11 ms·

Startup advice

334 points by sama 13y ago

diego 13y ago
There is some good stuff in there, but also a number of tautologies and platitudes, e.g. "Make something people want." This is a great sound bite, but it's not really actionable advice. Same as "don't die" or "get lucky." If you start a company unaware that you need to make something someone will want, you have no business doing so. Furthermore, it's absolutely nontrivial to start out making something people want. A better piece of advice (still flawed) would be: develop a process to make sure you don't deviate from building something people want, and/or converge towards something people want. You can always rewrite history (e.g. Twitter, Google) and make it look like you always knew that you were building something people wanted. In reality, Google tried to sell itself to Yahoo for $1M in 1999 (and Yahoo said no). Those of us who were around at the time remember this. I find it very dangerous to "tweet-wrap" advice that is the result of long slogs, and requires context. "Don't die" or "get lucky" sort of make sense if you know the back story. Otherwise you might as well say things like "grow wings" or "remember you always have a friend in the diamond business."
- maxmcd 13y ago
  You would most certainly be right if there was no context for those pieces of advice, but they're part of a large list that I think paints a pretty compelling picture. Soundbites are also nice because they provide quick reference points and mental footholds when you're thinking and working through problems. I'll also refer you to #46 regarding your better piece of advice.
  - diego 13y ago
    You might as well refer the OP. We both used the word exactly once, nitpicker :) I agree with that one, having taken a class on the topic at CMU in the 90s (which was mostly a waste of time). The same can be applied to most other bullshit startup terms.
- Swizec 13y ago
  But people often forget to make something people want and instead make something they think people want. Therein lies the incredibly actionable advice of the 4 word statement. In fact, a lot of my technologically and ideally awesome projects falter at the step where I need to find out what type of people would want this, how they'd want it wrapped up and how the hell will I reach them.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > But people often forget to make something people want and instead make something they think people want. That is a nonsensical statement. A person cannot make decisions based on something other than what they think.
    - Swizec 13y ago
      sigh and people wonder why us nerds/geeks are so difficult to talk to. Stop nitpicking and read what I said, then interpret it. Point is, you can either make decisions on what you think, or you can come up with hypotheses and find hard evidence that supports them. In fact, people often go with evidence in spite of their innate biases, thus making decisions based on what they don't think.
    - smartician 13y ago
      Two words: External validation. Ask your friends, ask in forums, do surveys, or even run Adsense campaigns to static landing pages just to see how the click through rates are (Tim Ferris style). Sure, this is not 100% bullet proof (what people think they want vs. what the actually want) and the results can be misinterpreted, but it's still more likely to succeed than just building whatever you think is cool.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        "Would you pay $X for this useful little app?" doesn't work so well though because there is the judgement/action gap. External validation doesn't work as well as we might think. Much better advice in my view is this: Identify a problem and build a solution to that problem.
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  "If you start a company unaware that you need to make something someone will want, you have no business doing so." Well, yes. That being said, as with many cliches, this one's a cliche for a reason. You'd be surprised how many entrepreneurs set out to make a cool product first, and a solution second. It's surprisingly easy to build a product -- even a beautiful, elegant, simple one -- that just doesn't solve or do anything useful for anyone in particular. It's very easy to mistake elegance, qua elegance, for utility. Elegance doesn't necessarily imply utility, but many fall into that trap. The mantra "Make something people want" is better expressed as "Make something useful." Or, perhaps, "Make something that solves a need." Don't build a hammer and then go looking for nails. The rest of your post ("Furthermore..." onward), I completely agree with.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > You'd be surprised how many entrepreneurs set out to make a cool product first, and a solution second. It's surprisingly easy to build a product -- even a beautiful, elegant, simple one -- that just doesn't solve or do anything useful for anyone in particular. True, but which of the following do you think was the problem? 1. The entrepreneurs did not know that they should make a product people want. 2. The entrepreneurs did not know that no one would want their product.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    What? You mean that solutions are more wanted than cool products? The problem with the saying is it doesn't address that obvious misunderstanding, which is why I propose changing it to "Make something useful."
    - jonnathanson 13y ago
      "What? You mean that solutions are more wanted than cool products?" No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that "cool" is relative to the customer's needs. There is no such thing as an objectively cool or objectively interesting product. It is the user who determines whether something is cool/wanted, and the coolness/need is determined by the degree to which the product solves something. I'm not using the word "solution" in the sense of B2B jargon. I'm using it in the sense that you have a Need, and you have a Fulfillment/Resolution of that Need. The need could be trivial, or it could be major. It could be for business utility or for personal entertainment. It could be a need you didn't know you had, or a need you had but weren't totally cognizant of until the solution articulated (and solved) it. Or it could be a need that's been plain and aching for a long time.
- swampthing 13y ago
  Hmm, is it dangerous though? Presumably, if the advice is not considered by the listener to be actionable, no harm would come of it. It seems the more common case would be that the listener might seek further clarification and come to understand the context. At that point, having the advice condensed into a one-liner is beneficial because it's easy to remember (and thus has a greater likelihood of being followed).
- pbreit 13y ago
  "Make something people want." That is extremely actionable advice. I witness lots of founders talk about all sorts of things except that and it's pretty easy to predict failure.
- infinitone 13y ago
  > In reality, Google tried to sell itself to Yahoo for $1M in 1999 (and Yahoo said no). Those of us who were around at the time remember this. Wow I never knew this. Care to expand further?
- rtfeldman 13y ago
