y ago
It works well enough if the numbers are large enough from an investors point of view. It may very well be sub-optimal when looked at from the position of an individual company. This is un-avoidable, any kind of start-up advice will always be a distillate from experience across a portfolio and hence will maximize the chances for the holders of portfolios, not for the holders of stock in a single company.
- geoff 9y ago
  This might be true if this were the sort of advice that argued that startups should always swing for the fences, or always take unreasonable risks, in the hopes that a portfolio of such startups will result in one or more big winners. In fact, this is not the case. Our advice is intended to increase the chances that every startup that follows it will be successful. Like any advice, you can surely find counterexamples where the advice will not be a good fit, but we would argue those cases are rare.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    I think your YC bias is blinding you to the vast arena of companies different than those that would normally apply to YC. So it is more along the lines of 'YC essential start-up advices for the kind of companies that would apply to YC'. Not for start-ups in general. • Launch now This works, if your product is something that is trivial or extremely easy to manufacture. Many products are not at all like that. • Build something people want Which you may only find out during the iterating process. • Do things that don’t scale That depends. Almost all of the examples in the article are from companies that eventually scaled very well, and the 'do things that don't scale' advice is only applicable to some specific examples that held true in extremely narrow domains. For the most part start-ups are trying to find each and every kink in the machine to automate it as soon as they can so they can stay lean while growing. I'd change it to 'do things that don't scale and then find a way to scale them anyway'. The first part is just to get a feel for the problem space, the next is where you will end up making or breaking the company. • Find the 90 / 10 solution The Pareto Principle at work, can't disagree with that in any way, it is good advice no matter what the context. Perfection can wait. • Find 10-100 customers who love your product Some very successful companies have only 3 or 4 customers, you'd never hear of them because they are not sexy in any way but they are critical and usually have a lock in on their customers that most start-ups can only dream of. • All startups are badly broken at some point I'd change that to 'Almost all companies are badly broken in some way'. This is after looking at many of them over the years. That doesn't mean they can not function, merely that almost every company that I've ever looked at had one or more pretty serious defects. • Write code – talk to users Not all start-ups revolve around writing code, in fact the best of them when it comes to 'changing the world' probably do not. • “It’s not your money” See comment elsewhere, it's not yours either, it is the company's money. • Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor Growth by itself should not be a goal, and in many cases growth would be a problem. I've written this before, if growth was good then cancer would be good. So if you grow fine but be in control and aware of what parameters drive that growth and don't be afraid to step on the brake if it looks as if your growth is going to outstrip your capacity to deal with it. • Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want Sensible advice, regardless of what kind of company you run. Could be generalized to: "do not fall for the premature optimization trap". • Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success I can't make much sense of company valuations in general and start-ups in particular, but I do know that even if the relationship does not hold in one direction, there does seem to be strong correlation between success in numbers and valuation. • Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can That 'if you can' is instrumental, anything involving enterprise sales is going to have that element. • Avoid big company corporate development queries – they will only waste time True, but they are sometimes also ways to bankroll the company without dilution. I've seen a couple of successes happen this way and it seems like an elegant way to grow a company. • Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers Agreed. Never went to a conference that I liked or that felt like time spent well. • Pre-product market fit – do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble Remaining small and nimble is good advice at any stage. VCs that push you to increase your headcount should be avoided at all cost. • Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time Strong agreement there, this goes for almost all the businesses I've looked at. I'd even consider a start-up that tries to solve more than one thing at the time as being more at risk than any of their competitors solving only one of those. You'd have to be very good at everything in order to change along more than one axis in more than an incremental fashion. • Founder relationships matter more than you think Again, strong agree. I've seen more start-ups tank or lose momentum because of founder issues than for any other reason or set of reasons combined. • Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you) But don't do it too early, make sure you drop them when you can afford to. • Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder That depends, there is one situation where being unaware of your competitors can be costly: If one of your competitors has picked up funding and they enter your market with a price war or giveaway when you are still selling your product. This makes keeping a cursory eye on your competitors a good investment as long as it does not occupy you or one of your colleagues more than an hour or so in a month. It can also help to keep you 'feature complete' in the eyes of potential customers if you are going head-to-head in the same market, as well as to stay informed about their pricing and models. • Most companies don’t die because they run out of money I disagree with this one, not sure what your reason behind writing that so definitively was, but in fact the majority of companies dying are due to bankruptcy. • Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk Agreed. In the same line: don't burn your bridges. • Get sleep and exercise – take care of yourself That's good advice for everybody including those people that do not work on start-ups. Thanks for posting all this by the way.

