
The Post-YC Slump - moritzplassnig
http://blog.samaltman.com/the-post-yc-slump
======
ceejayoz
> The main problem is that companies stop doing what they were doing during
> YC—instead of relentlessly focusing on building a great product and growing,
> they focus on everything else. They also work less hard and less
> effectively—the peer pressure during YC is a powerful force.

I'm curious about why there's no consideration of the possibility that perhaps
such a high-intensity pace is simply not sustainable on a personal level for
most people.

~~~
dhaivatpandya
If the pace isn't sustainable for a given person, that person probably
shouldn't be trying to do a startup. This might seem a bit blunt, but I think
it's probably true. There are many other options to bring the same financial
and "impact" success that a startup provides and the expected value of these
options is probably higher than creating a startup given an aversion to the
high-intensity pace.

~~~
jkestner
If 'startup' is defined by the pace, then you're correct. But do we all have
the goal of making a successful startup, or of earning more money from your
own idea? If the latter, there's an argument for a business model that allows
a more humane pace. It may just not be compatible with many investors' models.

------
untog
This seems like a failure of YC - if companies that have gone through the
program are consistently forgetting the lessons it has taught as soon as they
leave, maybe they're not being taught correctly?

That said, I'm not surprised. YC is a rare opportunity, and people will
absolutely punish themselves for the duration of their stay in YC to get the
most out of it. Few people can maintain that kind of pressure longer term. I
don't think that's a weakness, I think it's just being human.

~~~
tptacek
Of course it's a failure of YC. There is a 0% chance YC has all this stuff
right. It would be depressing to them if they did: that would mean there were
no further opportunities to improve the outcomes for YC companies.

------
webmasterraj
I have to disagree with a lot of people who seem to be saying that "working
hard" necessarily means torturous 100 hour weeks.

I don't think the measure of working hard is counting how many hours you're at
the office. I think the signal of working hard is how often you let yourself
get into your comfort zone and coast.

I think working hard means pushing yourself out of your comfort zone -
continuously. It means forcing yourself to ask the hard questions about your
business you're scared to ask. It means figuring out how to do things you're
not good at, like hiring or selling. It means identifying the most important
problem for your company today, and tackling it, even if it's not what you
want to be doing.

I'd guess that during YC, the partners and the community act as a force to
keep people asking the hard, honest questions about their business. And I'd
guess that after YC, without those outside forces, people revert to their
default comfort zones, with things that feel nice. Getting press feels nice.
Going to conferences feels nice. But what's true early is true later too: it's
the work that doesn't feel nice that usually matters most.

You could spend 40 hours a week in the office doing the right things, or 100
hours doing the wrong ones. One of those will lead to growth, the other one
won't. And it doesn't have to do with the hours.

~~~
mreiland
but you won't compete with someone spending 60-80 hours/week doing the right
thing.

Which is why people talk about it the way they do. The doing it right is
assumed.

------
steven2012
"So how can startups avoid this slump? Work on real work."

Simply working hard does not guarantee any path to success, at least in the
world of startups. You can work extremely hard, do no "fake work", and have
really great product and the vast majority of startups will still fail. You
need a great deal of luck as well, ie. #rightplacerighttime, and that's
something that isn't admitted by VCs whatsoever.

------
lanstein
One common theme from the YC CEOs I've talked with (maybe 8-10 - small sample
size, etc.) is that post-YC they don't know the basics of sales (what a
purchase order is, etc.). It would not surprise me if this was part of the
reason.

~~~
bsbechtel
Could you expand on this? I'm curious.

~~~
marrone12
Basically everything that's important to running a real business beyond
coding. Accounting, finances, HR, etc are all real challenges.

~~~
acgourley
I contest those are not "real challenges" in the way you are implying. Sure
they might be on the mind of inexperienced founders because they are suddenly
relevant and novel, but they are also quickly solved by bringing in experts or
firms. These are superficial challenges and only become "real" if they are
snowballing with more fundamental issues (lack of growth, money, market fit)

~~~
jlarocco
IMO, that's almost like saying "Building the app isn't a 'real challenge'
because we can contract it out to IBM."

Yeah, you can hire "experts", but it's expensive. Having some basic knowledge
of how things work can postpone hiring experts until the company can actually
afford it. Want an expert HR person or an expert shipping/receiving guy?
That's $150k each per year.