  That's not tautological. There are plenty of defensible business activities you can spend your time on (e.g. "reduce waste", "increase brand awareness") that don't bring you closer to making something people want. Nor is it "tweet-wrapped" so much as concise. You said a better piece of advice was "develop a process..." but that's just a longer-winded way of giving the same advice. Is that better? Occam argues it's worse. You're right that it's nontrivial to start out making something people want, but the value of the advice is to keep you focused when you're being pulled in different directions. If you're unsure how to proceed, default to the path that takes you closer to making something that people want. It's a feature, not a defect, that translating this advice into a specific plan necessitates pondering how to get from your present position to that one.
- david927 13y ago
  Saying "Make something people want." is like saying to a music composer, "Make something people will want to hear; make a hit." What will they make? Justin Bieber pop fluff that's forgotten the next day. A lot of the startups I see are just that. They're vapid and have little insight. True innovation comes from a different place than looking for acceptance.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Indeed. I would say much better advice is Make something useful. It's easy to get people to want useful things. If you can focus on solving needs and headaches for people they will want what you offer. I would add you could expand that to, "when evaluating a potential new product ask, 'Who will find this useful?' and 'Who needs this?'"
  - mietek 13y ago
    It's slighty more complex. You're talking about asking people what they want, then building it. "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." — Steve Jobs
ahsanhilal 13y ago
Always try to think of alternative ways to sell/market your product. How products are sold in any market is defined by incumbents; to get through them, and stand out, you will always have to go a different route. Don't rely on the press to sell your product; it is almost always unsustainable.
humanfromearth 13y ago
"Hire people that you could describe as animals." - who the fk is this guy?
- gyardley 13y ago
  That guy? Paul Graham. From http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html - What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive. Something got lost in that one sentence synopsis. He wasn't suggesting that you dehumanize your employees by literally thinking of them as animals.
  - jabbernotty 13y ago
    What is he talking about? He isn't talking about a saying like "stubborn as a mule", is he?
    - dpritchett 13y ago
      I think nowadays he says 'relentlessly resourceful' instead.
    - nanl2053 13y ago
      It's like saying "that person is a machine." They are able to sustain a high level of work output. Think of an ox tirelessly tilling a field.
    - youngerdryas 13y ago
      He is saying disregard personal hygiene deficiencies.
      - mrperl 13y ago
darrellsilver 13y ago
Now working on http://www.thinkful.com/ http://www.thinkful.com/ this one stands out as spot on and often ignored: 10. Growth solves (nearly) all problems. I'm amazed at the number of people who don't understand the difference between improving conversion of people already on your website and driving new users _to_ your site. While this one is spot on for team members, and opposite when finding investors: 19. Generally, value aptitude over experience.
- Uhhrrr 13y ago
  Presumably because for investors, aptitude is invariably acquired through experience.
  - darrellsilver 13y ago
    Exactly. Specifically because deep understanding of what works, what doesn't and connections are the drivers of strategy. Aptitude is crucial for execution, but that's not the VC's job.
cuttooth 13y ago
"28. Keep salaries low and equity high." "Don't pay people a fair salary; instead, offer them bespoke lunches catered by the finest local delis, a bus pass, and the promise of an amount of equity ultimately so trivial that even if the company sells for a couple hundred million, they still won't be a millionaire after all the taxing is said and done."
- sama 13y ago
  You should not join a startup as an early employee (with a correspondingly low salary) for an equity position that will not make you a post-tax millionaire in a 200MM exit.
  - gyardley 13y ago
    Fair enough, but unless you can predict the amount and terms of any future investment, you've got no way of knowing this. I'm guessing you'd need at least 2% up front to have an even chance of having 0.66% (or $1MM + taxes, in a $200MM exit) of the company at the time of sale.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    Without a face in the boardroom, how do you stop yourself from being diluted out to nil?
    - sama 13y ago
      This usually only happens if the company is failing, in which case your stock is close to worthless anyway.
chasing 13y ago
I think he missed some: 96. Stay out of jail. 97. You may feel you lack the time to defecate, but this is generally not something you can wait until after your big exit to do. 98. You are a special snowflake. Act like it.
- gregpilling 13y ago
  I could have used "don't have a business partner that goes to jail" at one point in my life. Or "don't have a business partner with undisclosed IRS issues from his last business". I am no longer partners with anyone, and I do not believe a person needs a co-founder. I may have some bias.
stevenj 13y ago
Should this be read in numeric order (as 1 being the most important, etc.)? If not, which would you say are the top 3 most important? In other words, how would you advise a startup CEO/founder manage their time in a big picture sense?
- Fuzzwah 13y ago
  1) realize that there is no 3 point list to success 2) ??? 3) profit!
- sama 13y ago
  not ordered.
tzaman 13y ago
81. Surf someone else’s wave. Following this advice only gets you dependent on that someone (if I understood the point correctly). So if they go down (read: limit/lock their API, like Twitter did), you go too.
- iamwil 13y ago
  I believe this one came from McAdoo's talk at Startup school. The context was that you want to pick a market that's growing, instead of trying to create the market yourself. Then you have both the problem of building your company, and educating potential users. I think this is one of those pieces of advice that resonate more to those that managed to build something people want, but found that they were a big fish in a small pond.
acgourley 13y ago
75. Give your investors something to do. sama can you clarify - as you could take it a couple ways
- sama 13y ago
  Most investors can really help with at least one thing, and if they're busy with that, they won't muck around in other things.
richkuo 13y ago
"22. Don’t die." aka "Don't YOLO"
- mrperl 13y ago
  Likely pg means, "don't let your startup die aka run out of cash and/or have the founders lose interest."
fi8on 13y ago
its all time pass, too many points to even bother reading. There are soo many thing involved in starting a business you just can't sum up things like that. Its just dumb. Every business is different and so is every person.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ericflo 13y ago
I hadn't heard the vitamin/painkiller analogy before, and that's a trap I've definitely fallen into. Great list!
- immy 13y ago