venantius 9y ago

What is your position on attacking regulated industries that require significant up-front capital (e.g. banking)? Domains like these face significant chicken-or-egg problems - you need financing in order to legally attack the problem, but without actually being in the market it's difficult to raise financing. YC seems invested in encouraging companies like these, but their domain necessitates a different approach than a traditional technology company.

ballenf 9y ago

When is it ok to outsource/offshore some/all of the software development?

mwseibel 9y ago
It’s often not good to do this
- ballenf 9y ago
  Thanks. Any recommended reading on this?
jpm_sd 9y ago
When the software is not that important to the success of your startup. So, not most of the time.
phonon 9y ago
"outsource/offshore" or hire remotely?

asah 9y ago

great advice! esp "a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you" I'd add some additional qualification: "Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success" ==> capital-intensive businesses require suitable valuation Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder ==> yes, and!!! competitors are good: they help build awareness among customers, investors, etc. "Write code – talk to users" ==> for enterprise products, also talk to a few customers / decision-makers. If nothing else, make sure your fans have access to budget.

alvis 9y ago
Out of curiosity, I am wondering if entrepreneurs really worry too much on their competitors. Often I find articles saying the opposite -- they urge people not having a blind eye on their competition so that they can at least differentiate themselves from competition, lest that they're making another me-too product.

alvis 9y ago

"Do things that don’t scale" -- The essential of the essential IMHO. Intuitively, it sounds nonsense. After all, who what to build an unscalable business. But having been working on my super early stage startup for a while, I realise this is the biggest wisdom I gain during the process. Sometimes I feel stressed on spending too much time on things like manually solving problems for my potential customers and even helping my once potential co-founder, who now formed another startup of his own, with his problems. But now looking back, the time I spend is not in vain. I gained lots of hand-on experience on what things do and don't work. Not to mention, valuable feedbacks and friendship are something I think I won't get it if I focus on something otherwise.

Bretts89 9y ago

If anyone is interested I'm building an edtech startup which streams college classes. We have a a few courses from Stanford done in partnership with Y Combinator on building startups: https://www.podiumedu.com https://www.podiumedu.com

fragsworth 9y ago

I take major issue with this: > By the way, it is vital to remember that the money you raise IS NOT your money. You have a fiduciary and ethical/moral duty to spend the money only to improve the prospects of your company. I think this is unethical. YCombinator is taking advantage of a lot of founders by discouraging them from paying themselves a reasonable salary with the money they raise. There is a lot of confusion about this issue, mostly because YCombinator founders are young and naive, and they think because they own most of their company that they should be working for free the entire time, and can spend years trying to make their company work while eating through what little savings they have. That's not the case. Founders should be doing one of the following: 1) You should pay yourself a reasonable salary with the money you raise. 2) Otherwise you should be diluting the investors over time by the amount you are getting underpaid.

csomar 9y ago
I think you just need to be reasonable person. If you raised $250k and you pay yourself a salary of $150k, it is not acceptable. If you raised a $30million round, then it is.
- fragsworth 9y ago
  Well, if you could be earning $150k at any other company, and you are only paying yourself $50k at yours, then you should be earning an additional $100k/year worth of shares over time to dilute the investors. You are investing that missing $100k. And you're missing the main point that many of these founders simply aren't getting paid at all, because they think it is unethical to do so with someone else's money. The original article is exacerbating this problem.
  - rgrieselhuber 9y ago
    This is a bit naive. I can sympathize but it's just not how things work. Nobody is forcing you to start a company and the equity you're building and convinced investors buy into should be your main focus. That being said, I do believe in founders paying themselves a liveable salary.

thinbeige 9y ago

> launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product. Yes, yes and yes. But this is so easy said but still a struggle and need to be put into perspective. Let's say we do a super simple business, eg a resume writing service on scale (just for the sake of having a simple example). To be ready to reach out to first customers we need to... - Setup a landing page, takes ten minutes with Squarespace but to get all the copy and visuals right or least good enough for some first testing, min one day, rather three to five - Setup and prefill all social media channels, should take half a day incl getting the first 25 likes in order to save the name - Create the first ads and iterate to some ads which actually convert at good CTRs/CPCs take multiple days because you need to let a campaign run at least for one day; so lets assume another five days So just to test this stupid-simple agency business properly we need already two weeks. Now imagine, you do something a bit more sophisticated, an actual app/SaaS/game/bot/whatever, you still need minimum two weeks for the 'Marketing' stuff before plus the time for the actual app. And being mediocre doesn't work in highly competitive markets. So, if you are able to (1) build a first testable thing in 2-4 weeks you are very good. And you are even better if (2) you have the power and positivity to do 12 tests per year because you need more than one shot.