I mentioned this in a post just yesterday. The way YC (and VC in general)
encourage companies to scale quickly at all costs increases dependence on VC
money because it encourages companies to spend extra money getting things
done/ready quickly, when they may not really need to.

HR, billing, marketing, sales, etc. are just as much a part of a company as
the product, and "Hire experts to do it" may not be the best advice when
starting out.

------
rexignis
What a contentless article, "Work harder! Grumble grumble grumble." We all
know that none of these VC "gurus" are actually cleverer than the rest of us,
but yet we give them an audience for empty posts like this because their job
is (hilariously) to maintain the VC guru image.

I just don't get why these "insightful advice" posts ever gain traction.

------
7Figures2Commas
> At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that
> about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-
> billion dollar company. Of course, only a handful of them do. Most go on to
> be decent or bad.

Pure hubris.

> The main problem is that companies stop doing what they were doing during
> YC—instead of relentlessly focusing on building a great product and growing,
> they focus on everything else. They also work less hard and less
> effectively—the peer pressure during YC is a powerful force.

No, the problem is that it's difficult to build a large company. High growth
is easy in the beginning when you're going from 0 to $100,000, but try going
from $100,000 to $100,000,000. "Fake work" isn't what prevents the vast
majority of companies from doing this.

------
babababa
I think there's also a theme around young founders, the ability to work as a
team when the going gets tough, hubris, and the fame that comes with being in
YC.

During YC, you're in a very controlled environment - everyone around you is
working hard, you have a deadline, you don't have money, and you just focus on
building, etc. Once you leave YC, suddenly, a few things happen (I've seen
this with exactly 2 start-ups so apologies for extrapolating):

1\. You suddenly have a lot more money, and simultaneously lose the very
guided structure you had at YC

2\. A lot of YC founders are young, haven't worked in teams with different
personality types, etc before and they have to learn how to manage people and
each other

3\. Because growth is the only thing they've been taught to look for at YC, at
the first sign of any slowdown in growth (which could be natural and
acceptable, or due to some other reason), they start freaking out and
churning. This further exacerbates point 2 and they start stressing out their
team and each other

4\. There's a bit of a personality cult around YC founders right now - I
recently attended a YC party in an apartment in a fancy high-rise in SF and
it's amazing how many hanger-ons that were there fawning over the founders. It
was a very SF start-up version of a celebrity night-club in LA/NYC. This
unfortunately builds on the narrative of infallible YC founders who are
building great billion dollar companies, etc

I guess where I'm going with this is that in addition to just growth, folks
need to be taught how to work in teams, how to gear up to build a longer term,
sustainable company, and to appreciate that they can and will make mistakes,
but they need to handle that with grace and maturity.

~~~
orthoganol
> and it's amazing how many hanger-ons that were there fawning over the
> founders. It was a very SF start-up version of a celebrity night-club in
> LA/NYC

Lol... I think your YMMV on what you encounter here, maybe I just know the
boring founders that could care less about social status. In fact I think the
ones who care about social status are by and large the ones who don't actually
get accepted.

------
jashmenn
I think it's super interesting to hear that they're developing software to
automate traction updates. It would be so cool to be able to "gem install yc"
into your Rails app (or whatever) and then have hooks that will automatically
keep them abreast of user growth and engagement.

It provides really interesting opportunities for them to be proactive about
giving help at the right time. For instance, they'll be able to setup rules
for notifications e.g. when you're having a slowing rate of growth, or to send
congratulations when you've had a strong month etc.

I imagine one of the problems in investing in so many companies is that you
aren't always aware of problems before it's too late. By using software to
collect metrics about their portfolio companies, they can systematize how to
become aware of and help out companies where they can make a difference.

~~~
aacook
What if it were a daily and weekly internal email that hooked into your
existing analytics or database?

I'm working on an alpha for a product called Growth Report that does just
that. It's not "gem install yc" but it's pretty close. Interested to try it
out with FieldDay?

------
hyperion2010
YC is a coaching environment. Imagine if you took a professional soccer team
and removed the coaches for a month. They would start loosing and if they
didn't you would find that one of the players had taken on the role of a
coach. This is almost certainly what is happening here.

~~~
jonlucc
So maybe YC isn't long enough to turn players into coaches?