  yo Eric, check out some of Nir Eyal's talks http://vimeo.com/63534588 http://vimeo.com/63534588
dvt 13y ago
(Bracing myself for downvotes here) I think the start-up community sometimes feels more like a self-help community than a bunch of cool dudes (and girls, occasionally) building cool shit. There's no secret to success and these kinds of lists are both trivial and highly tautological (sometimes even wrong, but plenty of people are posting about that). Come up with an idea you think is good. Implement it. Get people to use it. Pay attention to feedback. There's nothing mythical about being successful. Sometimes, it's nice to get lucky, and many (many) times, you will fail. Go back to Step 1. I'm only reading the OP because I'm at work, but if I were at home working on my "next big thing," the time spent would be much better invested opening up Eclipse or Notepad++. Go ahead, downvote me. But after that, close HN and get back to work!
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  > (Bracing myself for downvotes here) Not referring to you specifically (this is likely a case of Hanlon's Razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor), but this is a common tactic for soliciting sympathy upvotes -- "fishing for compliments" as it goes. It's about as bad as "upvote if you like X, downvote if you like Hitler" or "Does anyone else Y" style posts. Given the contrarian nature of HN comments, disagreeing with the OP is typically quite safe. If your comment fits the mold of "stereotypical top comment on HN" then it's hard to believe that you're bracing for downvotes.
- martythemaniak 13y ago
  One of my favourite little books is La Rochefoucauld's Maxims [1]. It is a collection of ~500 such aphorisms, mostly relating to human relationships gleaned from a lifetime at the French Court. Such writing may seem very superficial and empty, but it is in fact full of wisdom. It's just that you either have to have experienced it or go through the effort of putting yourself in the proper mindset. [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm
- sama 13y ago
  I agree, you'd be better off building your product than reading pretty much anything. Reading HN is rarely the most productive thing you could be doing with your time.
lubujackson 13y ago
Finally, a really good list of this sort of advice.
immy 13y ago
Tons of good ones mixed in with the platitudes. Here are some favorite quips from other people that I've saved: "Sell before you build" - Paul Nuchheit “Be a cockroach, impossible to kill” “Do stuff that doesn’t scale” “Launch early” Ask "five why's" to get to the root of what customers want. Usually, it will reveal "they want simplicity." "don't sacrifice the WHY in the process of speeding up the WHAT and HOW" - Hunter Walk "To achieve great things, two things are needed - a plan and not quite enough time" - Leonard Bernstein "The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame." - Salman Rushdie
jkuria 13y ago
Btw, whatever happened to loopt? Don't hear much about it nowadays. The website is taking forever to load.
- simonw 13y ago
  It was acquired by Green Dot last year.
tptacek 13y ago
Things that stuck out (I have a very different vantage point from Sam Altman, so, grain of salt): 7. In general, don’t start a startup you’re not willing to work on for ten years. Best piece of advice he gave, and I think more important than "built something people want" (both are important). 13. Overcommunicate with your team. For some reason most founders are really bad at this one. Transparency is your friend. Yes, but so hard to get this right. Start this early. Things you get in the habit of holding close to the m-team will probably stay with the m-team forever. This is something that's worth to spend mental energy on early, even though it won't matter until you're bigger, because it's so hard to do once you're bigger. 15. Hire slow; fire fast. Hiring is the most important thing you do; spend at least a third of your time on it. People say this all the time and I don't believe it really works; I thought we're be a fire-fast company when we started but discovered it's hard to be fire-fast and not sociopathic. Don't count on being fire-fast unless you're sure you can do it (for instance, because you've done it before). Weight hiring decisions that much more. 16. Occasionally think about why the 20th person will join your company. A great question, since we've been doing that for awhile, and answering it has motivated changes in how we approach the management of the company. Asking this question constantly will help your culture. 18. Hire friends and friends of friends. Go after these people like crazy to get them to join. Some other candidate sources are ok, but I always got bad results from technical recruiters. I think this seems true because all the conventional hiring vectors suck so badly. Have a better plan for hiring than "friends of friends". There is really no reason to believe that you are so central to the talent graph that your friends of friends are going to be great. What makes this worse is that relationships will queer the readings you get during your hiring process; you'll want people to work out. If your hiring process is fun for the interviewers, it's probably a bad hiring process. 19. Generally, value aptitude over experience. 1000x this; this is our hiring thesis. 20. Hire people that you could describe as animals. I don't know what this means but if I look at our top performers I would not uniformly describe them as animals. Beware irrational criteria. 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. This is probably vitally important for the kind of company YC starts but consider businesses that won't require you to do this, because retention is very very hard too. 33. Journalists like hearing directly from founders. If you hire PR people, resist their desire to control all the contact. Be suspicious of ideas that require you to have a PR plan. 44. Get on planes in marginal situations. In-person is still better than tele-anything. This is true and also can be usefully flipped, ie on investors or partners; someone who is serious about doing a deal with you will get on a plane, or, simpler, can be induced to take a call on a Saturday afternoon. 57. Celebrate your wins as a company. Get t-shirts for big milestones. Something I learned at the largest company I worked for was that it's often valuable to brand milestones in advance. People can use the brand as a shorthand. Often had the effect of assumptively closing on management buy-in; once you had the manager using the branding name for the project, they were automatically sold on the project. 60. Meetups and conferences are generally a waste of time. Yes. 63. Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It’s easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral. Yes. 68. Don’t have a diverse culture in the early days. Probably no. 71. On the really bad days, remember that tomorrow will be better—it’s hard to see it being much worse! Since I see people asking how to find cofounders so often, here I'd like to add: you know you have good cofounders when things are going wrong for you, the world seems like it's falling apart, and you suddenly realize with great relief that there are more people who will have to melt down before anything bad happens in the company. Can you imagine feeling that way about a prospective cofounder? This is why I think the cofounder matching sites are kind of silly. But I guess if it works for dating... 94. Have a table in your offer letters that shows how much the stock you’re granting a new hire could be worth in various scenarios. This sounds like a really up-front way to handle that. I think you should offer less equity and more salary, though. This was a great list. Thanks, Sam Altman.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Perhaps a better title would be 'Startup Aphorisms' :-) But generally some solid stuff. I'm alway a big fan of fearing complexity, if you can't understand it how do you know its working? How can anyone outside your company understand it? And when it breaks your screwed.