briandear 9y ago
I agree so much! My little company does mental health practice management and communications yet it’s incredible hard to “start small” because your being judged against all the incumbents. Even if you have some clever tech (we do,) nobody wants to use it if you don’t at least compare somewhat to the existing competition. If I were building photo sharing in 2006, maybe that small, sloppy and iterative approach would work great, but when you’re taking on entrenched incumbents, it’s hard, especially in a space related to health. I guess you could build one feature and be really great at it, but users are rarely shopping for that specific feature, especially if it’s novel and they don’t realize they need it yet.
- erispoe 9y ago
  > it’s incredible hard to “start small” because your being judged against all the incumbents Then you're probably addressing the wrong market. I found _The Innovator's Solution_[1] by Clayton Christensen pretty useful to understand that. You want to address a market that is underserved or not served at all by the existing big players. Often, it's by providing a service that is much simpler, much less powerful, but cheaper and/or more accessible than the existing solutions. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaining-Successful/dp/1422196577 https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Solution-Creating-Sustaini...

CM30 9y ago

This is especially relevant if you're trying to setup a social networking site: > Many startup advisors persuade startups to scale way too early. This will require the building of technology and processes to support that scaling, which, if premature, will be a waste of time and effort. I see all these social media services started up by folks who've spent weeks coding fancy platforms hosted on cloud services with a whole team of engineers on standby with all the best graphics design work money can buy... While no one's actually using the service. Best to focus on the community and getting people using it than the tech stack. No point trying to make a super complicated site that scale to Facebook levels when you've got about a hundred people actually posting on it.

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
I have leaned towards scaling too early in the past too and I think there’s a tendency to do that for professional software developers turned founders because that’s the expectation we have when interviewing for a corporate role. It’s hard to unlearn.
TACIXAT 9y ago
I totally did this. I got my stuff up on AWS with a Cassandra backend. I launched that site and realized how silly it was. My mentality has definitely shifted to build something simple and get users.

jorgemf 9y ago

> Get sleep and exercise – take care of yourself This should be the first advice, how are you going to take care of something if you don't take care of yourself first?

moron4hire 9y ago

I am always disappointed at the lack of effort put into discussing what "launch early" really means. For example, let's say you're making a Word Processor[0]. Surely, putting up nothing more than a download page where people can Stripe their $10 for a copy is not sufficient. There must be a lot more to the story, because there are a lot of projects that have done just that and have gone nowhere. It's always made to sound like you can "just launch now". But there must be some sort of apparatus in place to promote the product and take advantage of the attention given to the product. Constructing this apparatus must be a significant undertaking, or else more people would do it. So one can't "just" launch. There is still significant work to do up front, it just might not necessarily be programming of your product. [0] Just for example. Call it, "consumer-oriented software", rather than any sort of SaaS or open-source library or any other sort of software offering.

nathan_f77 9y ago
I agree that it's certainly possible to launch too early, especially if your product doesn't exist, or it's full of bugs and unusable. But this is still good advice for me. I'm just about to launch a service, and I think I've already gone way beyond "MVP" status. I was even planning on doing a big redesign of the whole product, but now I've decided not to do that, because it works fine as it is. I could easily keep working on this product for another 6 months before I was comfortable launching it, but now I think I'm going to set a deadline for early next week, and only work on the most important things.
- staticelf 9y ago
  What is the product? You should always link to your product if possible when you're talking about it. It got me interested even if I just want to take a look.

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago

One area I’d love to be discussed/expanded further in another post is about techniques around taking to users. Even getting people who have signed up or are existing customers to talk to you is surprisingly difficult. There are probably pearls of wisdom to share in this area. Taking and listening to customers is so important but with the noise nowadays I find it’s harder to get them taking, even as I say they’re already using the product.

neerkumar 9y ago

I never find advice on how to grow when your customers are heavily competing with each other and, therefore, they are very unlikely to recommend your product no matter how much they love you. I feel this is a very common situation and I never heard YC talk about how to deal with it.

danieltillett 9y ago
We have a similar situation where our customers actively prevent us even mentioning that they use our products. It is a grind.

