5 ms·
More advice for new Y Combinator founders
-Get ready for high highs and low lows, and practice keeping yourself in the middle or you'll never get good work done. You're going to be pretty sure your company is dying at least once a month, and it usually isn't. This is very important and very difficult to learn.
-Focus on the product, especially in the early days. You'll have time to make deals later. Now, you've got to build something great.
-If you hire, do it very slowly and carefully. The culture of a company is set very early, and so is the quality of the team.
-Don't be afraid to change your idea if the market seems bad. Early is a good time to do it. You can change your product, you can change your team, you can change your sales strategy, but you can probably not create a market. Good startups surf someone else's wave.
-Figure out what the important things are, and spend lots time on those and little on the rest. Lots of startups work very hard, but on the wrong things. They still die an untimely death.
-Watch out for fights and brewing tension among cofounders (ie, make sure everyone feels they have a reasonably fair deal). I've seen this derail more early startups than anything else. And, if you are really sure you have the wrong cofounder, fire fast.
-The startups in my Y Combinator 'class' that tanked the fastest were the ones that spent the most time worrying about option grants for members of their board of advisors and the least time on their product. Could be a coincidence, but why risk it? Build your product.
-Great products, technology, and people win the day in the long run. History backs this up. Do not be afraid of competitors without them, no matter how much money they raise or how much noise they make.
-It's most tempting to give up right before you're about to succeed.
Best of luck,
Sam Altman
- terpua 19y agoThat last point is so true!
- choward93 19y agoThis are some great tips. Ill live by these.
- webwright 19y agoI can't agree with the second to last point enough... People are paranoid about competition and copycats--- it's a waste of time and energy.
- bayareaguy 19y agoWhich YC startups have tanked?
- iamwil 19y agoyou can find a half updated list on the wikipedia page for ycombinator.
- nickb 19y agoSam, thanks for an awesome post! I have one question. You say the following: >>> Figure out what the important things are, and spend lots time on those and little on the rest. Lots of startups work very hard, but on the wrong things. Product is number one, no question about it. What else do you consider important and what do you consider 'wrong things'?
- sama 19y agoGood: -Things that will get you more revenue -Things that will get you more users (and thus hopefully revenue) -Things that will make your product better (and thus hopefully more users) -Things that will get you great hires (and thus hopefully better products) -Focusing on the right market Bad: -Going to events at business schools or 'networking' with the people that do
- jkush 19y agoNice post Sam. I wonder about #1, though. How do you tell the difference between when you think your company is dying and when it really is?
- sama 19y agoIf no new or current users/advertisers/customers/etc care about what you're doing, and no one in the company has a plan (or, more commonly I think, a desire) to fix it, you are probably in bad shape.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- sama 19y agoWithout naming either company involved, two companies from Stanford started approximately simultaneously with pretty much the same vision. One group spent months (literally) drafting employment and consultant agreements, filing patents and trademarks, setting up various shell corporations to shield themselves from liability, etc etc and then hired an offshore development team to build the product. The other guys just built the thing, only coding and talking to users, and were delighted to find that everything else could be done retroactively. They had tons of happy users before the first guys had anything but a gigantic stack of legal documents, nicely written but protecting nothing. By the time they pitched the same VC, company B had probably a 1000x lead in user traction, with a growing spread. Easy decision for the VC firm. A is dead; B is a massive success.
- adrianwaj 19y agoImagine if startup A joined startup B to provide their IP management processes. Don't discount the skills and value-adding that startup A would have learnt for their next startup or providing these services to other startups.
- paul 19y agoOr maybe they would have distracted startup B and they would've both failed. Doing everything really isn't an option, so you had better pick the one thing that really matters.
- anamax 19y agoWe don't know that the folks in startup A learned anythinguseful. We also don't know that A's processes or paperwork can provide any benefit to startup B, let alone if A is willing to sell for a lower price than B can get them from elsewhere. If A's processes and paperwork are valuable to other startups, A should be selling them itself. (B has a biz, and it's not processes and paperwork.)
- maurycy 19y agoHow to fight with lows? Especially, what if you spend months on the product and no one actually uses it?
- pg 19y agoYou've answered your own question. One of the (many) advantages of releasing quickly is that it's better for morale.
- davidw 19y agoSome fruit doesn't hang quite that low, though.
- akkartik 19y agoBe creative in finding smaller releasable pieces. The #1 thing to optimize for is your own motivation.
- euccastro 19y agoSo, try and find that which does?
- maurycy 19y agoWith this approach, you'd not work on Google.
- staunch 19y agoBreak off a piece that is low and release that, then build on it.
- edw519 19y agoEvery one of these "seems" like common sense. It sure is nice when someone (especially someone who's been there) articulates them so well. This is definitely bulletin board material. Thank you, Sam!
- ojbyrne 19y agoGotta give two thumbs up to that first point. I completely underestimated how emotional I am, and how much that interfered with my work.
- jl 19y agoThanks Sam! As usual, excellent advice. Though it seems like common sense, you'd be surprised how hard this advice might be to follow. Especially the last one.
- pg 19y agoI agree with everything here. If I had to pick out the most important, it would be the last sentence of the second (and seventh) item: "Now you've got to build something great." Few startups build something great and then die. Nearly all startups that fail to build something great die. Therefore succeeding is identical with building something great, plus or minus about 1%. In phase 1, doing anything else except making something great (fussing over paperwork, arguing with one another, working on other projects, worrying about competitors) is a mistake.
- mattmaroon 19y agoI like how you styled it as advice for Y C founders, even though it's applicable to all startups, hoping that our competitors will therefore ignore and/or do the opposite. Brilliant maneuver sir. Remember if you're not a Y C founder, be sure to spend all of your time working on patents.
- dbrush 19y agoObviously you all don't know Matt. He's the resident court jester and we love him for it. And by we I, at the very least, mean me.
- shayan 19y agoThanks Sam, its nice of you to put in the time and type this up. And all the best.
- kajecounterhack 19y agoHmm this reminds me of that book...oh yeah, Donald Trump's "Success University" series I think. "I don't sell buildings because I'm famous. I sell buildings because I build good buildings."