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I started Startup School about 7 months ago and went from side-project to a full-time cofounder [1]. I (23M) am a first-time technical entrepreneur, and I canno

I started Startup School about 7 months ago and went from side-project to a full-time cofounder [1]. I (23M) am a first-time technical entrepreneur, and I cannot emphasize enough how beneficial YC's resources are for those who just start. The most important thing which is told to you over and over again while you are doing Startup School is "talk to your users (potential users)". Talk to them before writing the first damn line of code. Only after you have 20-100 people who told you "yes, that is my problem which must be resolved" start working on your solution to this particular problem. Still, about 80% of people who I met over SS weekly sessions completely neglected those rules. They were building to build not to solve the problem. Also, AWS credits saved us thousands of $. I did not know about these credits until I randomly clicked on a "deals" tab of SS interface. This "Build Sprint" is truly a great idea that will finally highlight the success of those teams who listened to YC's advises. Finally, I think because of SS is free many people do not value their advises. However, SS literally has 99% of what you need to know to build a 100k-1M ARR business. That's why I think SS should be somewhat paid/exclusive to make people value it. [1] https://newscatcherapi.com/ https://newscatcherapi.com/

onion2k 6y ago
Only after you have 20-100 people who told you "yes, that is my problem which must be resolved" start working on your solution to this particular problem. This is good advice if you want to 'do a startup', and maybe that's the sort of person startup school attracts, but it seems incongruous with the majority of founders I know who started by solving a problem they had themselves. They built something because they needed it to exist, and a business grew out from that. Building to distract yourself from more important work on your startup (eg testing your assumptions) is a bad idea but building because you actually need the thing to exist isn't.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  I need a thing to exist (calorie counter), but I also talked (if only superficially) to other people like me about the issue. I still got a lot of insight out of that. You wouldn’t expect the number of tiny, innocent assumptions you make that hold for yourself but are utterly not the case for others. For example, the fact that I live with my partner and many of my potential users don’t means they can apply a fundamentally different process to tracking calories than me. You are not going to realize stuff like that on your own. So even if you’re mostly just fixing your own problem, just talking to a few people and making minor changes accordingly can make your product useful for a way bigger audience. Or maybe better stated conversely, not talking to others will narrow your products’ audience down immensely.
  - artembugara 6y ago
    Same, we fixed our own problem. Still, talked to others to understand if there is a demand. Because there is always a chance that it is only you who have such issues.

onion2k 6y ago

Only after you have 20-100 people who told you "yes, that is my problem which must be resolved" start working on your solution to this particular problem. This is good advice if you want to 'do a startup', and maybe that's the sort of person startup school attracts, but it seems incongruous with the majority of founders I know who started by solving a problem they had themselves. They built something because they needed it to exist, and a business grew out from that. Building to distract yourself from more important work on your startup (eg testing your assumptions) is a bad idea but building because you actually need the thing to exist isn't.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
I need a thing to exist (calorie counter), but I also talked (if only superficially) to other people like me about the issue. I still got a lot of insight out of that. You wouldn’t expect the number of tiny, innocent assumptions you make that hold for yourself but are utterly not the case for others. For example, the fact that I live with my partner and many of my potential users don’t means they can apply a fundamentally different process to tracking calories than me. You are not going to realize stuff like that on your own. So even if you’re mostly just fixing your own problem, just talking to a few people and making minor changes accordingly can make your product useful for a way bigger audience. Or maybe better stated conversely, not talking to others will narrow your products’ audience down immensely.
- artembugara 6y ago
  Same, we fixed our own problem. Still, talked to others to understand if there is a demand. Because there is always a chance that it is only you who have such issues.