~~~
krlkv
It might be long enough for some, but not the others. Startups need to have
majority of things right even before getting into YC and then improve more
under YC mentoring.

------
BatFastard
"Raising money and getting press is fake work"

Raising money is not fake work if you don't know how you are going to pay your
team in 6 months, or 3 months, or next month. Twice I have taken out a second
mortgage on my house to pay my team, its not a good idea. Press seems to be a
necessary evil, again I have made the best product on the market, only to go
unnoticed because of lack of press coverage. Its not like 99.9% of the press
are out looking for a great product, they are being lead by the PR agents.

I agree raising money and getting press are "non productive work" as far as
product advance goes. But so are things like washing the dishes in your house,
they don't help you get more work done that day, but it is a needed part of
the system.

So maybe y-combinator should take those two VERY important survival aspects
over for the 25% of companies that they feel are the unicorns. For another 10%
they will make sure they have enough money for the next year, and that they
will get the press they need. Seems like a natural extension....

~~~
Schwolop
Agree with the first part, less so the second. YC is (rightly) worried about
signalling risk. If they exposed who they thought the 25% were, the other 75%
would struggle to get funding.

------
Nimitz14
I'm surprised how many people here seemed to have missed the point of the
article.

What the author is talking about is how there are a lot of fun things one can
work on that could be useful at some point in the future. But probably not
within the next week or month. Instead, the author is saying to focus on the
things that will without a doubt be useful within the near future (<month).

------
grndn
Couldn't this just be a form of the "Sports Illustrated cover jinx", that is,
regression to the mean?

------
param
Seems like it would be a simple inexpensive investment (probably completely
outsourced) for YC to set up fortnightly (down from Tuesday dinners/weekly)
dinners for founders of a single batch to come and report updates to each
other.

I recall reading somewhere that YC batches are now split into clusters because
there are so many companies in each batch. Maybe these dinners can be cluster
specific as well.

As the companies grow in size, they can democratically decide to reduce
frequency to monthly - I can see how changes would be slower as the companies
become larger.

Edit: To clarify, this is purely a peer group - no YC presence needed. Have to
do it this way to scale.

------
bsbechtel
I believe this could be a problem in general, but I keep thinking about a
recent high profile failure from YC - Homejoy. They had a number of problems
with their platform, but from what I've gathered through the press/blogs is
that they focused too much on (geographical) growth after their $38mm round at
the expense of fixing issues with quality and their business model (costing
them retained users and continued local market growth). I think this is an
outlier to Sam's theory, but it also provides some food for thought.

------
wbeckler
This pre-investment spike for startups reminds me somewhat of the pump and
dump marketing tactics of a more mature company looking for a sale or an IPO.
I've been in companies that have done this: go overboard trying to game some
unsustainable metric, such as top line traffic, until you don't have to
anymore. If you have done digital marketing for awhile, you can come up with
dozens of ways to "grow" your metrics that appear sustainable on the surface
but have some kind of catch that makes it impractical long term.

------
toomuchtodo
"At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that
about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-
billion dollar company. Of course, only a handful of them do. Most go on to be
decent or bad."

"You have to keep up a high level of intensity for many, many years."

Don't take this the wrong way /u/sama, but could it be that perhaps business
models are the problem and not founders not grinding away for years on "real
work"? 90% of startups fail [1] [2]. I am highly suspect of the idea that this
is caused by teams not being committed or working on "fake work". More likely,
markets shift, business models aren't viable, and so forth. This is not a case
of people "not giving it their all".

[1] [http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-startups-
fail?share=...](http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-startups-fail?share=1)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-
start...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups-
will-fail-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-10/)

EDIT: Its been proven scientifically that people encounter diminising returns
past 40-50 hour work weeks. [3] Don't encourage grinding harder. Encourage
finding where to exert the most leverage, and hiring best people you can hire
_today_. Quality people + automation leverage (your software) + quality
marketing is a solid formula (but not a guarantee) for success. Luck, while no
one wants to admit it, is a non-insignificant component of success ("right
place at the right time").

[3] [http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-
pres...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-
presentation.html)

~~~
sama
Sure--the vast majority of ideas just can't support a multi-billion dollar
business.