d0m 13y ago
Haha about the "20. Hire people that you could describe as animals.". Without context it looks a bit silly. "Yeah, this guy is totally a zebra. Oh, that programmer over there is such a squirrel". Great advises, thanks for sharing!
amirmc 13y ago
"9. In the current pivot-happy world, good ideas are underweight. It’s worth the time to think through a good one." I really didn't understand this one - mainly the first sentence. Can anyone (sama?) elaborate?
- benologist 13y ago
  People bounce from one idea to the next without exploring an idea deeply.
7Figures2Commas 13y ago
> 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. > 94. Have a table in your offer letters that shows how much the stock you’re granting a new hire could be worth in various scenarios. Notwithstanding the point that trying to predict what stock options could be worth is generally a pointless exercise at early-stage startups and may not be advisable from a legal standpoint, if you really believe the best case figures you're likely to show or want to show in such a table, you would almost always have an incentive to minimize the amount of equity doled out. A company that prefers to treat equity as an immediate substitute for salary either a) believes that its equity is cheap, b) is cash constrained or c) has concerns about its cash position going forward. These are all red flags for someone considering joining the company as an employee.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  This is true, but if I was going to be employee 3 or 4 for a startup that wasn't concerned about cash position going forward, that would be a red flag too.
  - 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
    There's a difference between having concerns about cash position and managing burn wisely. Nothing is guaranteed at a startup and early employees should assume the risk that the money will eventually run out is high. But even so, a company that would prefer to minimize the cash part of your compensation and maximize the equity portion should be looked at with extreme skepticism.
zbruhnke 13y ago
40 is the one that sticks out most to me. "Don’t let your company be run by a sales guy. But do learn how to sell your product." But for me it hits a little closer to home, I saw first hand how this could be a very bad situation and its a mistake I won't make again. Founders should be product people in some way, that does not necessarily mean they need to BUILD the product, but they should definitely be more than just a "Sales" person
famousactress 13y ago
What does "Schleps are good" mean?
- gmonaco 13y ago
  Read "Schlep Blindness" from PG[1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
agranzel 13y ago
This is an awesome list. Learned this one the hard way: <i>Pay a lot of attention to the relationship between cofounders, especially if both/all of you want to be CEO.</i>
ntoshev 13y ago
50. You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. How can complex coordination create value? An example, perhaps?
- gsmaverick 13y ago
  I would guess that Uber is a good example.
_pmf_ 13y ago
> 18. Hire friends and friends of friends. With "friend := someone whom you personally know for sure to be a able worker" > 57. Celebrate your wins as a company. Get t-shirts for big milestones. If you insist on making your employees cringe ...
run4yourlives 13y ago
Keep in mind that a lot of this is why it's pretty shitty to work for a startup, as opposed to another smaller business. Examples: 1. Hire slow; fire fast. If you screw up, you're gone. So much for job security. 17. Hire smart and effective people that are committed to what you’re doing. The last five words there are important. You're ideas aren't important unless they echo ours, so please, don't rock the boat. kthx. See #1. 20. Hire people that you could describe as animals. i.e, hire people that are willing to join your cult and have no outside interests. They'll wear the scars of your whipping as badges of honour. 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. While you're at it, just post "Fuck you" on your door too... they should want to join you just based on the promise of winning the lottery and because they are generally young and ignorant. See #20. I'm being hyperbolic and a little unfair in my criticism in an effort to make a point - working for a startup has all of the downsides and none of the upsides of founding a startup. People quickly wise up to this, which is usually why not many people with families and such commit to the "startup lifestyle". That isn't to say that they avoid startups completely, just that they avoid the ones that treat their employees more like machines than people. You can avoid all this by just doing the opposite of these points in many cases: 1. Hire slow, Fire slow Let people screw up. Trust your hiring process. If they were so great on day one, why are you looking to fire them? Why don't you ask them what's changed? (Note, this doesn't mean never to part ways with anyone) 17. Hire smart and effective people that are committed to what you’re doing. No need to emphasize the obvious. Embrace your employees, and their life changes. Embrace the fact that their thoughts, feelings, desires change as yours do. Work with them, within reason, as much as possible. After all, considering you hired friends of friends, this is your social network you're talking about. 20. Hire people that you could describe as animals. Let people be. Your number one expense should not be high blood pressure medication. Sure, you need the tigers, but you also need people to keep you grounded. Nobody would suggest only hiring men, or only hiring people that play soccer. Don't hire people that only 100% drive. These people (myself included) also have a tendency to slip into pure assholedome. You need more than a bunch of assholes. 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. I think this is self explanatory. Don't exploit people if you don't want to deal with "firing fast" every second month. Your employees have tremendous risk in joining a new, unproven startup with little to no income. They should receive a salary that reflects this, unless you're partnering with them and bringing them on as part of ownership.
goodgoblin 13y ago
Does anyone know if 94. is standard practice or not?
daniel-cussen 13y ago
95 theses, huh? Like Martin Luther? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses
tyang 13y ago
Most important part omitted is how to do #1. Customer discovery, learning key.