shamino 9y ago

For people just coming out of college, the advice given by YC might seem very "groundbreaking". But honestly, these are not new ideas. I listened to Sam's lectures at Stanford, and listened to Brian Tracy's business books, and they are the same advice. Not to hate on YC, but I just wanted to keep it 100.

mwseibel 9y ago
Let’s be clear the goal wasn’t to break new ground in fact it’s the opposite. To condense all the accumulated pieces of advice that we give in one place and provide links to dive deeper if needed.
- shamino 9y ago
  I agree you are trying to do that with this post. But YC startup information sometimes markets itself as knowing what others don't know when it comes to growing a business, and say they know best since they've seen so many startups in their cohorts. It comes across as revolutionary ideas, even if those words aren't exactly used.
  - shamino 9y ago
    For instance, all your reference links are to yourselves. Are there no data points outside your own findings that could be useful ?
TACIXAT 9y ago
Even if it is not groundbreaking, people need to learn it somewhere. I've learned a ton from YC posts. Maybe they are things that people running businesses already know, but that is not me. I may look at an application and say it is not innovative technology, but if they are solving someone's problem and making money it is hard to argue with it. YC is definitely educating people who don't know these things and in that sense, the information is very insightful.
dzonga 9y ago
The guys at Basecamp have preaching this stuff for years.

jtmarmon 9y ago

This is a bit of a meta question but I've found that I've almost never learned anything from reading posts like this. I've scanned them over and nodded in agreement, only to make the mistakes I've been warned against and then I finally understand what people were telling me all these years. Does YC have an approach on how to actually get founders to take advice to heart instead of just understanding at a surface level?

adventured 9y ago
> Does YC have an approach on how to actually get founders to take advice to heart instead of just understanding at a surface level? I've been building Internet companies non-stop since the mid 1990s. The only means I've seen or personally experienced to accomplish that, is personal suffering (only half joking). That is to say, going through it for yourself. The difference between book knowledge and hands on experience. Taking a punch to the gut (so to speak) provides an intimate, emotional, personal lesson in a way that reading about taking a punch to the gut simply never can. Your brain subconsciously makes a special effort to take note (forms of pain learning mechanisms) and ingrain lessons that it will not (and I would argue, can't) from reading about it alone. It's almost like something getting etched into your DNA, versus just having a surface tattoo. When you actually go through it, you acquire a kind of automated discipline (courtesy of said pain) that you can't have just from reading or being told; children and pets learn the same way from touching hot things.
- dyarosla 9y ago
  I imagine that the best thing to extrapolate from this is to learn from your own failures, but make those punches hurt only a little. So that if you mess up, you can still move on. Advisors could say what things to avoid, but then offer a path of- but if you don't want to listen to me, try this (small) experiment to see what happens.
  - adventured 9y ago
    The kind of advice that you pick up from articles like those routinely linked here on HN, in my opinion, can help you limit mistakes slightly and can help you learn slightly faster; basically, improve the outcomes somewhat. It probably also compounds nicely with actual experience, as reinforcement. I don't think there's any good substitute for doing, as a means to learn how to do start-ups, and more broadly understanding how companies should operate. That naturally includes working for other successful companies first for a couple of years, which is a tremendous way to learn as much as possible about the fundamentals of how companies run before striking out on your own.

alyhuss 9y ago

On YouTube, "How To Start A Startup" has a list of videos that talks about various stages a startup will encounter. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCMEptJjxmmQgGFsnCg

pascalxus 9y ago

Great post: I especially like the description he gave: "find customers who have their hair on fire". If anyone wants to solve the Satiety problem, I'd be willing to bet there's millions if not billions of people with their hair on fire with that problem!

