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"Making sure you impress Paul Graham every week, and other YC co-founders is probably the best way to go about your company." I don't buy it. Can you elaborate

• kineticac 16y ago
  it's another source of motivation. we each push each other to do more and more. of course the best source is a regular set of users telling you want they want, but the need to show new improvements each week is akin to making parents/friends proud of something you worked on.
  • rcoder 16y ago
    Not to detract from the YC experience, but I think you can create this sort of rhythm independently, too. Demos in front of a <100% complimentary audience (i.e., not your cofounder/girlfriend/parents) can be enough to force you to develop many of the habits of a successful startup (fail fast, pivot, stretch yourself, listen to customers, etc., etc.) no matter where you are. That discipline, coupled with an honest daily status report to my team, effectively ended ~10 years' worth of my own bad coding habits (procrastination, under-estimation, and insistence on clever/perfect/fast solutions where "good enough" was in fact enough) in about a year. The extra pressure of a YC demo day may help increase your pace in the short term, but you eventually need to learn the discipline to show continual improvement without the pressure of a room full of VCs criticizing your every word.