startup advice

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Self-promotion
2 months ago
- Founders often over-promote their products in discussions, which leads to people tuning them out.
- Self-promotion hijacks conversations and is distinct from marketing, which prioritizes providing value first.
- Instead of constantly pitching, founders should contribute insights and help others without expecting anything in return.
- When you establish credibility and value, people will naturally seek out your product—no explicit pitch needed.
- Marketing scales through word of mouth and organic channels, while self-promotion rarely does.
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
2 months ago
- The state of the economy does not significantly determine startup success; founder qualities are the key factor.
- Starting a technology startup during a recession can be advantageous due to less competition and lower costs.
- Acting quickly on a specific idea is important, as technology progresses independently of the economy.
- Startups should adapt to investor reluctance by focusing on recession-proof aspects and running cheaply.
- Hackers are more liquid in job markets, reducing the risk of starting a startup in a bad economy.
- Founders should view themselves as investors buying stock with work, and buy when times are bad.
Do Things that Don't Scale
2 months ago
- Startups don't take off on their own; founders must actively push them, often through unscalable efforts.
- Manually recruit users initially, as Stripe did with on-the-spot setup (Collison installation).
- Compound growth makes small numbers significant; a 10% weekly growth leads to 14,000 users in a year.
- Airbnb succeeded by going door-to-door to recruit users and improve listings.
- Early-stage startups are fragile; founders must not dismiss their own potential.
- Delight early users with extraordinary service, like handwritten thank-you notes.
- Focus on a narrow market first to build critical mass, as Facebook did for Harvard.
- Hardware startups should consider assembling products themselves (Meraki approach).
- Treat initial users like consulting clients to refine the product.
- Manual processes can substitute for software initially; automate later.
- Big launches and partnerships rarely work; organic user acquisition is key.
- View startup ideas as vectors: product plus unscalable initial actions.
Don't Talk to Corp Dev
2 months ago
- Corporate Development (corp dev) is the group within companies responsible for acquiring other companies.
- Startups should generally only engage with corp dev if they are either doing extremely well or extremely poorly, as the middle ground often leads to wasted time and distraction.
- Conversations with corp dev can be highly distracting and demoralizing, undermining a startup's focus and morale.
- Corp dev professionals often use aggressive tactics, including lowball offers and renegotiating agreed prices, to buy companies cheaply.
- Founders often mistakenly meet with corp dev out of flattery or wishful thinking, even when they do not want to sell.
- The best protection against the negative effects of engaging with corp dev prematurely is to simply refuse the first meeting unless a sale is desired immediately.
- The essay advises founders to avoid talking to corp dev in the first year unless they are certain they want to sell.
What I've Learned from Users
2 months ago
- The most important advice for startups is to explain what they've learned from users, which tests attention, understanding, and user need.
- Most startups face the same common problems, regardless of their product, a key insight enabling Y Combinator's effectiveness.
- YC's early funding of many startups provides extensive data and experience, compared to later-stage investors.
- Advising startups cannot be automated; it requires individualized guidance from partners who know each startup well.
- YC learned that treating startups as a group fails at scale, leading to sharding into smaller groups for better partner focus.
- Founders often misidentify their problems or prioritize them poorly, requiring partners to uncover deeper issues during office hours.
- Founders frequently ignore advice due to the counterintuitive nature of startups, which makes advice seem wrong until experience proves it right.
- YC's value lies in helping founders focus on the most critical problems to enable speed, which defines startups.
- Colleagues are as important as partner advice; YC creates a supportive community of peers that enhances founder success.
- YC was designed to address founder loneliness and provide seed funding, while fostering a collaborative environment that amplifies help and inspiration.

startup advice

Self-promotion

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Do Things that Don't Scale

Don't Talk to Corp Dev

What I've Learned from Users