But a lot can, and poor execution is why they don't.

~~~
teacup50
Don't you feel the least bit of reservation selling young kids on the idea
that they're likely to create a "multi-billion dollar business" by running
through a grist-mill of a program that -- by your own admission -- isn't
sustainable for most of them?

The vast majority will not achieve that goal (you don't need them to, either
-- for sustainability, all you need is a few winners), and in the process, I
can't help but feel that they're stunting their career, technical, and
personal growth by approaching critical period of their lives with the belief
that _your_ economic model of the universe applies equally to _them_.

~~~
sama
No, I don't.

We try to be up front that they have a high chance of failure. But I truly
believe that there is nothing better for their career, technical, and personal
growth than doing a startup they're passionate about (we try to filter out the
people that want to do a startup for a resume item).

Also, one of the advantage of YC is that if the startup doesn't work out,
founders have made a lot of connections in the network and can usually find
something interesting to do next.

As I've said before, I think the actual risky path is not pursuing what you
really want to do and then spending the rest of your life regretting it.

~~~
teacup50
My impression of YC's marketing is an appeal to hubris (and often, the hubris
of youth). Most will fail, but none believe it will be them, and in the
process, they position themselves outside of an environment in which they'd
otherwise have access to people with technical and sustainable business
experience from which they can learn what (and what not) to do.

I'm a lot happier having spent 10 years building a sustainable company doing
what I really want to do, than I ever was at exciting startups during the v1
.com bubble.

Getting to that point, however, required putting in a lot more than 3 months
-- or 3 years -- of backbreaking effort.

~~~
silverlake
sama's response is correct. There's no real downside to doing YC when you're
young. If you succeed, you get rich. If you don't, you can probably find work
at another YC company that is succeeding. If you can't, then having YC on your
resume will probably help you land a job at another startup. No YC founder
will ever go hungry.

~~~
teacup50
There's a long, long road between not "going hungry" and maximizing your
individual potential, and anyone that survived the first .com bubble unscathed
knows that the latter has far more lasting power.

------
JacobAldridge
After the startup curve, the focus has to be about Revenue. And in a simple
way, there's a formula, and activity outside of this formula is a lot of the
'fake work' Sam mentions.

Revenue = Value x Sales Activity x Conversion Rate x Retention

The specific approach will differ depending on your size, your vision, funding
or bootstrapped etc, but the fundamentals are the same.

Value: Covers getting your business model right. Volume x Margin, Product-
Market fit kind of thing. It's essentially a hypothesis you're taking into
Sales activity and refining.

Sales Activity: Includes lead generation, but I don't like to put 'Marketing'
as a separate heading because blogging and chatting to bloggers is the easiest
way to feel busy and achieve nothing. Are you getting in front of clients?

Conversion Rate: And how many of your clients are actually buying? Track this!
Segment it when you can! [ _channels the power of Danielle Morrill_ ] "Know
your numbers!"

Retention: Obviously depends on the business model, but ongoing or repeat
clients are lovely. In a recurring revenue business, churning a client for
every new one you bring on board wastes all the previous steps.

------
pesenti
How about backing these assertions with real data? Can YC show that companies
are more likely to flatlines post-YC vs. while being coached? Or is that
simply due to fast growth being hard to sustain? A careful statistical
analysis of the growth of their companies, given the large sample they have,
could have made this an interesting post rather than just a smug one...

------
rdlecler1
We felt this coming out of 500 Startups B12. We were a team of four, we had
limited analytics in place, we were ranking horribly for SEO, accounting was a
mess, and we were doing a ton of things that didn't scale which we needed to
now scale. Post demo day we had to worry about fundraising, then recruiting,
hiring, and now training--and in some cases firing, and starting all over
again. If we get this iteration wrong we're doomed to fail. Basically we
needed to add a whole new level to our pyramid and we need to find people we
can delegate tasks to do that the process scales and so everything has come to
a grinding halt for a few months. If you raise more money quickly it may be
possible to attract more & better talent at the top of the funnel and run this
process more quickly but it's been a massive growing pain for us.

------
imh
> Burnout seems to almost always affect founders whose startups are not doing
> well...

There doesn't seem to be an obvious causation here. I could totally see either
causing the other, or there being a common cause of both. Seems weird to just
assume burnout is a result of doing poorly.

------
msellout
One can easily gain momentum by simply adding mass, which is completely the
wrong metaphor. Let's end the practice of misusing the word "momentum" in
business. Use "velocity" or simply "speed".

------
rokhayakebe
My favorite fake work is "I am doing research." It is also the most important
work one can do prior to making decisions, however it just gets to one point
where you have to admit to having enough data to move forward.

------
help_everyone
Not sure how I feel about cleaning up a code base as doing "fake work".