334 points by sama 13y ago

diego 13y ago

There is some good stuff in there, but also a number of tautologies and platitudes, e.g. "Make something people want." This is a great sound bite, but it's not really actionable advice. Same as "don't die" or "get lucky." If you start a company unaware that you need to make something someone will want, you have no business doing so. Furthermore, it's absolutely nontrivial to start out making something people want. A better piece of advice (still flawed) would be: develop a process to make sure you don't deviate from building something people want, and/or converge towards something people want. You can always rewrite history (e.g. Twitter, Google) and make it look like you always knew that you were building something people wanted. In reality, Google tried to sell itself to Yahoo for $1M in 1999 (and Yahoo said no). Those of us who were around at the time remember this. I find it very dangerous to "tweet-wrap" advice that is the result of long slogs, and requires context. "Don't die" or "get lucky" sort of make sense if you know the back story. Otherwise you might as well say things like "grow wings" or "remember you always have a friend in the diamond business."

maxmcd 13y ago
You would most certainly be right if there was no context for those pieces of advice, but they're part of a large list that I think paints a pretty compelling picture. Soundbites are also nice because they provide quick reference points and mental footholds when you're thinking and working through problems. I'll also refer you to #46 regarding your better piece of advice.
- diego 13y ago
  You might as well refer the OP. We both used the word exactly once, nitpicker :) I agree with that one, having taken a class on the topic at CMU in the 90s (which was mostly a waste of time). The same can be applied to most other bullshit startup terms.
Swizec 13y ago
But people often forget to make something people want and instead make something they think people want. Therein lies the incredibly actionable advice of the 4 word statement. In fact, a lot of my technologically and ideally awesome projects falter at the step where I need to find out what type of people would want this, how they'd want it wrapped up and how the hell will I reach them.
- baddox 13y ago
  > But people often forget to make something people want and instead make something they think people want. That is a nonsensical statement. A person cannot make decisions based on something other than what they think.
  - Swizec 13y ago
    sigh and people wonder why us nerds/geeks are so difficult to talk to. Stop nitpicking and read what I said, then interpret it. Point is, you can either make decisions on what you think, or you can come up with hypotheses and find hard evidence that supports them. In fact, people often go with evidence in spite of their innate biases, thus making decisions based on what they don't think.
  - smartician 13y ago
    Two words: External validation. Ask your friends, ask in forums, do surveys, or even run Adsense campaigns to static landing pages just to see how the click through rates are (Tim Ferris style). Sure, this is not 100% bullet proof (what people think they want vs. what the actually want) and the results can be misinterpreted, but it's still more likely to succeed than just building whatever you think is cool.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      "Would you pay $X for this useful little app?" doesn't work so well though because there is the judgement/action gap. External validation doesn't work as well as we might think. Much better advice in my view is this: Identify a problem and build a solution to that problem.
jonnathanson 13y ago
"If you start a company unaware that you need to make something someone will want, you have no business doing so." Well, yes. That being said, as with many cliches, this one's a cliche for a reason. You'd be surprised how many entrepreneurs set out to make a cool product first, and a solution second. It's surprisingly easy to build a product -- even a beautiful, elegant, simple one -- that just doesn't solve or do anything useful for anyone in particular. It's very easy to mistake elegance, qua elegance, for utility. Elegance doesn't necessarily imply utility, but many fall into that trap. The mantra "Make something people want" is better expressed as "Make something useful." Or, perhaps, "Make something that solves a need." Don't build a hammer and then go looking for nails. The rest of your post ("Furthermore..." onward), I completely agree with.
- baddox 13y ago
  > You'd be surprised how many entrepreneurs set out to make a cool product first, and a solution second. It's surprisingly easy to build a product -- even a beautiful, elegant, simple one -- that just doesn't solve or do anything useful for anyone in particular. True, but which of the following do you think was the problem? 1. The entrepreneurs did not know that they should make a product people want. 2. The entrepreneurs did not know that no one would want their product.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  What? You mean that solutions are more wanted than cool products? The problem with the saying is it doesn't address that obvious misunderstanding, which is why I propose changing it to "Make something useful."
  - jonnathanson 13y ago
    "What? You mean that solutions are more wanted than cool products?" No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that "cool" is relative to the customer's needs. There is no such thing as an objectively cool or objectively interesting product. It is the user who determines whether something is cool/wanted, and the coolness/need is determined by the degree to which the product solves something. I'm not using the word "solution" in the sense of B2B jargon. I'm using it in the sense that you have a Need, and you have a Fulfillment/Resolution of that Need. The need could be trivial, or it could be major. It could be for business utility or for personal entertainment. It could be a need you didn't know you had, or a need you had but weren't totally cognizant of until the solution articulated (and solved) it. Or it could be a need that's been plain and aching for a long time.
swampthing 13y ago
Hmm, is it dangerous though? Presumably, if the advice is not considered by the listener to be actionable, no harm would come of it. It seems the more common case would be that the listener might seek further clarification and come to understand the context. At that point, having the advice condensed into a one-liner is beneficial because it's easy to remember (and thus has a greater likelihood of being followed).
pbreit 13y ago
"Make something people want." That is extremely actionable advice. I witness lots of founders talk about all sorts of things except that and it's pretty easy to predict failure.
infinitone 13y ago
> In reality, Google tried to sell itself to Yahoo for $1M in 1999 (and Yahoo said no). Those of us who were around at the time remember this. Wow I never knew this. Care to expand further?
rtfeldman 13y ago
That's not tautological. There are plenty of defensible business activities you can spend your time on (e.g. "reduce waste", "increase brand awareness") that don't bring you closer to making something people want. Nor is it "tweet-wrapped" so much as concise. You said a better piece of advice was "develop a process..." but that's just a longer-winded way of giving the same advice. Is that better? Occam argues it's worse. You're right that it's nontrivial to start out making something people want, but the value of the advice is to keep you focused when you're being pulled in different directions. If you're unsure how to proceed, default to the path that takes you closer to making something that people want. It's a feature, not a defect, that translating this advice into a specific plan necessitates pondering how to get from your present position to that one.
david927 13y ago
Saying "Make something people want." is like saying to a music composer, "Make something people will want to hear; make a hit." What will they make? Justin Bieber pop fluff that's forgotten the next day. A lot of the startups I see are just that. They're vapid and have little insight. True innovation comes from a different place than looking for acceptance.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Indeed. I would say much better advice is Make something useful. It's easy to get people to want useful things. If you can focus on solving needs and headaches for people they will want what you offer. I would add you could expand that to, "when evaluating a potential new product ask, 'Who will find this useful?' and 'Who needs this?'"
- mietek 13y ago
  It's slighty more complex. You're talking about asking people what they want, then building it. "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." — Steve Jobs