graycat 9y ago

That seems like a lot of excellent advice except in cases where "it depends" and the advice is not good or some other advice would be better. > If we invest in you, your group is expected to move to the Bay Area for January--March 2018. You can of course leave afterward if you want, but it's a good place for a startup to be. IMHO it's a horrible place to be, way too expensive, and anyone not really wealthy should get the heck out ASAP. It's the state of Governor Moonbeam and the district of Nasty Nancy, "The San Francisco Treat". > we expect you to work out of wherever you find to live. I agree with that. IIRC, some places there can be zoning and insurance issues operating a business out of residential housing. > At each dinner we'll invite an expert in some aspect of startups to speak. Biggie problem: For the startups that are really wanted, eventually worth $10+ billion, there are not many experts from the past and many fewer for the next dozen such in the future. Indeed, for the next $10+ billion startups, a guess is that they will be different from last $10+ billion startups, mostly need to be something quite new in some of problems solved, technology used, market, and customers served. Then the new stuff might be from field crossing and not from what is in Silicon Valley or computer science now. > Most successful startups change their idea substantially. Not very good news. > The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have funded many of them now. But notice the advice > It turns out most companies fail fast because founders fall out. Right. And the obvious solution is to be a sole, solo founder where > We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, For > Make something people want. Yes, but at first, nearly no one knew they wanted a telephone, a Ford Model-T, a PC, Google, or Facebook. > the guidance below will help most startups find their path to success But "most startups" will be at most a minor success. So far we get another Google only about once each ten years. So, the advice that works for "most startups" doesn't have to work for the next Google or even the next 10 startups worth $10+ billion. > The first thing we always tell founders is to launch their product right away; That is good advice for some startups, but for other startups there is the issue of "You only get one chance to make a good first impression." > ... for the simple reason that this is the only way to fully understand customers’ problems and whether the product meets their needs. Again, that's good advice for some startups, but we would hope that the situation was: (A) The startup has picked a problem currently solved at best poorly where it is totally, 100%, completely utterly clear that the first good, a much better, or an excellent solution will just thrill enough users/customers with enough revenue per each to make a really successful business. The great example would be a cheap, safe, effective one pill taken once to cure any cancer. Believe me, once someone has such a cancer pill, no way will they then be out talking to customers for feedback about, say, the color (white or yellow) or shape (round, oval) of the pill. Instead, as soon as that pill is known to exist, desperate customers will literally be banging on the doors to get one. (B) The challenge is not at all having the first good solution thrill the users/customers but just being able actually to construct that solution. That is, as for that cancer pill, the reason there is no solution now is that so far no one has been able to find one. So, the solution will need something new, some secret sauce in some important respects too difficult for others to discover. Then hide the secret sauce, say, in a server farm, with good security. > Surprisingly, launching a mediocre product as soon as possible, and then talking to customers and iterating, is much better than waiting to build the “perfect” product. Sure. And "The perfect can be the enemy of the very good." But the > talking to customers and iterating is not very good for all startups. > Once launched, we suggest founders do things that don’t scale (Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham1). Okay, but how did that little photography experiment lead to "a vibrant marketplace"? Maybe you are saying that the photography experiment said that pictures are important. Then the scalable, production version was to tell the AirBnB associates that they needed to hire an okay or better photographer to take pictures, e.g., much as in the experiment. > Talking to users usually yields a long, complicated list of features to build. Maybe. But Google has hardly changed their home page in years. > a 100% solution that takes ages to build. Creating unique, powerful, valuable, crucial core "secret sauce" is, say, some applied math research, and that by the right person commonly can be done in hours, days, or weeks. Then write the darned code, dirt simple code, and go for it. E.g., I worked out the main parts of my Ph.D. dissertation research in my head in an airplane ride. The resulting dissertation had some nice improvements but was always well within what I first worked out. This "ages to build" stuff suggests finding another problem to solve. > As companies begin to grow there are often tons of potential distractions. By far the worst I found was contacting VCs. I'll never do that again. It'd be better to start a grass mowing service than trying to get equity funding. Besides, now, for an information technology startup based on software, the computing hardware, software infrastructure, and Internet data rates are so cheap that a solo founder, with a good startup selection, can bring his work to the traction equity funders want that will put him into nice profitability and ability to grow just from retained earnings. The equity funders are asking for too much: By the time a solo founder has what the equity funders want, that founder will no longer need, want, or accept an equity check. > chasing after press coverage That can be one of the most important sources of publicity and users/customers. Remember: You want your story told, and the press desperately wants a story to tell. > the most important tasks for an early stage company are to write code and talk to users. That's true for some startups, but such a startup is usually going to be in a sad situation. Instead, the founders should already have a good problem to solve. By the time the customers see the good alpha test, the company should be in quite good shape with very little more code to write until, say, much bigger scale is needed. > For any company, software or otherwise, this means that in order to make something people want: You must launch something, talk to your users to see if it serves their needs, and then take their feedback and iterate. This advice can hold for some companies, but not all. Instead, some startups have already selected a good problem and found a good solution. > These tasks should occupy almost all of your time/focus. For great companies this cycle never ends. Again, Google has hardly changed their home page in years. > Similarly, as your company evolves there will be many times where founders are forced to choose between multiple directions for their company. Again, Google has hardly changed their home page in years. > When it comes to customers most founders don’t realize that they get to choose customers as much as customers get to choose them. We often say that a small group of customers who love you is better than a large group who kind of like you. Sometimes, yes. E.g., does an auto company go for the Rolls Royce, Mercedes, BMW, Chevy SUV, Ford F-150, etc. market? > YC is sometimes criticized for pushing companies to grow at all costs, but in fact we push companies to talk to their users, build what they want, and iterate quickly. That talking and iterating stuff only works for some startups. > It is very difficult as a new startup founder not to obsess about competition, actual and potential. It turns out that spending any time worrying about your competitors is nearly always a very bad idea. We like to say that startup companies always die of suicide not murder. There will come a time when competitive dynamics are intensely important to the success or failure of your company, but it is highly unlikely to be true in the first year or two. Again, that doesn't apply to all startups, but it's good news, and I can believe it often applies. > A few words on fund raising (A Guide to Seed Fund raising by Geoff Ralston9). The first, best bit of advice is to raise money as quickly as possible and then get back to work. Better advice: (A) Pick a problem and solution so that you, as a solo founder, won't need equity funding. (B) If you contact 20 VC firms and don't get a check, then give up on VC at least for a while. (C) Do "get back to work". > It turns out most companies fail fast because founders fall out. So, as above, be a solo founder. So, pick a pair of a problem and good solution that you as a solo founder can bring to nice profitability alone without equity funding.