ahsanhilal 13y ago

Always try to think of alternative ways to sell/market your product. How products are sold in any market is defined by incumbents; to get through them, and stand out, you will always have to go a different route. Don't rely on the press to sell your product; it is almost always unsustainable.

humanfromearth 13y ago

"Hire people that you could describe as animals." - who the fk is this guy?

gyardley 13y ago
That guy? Paul Graham. From http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html - What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive. Something got lost in that one sentence synopsis. He wasn't suggesting that you dehumanize your employees by literally thinking of them as animals.
- jabbernotty 13y ago
  What is he talking about? He isn't talking about a saying like "stubborn as a mule", is he?
  - dpritchett 13y ago
    I think nowadays he says 'relentlessly resourceful' instead.
  - nanl2053 13y ago
    It's like saying "that person is a machine." They are able to sustain a high level of work output. Think of an ox tirelessly tilling a field.
  - youngerdryas 13y ago
    He is saying disregard personal hygiene deficiencies.
    - mrperl 13y ago

darrellsilver 13y ago

Now working on http://www.thinkful.com/ http://www.thinkful.com/ this one stands out as spot on and often ignored: 10. Growth solves (nearly) all problems. I'm amazed at the number of people who don't understand the difference between improving conversion of people already on your website and driving new users _to_ your site. While this one is spot on for team members, and opposite when finding investors: 19. Generally, value aptitude over experience.

Uhhrrr 13y ago
Presumably because for investors, aptitude is invariably acquired through experience.
- darrellsilver 13y ago
  Exactly. Specifically because deep understanding of what works, what doesn't and connections are the drivers of strategy. Aptitude is crucial for execution, but that's not the VC's job.

cuttooth 13y ago

"28. Keep salaries low and equity high." "Don't pay people a fair salary; instead, offer them bespoke lunches catered by the finest local delis, a bus pass, and the promise of an amount of equity ultimately so trivial that even if the company sells for a couple hundred million, they still won't be a millionaire after all the taxing is said and done."

sama 13y ago
You should not join a startup as an early employee (with a correspondingly low salary) for an equity position that will not make you a post-tax millionaire in a 200MM exit.
- gyardley 13y ago
  Fair enough, but unless you can predict the amount and terms of any future investment, you've got no way of knowing this. I'm guessing you'd need at least 2% up front to have an even chance of having 0.66% (or $1MM + taxes, in a $200MM exit) of the company at the time of sale.
- danielweber 13y ago
  Without a face in the boardroom, how do you stop yourself from being diluted out to nil?
  - sama 13y ago
    This usually only happens if the company is failing, in which case your stock is close to worthless anyway.

chasing 13y ago

I think he missed some: 96. Stay out of jail. 97. You may feel you lack the time to defecate, but this is generally not something you can wait until after your big exit to do. 98. You are a special snowflake. Act like it.

gregpilling 13y ago
I could have used "don't have a business partner that goes to jail" at one point in my life. Or "don't have a business partner with undisclosed IRS issues from his last business". I am no longer partners with anyone, and I do not believe a person needs a co-founder. I may have some bias.

stevenj 13y ago

Should this be read in numeric order (as 1 being the most important, etc.)? If not, which would you say are the top 3 most important? In other words, how would you advise a startup CEO/founder manage their time in a big picture sense?

Fuzzwah 13y ago
1) realize that there is no 3 point list to success 2) ??? 3) profit!
sama 13y ago
not ordered.

tzaman 13y ago

81. Surf someone else’s wave. Following this advice only gets you dependent on that someone (if I understood the point correctly). So if they go down (read: limit/lock their API, like Twitter did), you go too.

iamwil 13y ago
I believe this one came from McAdoo's talk at Startup school. The context was that you want to pick a market that's growing, instead of trying to create the market yourself. Then you have both the problem of building your company, and educating potential users. I think this is one of those pieces of advice that resonate more to those that managed to build something people want, but found that they were a big fish in a small pond.

acgourley 13y ago

75. Give your investors something to do. sama can you clarify - as you could take it a couple ways

sama 13y ago
Most investors can really help with at least one thing, and if they're busy with that, they won't muck around in other things.

richkuo 13y ago

"22. Don’t die." aka "Don't YOLO"

mrperl 13y ago
Likely pg means, "don't let your startup die aka run out of cash and/or have the founders lose interest."

fi8on 13y ago

its all time pass, too many points to even bother reading. There are soo many thing involved in starting a business you just can't sum up things like that. Its just dumb. Every business is different and so is every person.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ericflo 13y ago

I hadn't heard the vitamin/painkiller analogy before, and that's a trap I've definitely fallen into. Great list!

immy 13y ago
yo Eric, check out some of Nir Eyal's talks http://vimeo.com/63534588 http://vimeo.com/63534588

dvt 13y ago

(Bracing myself for downvotes here) I think the start-up community sometimes feels more like a self-help community than a bunch of cool dudes (and girls, occasionally) building cool shit. There's no secret to success and these kinds of lists are both trivial and highly tautological (sometimes even wrong, but plenty of people are posting about that). Come up with an idea you think is good. Implement it. Get people to use it. Pay attention to feedback. There's nothing mythical about being successful. Sometimes, it's nice to get lucky, and many (many) times, you will fail. Go back to Step 1. I'm only reading the OP because I'm at work, but if I were at home working on my "next big thing," the time spent would be much better invested opening up Eclipse or Notepad++. Go ahead, downvote me. But after that, close HN and get back to work!

hayksaakian 13y ago
> (Bracing myself for downvotes here) Not referring to you specifically (this is likely a case of Hanlon's Razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor), but this is a common tactic for soliciting sympathy upvotes -- "fishing for compliments" as it goes. It's about as bad as "upvote if you like X, downvote if you like Hitler" or "Does anyone else Y" style posts. Given the contrarian nature of HN comments, disagreeing with the OP is typically quite safe. If your comment fits the mold of "stereotypical top comment on HN" then it's hard to believe that you're bracing for downvotes.
martythemaniak 13y ago
One of my favourite little books is La Rochefoucauld's Maxims [1]. It is a collection of ~500 such aphorisms, mostly relating to human relationships gleaned from a lifetime at the French Court. Such writing may seem very superficial and empty, but it is in fact full of wisdom. It's just that you either have to have experienced it or go through the effort of putting yourself in the proper mindset. [1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9105/9105-h/9105-h.htm
sama 13y ago
I agree, you'd be better off building your product than reading pretty much anything. Reading HN is rarely the most productive thing you could be doing with your time.

lubujackson 13y ago

Finally, a really good list of this sort of advice.

immy 13y ago

Tons of good ones mixed in with the platitudes. Here are some favorite quips from other people that I've saved: "Sell before you build" - Paul Nuchheit “Be a cockroach, impossible to kill” “Do stuff that doesn’t scale” “Launch early” Ask "five why's" to get to the root of what customers want. Usually, it will reveal "they want simplicity." "don't sacrifice the WHY in the process of speeding up the WHAT and HOW" - Hunter Walk "To achieve great things, two things are needed - a plan and not quite enough time" - Leonard Bernstein "The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step out of the frame." - Salman Rushdie

jkuria 13y ago

Btw, whatever happened to loopt? Don't hear much about it nowadays. The website is taking forever to load.

simonw 13y ago
It was acquired by Green Dot last year.

tptacek 13y ago

Things that stuck out (I have a very different vantage point from Sam Altman, so, grain of salt): 7. In general, don’t start a startup you’re not willing to work on for ten years. Best piece of advice he gave, and I think more important than "built something people want" (both are important). 13. Overcommunicate with your team. For some reason most founders are really bad at this one. Transparency is your friend. Yes, but so hard to get this right. Start this early. Things you get in the habit of holding close to the m-team will probably stay with the m-team forever. This is something that's worth to spend mental energy on early, even though it won't matter until you're bigger, because it's so hard to do once you're bigger. 15. Hire slow; fire fast. Hiring is the most important thing you do; spend at least a third of your time on it. People say this all the time and I don't believe it really works; I thought we're be a fire-fast company when we started but discovered it's hard to be fire-fast and not sociopathic. Don't count on being fire-fast unless you're sure you can do it (for instance, because you've done it before). Weight hiring decisions that much more. 16. Occasionally think about why the 20th person will join your company. A great question, since we've been doing that for awhile, and answering it has motivated changes in how we approach the management of the company. Asking this question constantly will help your culture. 18. Hire friends and friends of friends. Go after these people like crazy to get them to join. Some other candidate sources are ok, but I always got bad results from technical recruiters. I think this seems true because all the conventional hiring vectors suck so badly. Have a better plan for hiring than "friends of friends". There is really no reason to believe that you are so central to the talent graph that your friends of friends are going to be great. What makes this worse is that relationships will queer the readings you get during your hiring process; you'll want people to work out. If your hiring process is fun for the interviewers, it's probably a bad hiring process. 19. Generally, value aptitude over experience. 1000x this; this is our hiring thesis. 20. Hire people that you could describe as animals. I don't know what this means but if I look at our top performers I would not uniformly describe them as animals. Beware irrational criteria. 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. This is probably vitally important for the kind of company YC starts but consider businesses that won't require you to do this, because retention is very very hard too. 33. Journalists like hearing directly from founders. If you hire PR people, resist their desire to control all the contact. Be suspicious of ideas that require you to have a PR plan. 44. Get on planes in marginal situations. In-person is still better than tele-anything. This is true and also can be usefully flipped, ie on investors or partners; someone who is serious about doing a deal with you will get on a plane, or, simpler, can be induced to take a call on a Saturday afternoon. 57. Celebrate your wins as a company. Get t-shirts for big milestones. Something I learned at the largest company I worked for was that it's often valuable to brand milestones in advance. People can use the brand as a shorthand. Often had the effect of assumptively closing on management buy-in; once you had the manager using the branding name for the project, they were automatically sold on the project. 60. Meetups and conferences are generally a waste of time. Yes. 63. Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It’s easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral. Yes. 68. Don’t have a diverse culture in the early days. Probably no. 71. On the really bad days, remember that tomorrow will be better—it’s hard to see it being much worse! Since I see people asking how to find cofounders so often, here I'd like to add: you know you have good cofounders when things are going wrong for you, the world seems like it's falling apart, and you suddenly realize with great relief that there are more people who will have to melt down before anything bad happens in the company. Can you imagine feeling that way about a prospective cofounder? This is why I think the cofounder matching sites are kind of silly. But I guess if it works for dating... 94. Have a table in your offer letters that shows how much the stock you’re granting a new hire could be worth in various scenarios. This sounds like a really up-front way to handle that. I think you should offer less equity and more salary, though. This was a great list. Thanks, Sam Altman.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Perhaps a better title would be 'Startup Aphorisms' :-) But generally some solid stuff. I'm alway a big fan of fearing complexity, if you can't understand it how do you know its working? How can anyone outside your company understand it? And when it breaks your screwed.