pbiggar 9y ago

I think this advice is great, but the wording they use causes people to miss the point. Specifically the word "launch". You don't need to have a big marketing launch, you don't need to do ads, you just need to get it in front of customers and validate your business by whatever means you can (whether checking whether consumers come back or asking people to pay, or whatever). The struggle is that people think "oh, this needs Slack-level design" or 'just another feature', but if they thought of it not as "launch" but instead "put this in front of customers now and get feedback", it would be more obvious that this was a good thing.

johnrob 9y ago

I found a typo: "copy written" should be "copyrighted".

deleted 9y ago

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ilaksh 9y ago

All great advice, but realize that you cannot just do one or two of them, or incorrectly execute some of them, and expect to be successful. For example, you cannot take the 'imperfect MVP' and 'iterate quickly' advice as an excuse for poor testing and ignore the part about a narrow focus or listening to customers. I will admit that I have worked on several projects where something like this was the case. It may just be that some of the projects I have worked on have not been so great (because it is much easier to get those contracts), or maybe this is common -- but what I have seen is startups or dev teams that are iterating quickly on programs that fundamentally do not work or cause their users great frustration. Part of the problem is that people often underestimate the technical difficulty (or perhaps almost infeasibility in some cases) of certain features or impracticality of some UX, etc. The user frustration one was a government contract so the users couldn't switch to another program. What happened was we built a program for utility workers that required a ton of data entry in the field. Due to slow loading screens or just a ton of extraneous fields or an issue of keeping laptops clean or something else, it was impractical, so they switched to doing data entry in the office on based on paper forms. And then someone decided to give all of those forms to one poor lady in the office. One day I was permitted to visit, and found that due to some bugs we had not been told about and the sheer volume of work, the lady was literally going insane. They were still iterating quickly and adding tons of features on that project when I left. Here is an example where a project manager may have been using something like the idea of an imperfect MVP as an incorrect rationale for perhaps not evaluating core functionality carefully enough. The product was a home server device. A core feature that was supposedly complete when I came onto the project was a relay/proxy system that would allow multiple connections to come into this device through one port while it was behind NAT. Or something close to that -- it was a few years ago so I don't remember perfectly. But I was initially given the task of working on some lighting animation and only coincidentally discovered that this proxying system and other core networking was not even close to working. I did eventually get a multiplexing thing working for it but they never delivered the system to the initial customer so it was never fully tested. On another project, it started out as another case of an 'MVP' that actually didn't do the thing it was supposed to do. It mostly did it most of the time, but due to the nature of the project, without an automatic way to detect and correct the 5% of cases where it didn't work, it could not possibly make any significant amount of money. So when I came on, I wasted quite a bit of time trying to make this supposedly already working MVP work, but it had been 'iterated on quickly' and had unmaintainable code and no tests, so I ended up rewriting it.

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Naushad 9y ago

Matches with a lot of practical thoughts shared by dhh and jason in "Re-work"

staticelf 9y ago
I really, really loved that book. It resonates so well with how I think and view the world.