d0m 13y ago

Haha about the "20. Hire people that you could describe as animals.". Without context it looks a bit silly. "Yeah, this guy is totally a zebra. Oh, that programmer over there is such a squirrel". Great advises, thanks for sharing!

amirmc 13y ago

"9. In the current pivot-happy world, good ideas are underweight. It’s worth the time to think through a good one." I really didn't understand this one - mainly the first sentence. Can anyone (sama?) elaborate?

benologist 13y ago
People bounce from one idea to the next without exploring an idea deeply.

7Figures2Commas 13y ago

> 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. > 94. Have a table in your offer letters that shows how much the stock you’re granting a new hire could be worth in various scenarios. Notwithstanding the point that trying to predict what stock options could be worth is generally a pointless exercise at early-stage startups and may not be advisable from a legal standpoint, if you really believe the best case figures you're likely to show or want to show in such a table, you would almost always have an incentive to minimize the amount of equity doled out. A company that prefers to treat equity as an immediate substitute for salary either a) believes that its equity is cheap, b) is cash constrained or c) has concerns about its cash position going forward. These are all red flags for someone considering joining the company as an employee.

einhverfr 13y ago
This is true, but if I was going to be employee 3 or 4 for a startup that wasn't concerned about cash position going forward, that would be a red flag too.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  There's a difference between having concerns about cash position and managing burn wisely. Nothing is guaranteed at a startup and early employees should assume the risk that the money will eventually run out is high. But even so, a company that would prefer to minimize the cash part of your compensation and maximize the equity portion should be looked at with extreme skepticism.

zbruhnke 13y ago

40 is the one that sticks out most to me. "Don’t let your company be run by a sales guy. But do learn how to sell your product." But for me it hits a little closer to home, I saw first hand how this could be a very bad situation and its a mistake I won't make again. Founders should be product people in some way, that does not necessarily mean they need to BUILD the product, but they should definitely be more than just a "Sales" person

famousactress 13y ago

What does "Schleps are good" mean?

gmonaco 13y ago
Read "Schlep Blindness" from PG[1]. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

agranzel 13y ago

This is an awesome list. Learned this one the hard way: <i>Pay a lot of attention to the relationship between cofounders, especially if both/all of you want to be CEO.</i>

ntoshev 13y ago

50. You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. How can complex coordination create value? An example, perhaps?

gsmaverick 13y ago
I would guess that Uber is a good example.

_pmf_ 13y ago

> 18. Hire friends and friends of friends. With "friend := someone whom you personally know for sure to be a able worker" > 57. Celebrate your wins as a company. Get t-shirts for big milestones. If you insist on making your employees cringe ...

run4yourlives 13y ago

Keep in mind that a lot of this is why it's pretty shitty to work for a startup, as opposed to another smaller business. Examples: 1. Hire slow; fire fast. If you screw up, you're gone. So much for job security. 17. Hire smart and effective people that are committed to what you’re doing. The last five words there are important. You're ideas aren't important unless they echo ours, so please, don't rock the boat. kthx. See #1. 20. Hire people that you could describe as animals. i.e, hire people that are willing to join your cult and have no outside interests. They'll wear the scars of your whipping as badges of honour. 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. While you're at it, just post "Fuck you" on your door too... they should want to join you just based on the promise of winning the lottery and because they are generally young and ignorant. See #20. I'm being hyperbolic and a little unfair in my criticism in an effort to make a point - working for a startup has all of the downsides and none of the upsides of founding a startup. People quickly wise up to this, which is usually why not many people with families and such commit to the "startup lifestyle". That isn't to say that they avoid startups completely, just that they avoid the ones that treat their employees more like machines than people. You can avoid all this by just doing the opposite of these points in many cases: 1. Hire slow, Fire slow Let people screw up. Trust your hiring process. If they were so great on day one, why are you looking to fire them? Why don't you ask them what's changed? (Note, this doesn't mean never to part ways with anyone) 17. Hire smart and effective people that are committed to what you’re doing. No need to emphasize the obvious. Embrace your employees, and their life changes. Embrace the fact that their thoughts, feelings, desires change as yours do. Work with them, within reason, as much as possible. After all, considering you hired friends of friends, this is your social network you're talking about. 20. Hire people that you could describe as animals. Let people be. Your number one expense should not be high blood pressure medication. Sure, you need the tigers, but you also need people to keep you grounded. Nobody would suggest only hiring men, or only hiring people that play soccer. Don't hire people that only 100% drive. These people (myself included) also have a tendency to slip into pure assholedome. You need more than a bunch of assholes. 28. Keep salaries low and equity high. I think this is self explanatory. Don't exploit people if you don't want to deal with "firing fast" every second month. Your employees have tremendous risk in joining a new, unproven startup with little to no income. They should receive a salary that reflects this, unless you're partnering with them and bringing them on as part of ownership.

goodgoblin 13y ago

Does anyone know if 94. is standard practice or not?

daniel-cussen 13y ago

95 theses, huh? Like Martin Luther? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses

tyang 13y ago

Most important part omitted is how to do #1. Customer discovery, learning key.