~~~
nashashmi
It does not lead to the growth of a company directly. Better to work on more
features than to work on cleaning up the desk.

~~~
baldajan
I agree and disagree with this point. The absolute worse thing a startup can
do is to "flip"/"redo" their code base, in an attempt to clean it up. We
learned that the hard way last year. That said, going through code and
occasionally cleaning a class or two in order to achieve a desired feature can
save time while debugging, usually a lot.

This is like most things in life, taken in moderation = good for you, but the
extreme might kill you (or in this case, your startup).

------
rdl
Bullshit fake work is way worse than strictly time-boxing work. A focused
20-40h/wk is a lot more effective than 100h/wk of working on 90% bullshit,
particularly because the bullshit reduces your per-hour marginal productivity
as much if not more than real work, so you're not even getting just 10h of
real work. And because 90h of bullshit this week means, due to sunk cost
fallacy, prior commitments, etc., you're basically going to have to spend at
least 50h the next week on similar bullshit.

~~~
krlkv
Yep. Time tracking software is quite good at proving this. When one becomes
disciplined in tracking "focused work", it becomes obvious that these mythical
60-100 hour work weeks are nonsense.

------
nashashmi
The article should have been titled "never lose momentum". Burnout is always a
big thing. And distractions are even bigger. And complacency is fall of many.

------
dewitt
This post is probably the best reason I've seen yet to be a YC startup. The
investor who can call you out on stuff like this is the investor you want.

~~~
ceejayoz
I, too, can tell you to work harder.

I, too, won't pay your therapy bills after you burn out from working 16/7 work
weeks for months/years on end.

~~~
dang
This is emblematic of many cynically dismissive comments in this thread.

The article is about the difference between real work (that moves a startup
forward) and fake work (that does not). People often work very hard at the
wrong things, so Sam's advice has nothing to do with "work harder". "Work
smarter" might have been closer, if we're going to pick a half of that cliché.
To take a post that is clearly trying to help save founders from a lot of
unnecessary work, and twist it into something sick, is pretty uncharitable.

I keep thinking about adding the Principle of Charity to the HN guidelines.
What good comments would be ruled out if we did this? It would certainly rule
out many bad ones.

[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

~~~
ceejayoz
Sorry, but I _am_ cynical about the article and its motivations.

A venture capitalist isn't generally going to be satisfied with one of their
investments discovering they prefer running as a lifestyle business instead of
a potential multi-billion dollar company.

The VC has an interest in the aggregate success of their portfolio more than
particular startups within it. Advice is going to be oriented towards that
goal - they'd rather have 99 failures and 1 Facebook over 100 $1M sustainable
lifestyle businesses.

"Work as hard as you did in YC" is great and all, but I really don't think
it's possible for most folks long-term.

~~~
dang
YC is not a VC. More importantly, YC is especially known for not blocking
founders' wishes or interests. This has been true since forever and is one
thing that attracted me as a founder to YC. It may be hard for you to believe,
but YC was started by deeply decent people who understand all too well what
being a founder is like, and Sam is squarely in that tradition.

I'm not saying you can't be cynical or feel what you feel. I'm saying that
cynicism also should have a bar to clear. Painting everything black leaves
everything black for everyone. That's intellectual vandalism. It wrecks the
discussion in its vicinity, and ultimately wrecks the community, because
people who don't like wet black paint all over everything will just leave.

What is the minimal bar that cynicism should clear? Addressing a strong
version of what it's critiquing, rather than lazily picking a weak version in
order to get straight to sniping. That's the Principle of Charity, and it's
basic to intellectual honesty. Why should cynicism get a free pass just
because of how it feels? If you had considered that bar before commenting, you
couldn't have posted what you did.

I don't at all mean to pick on you personally and I hope I'm not coming across
that way. This is a systemic question and I care about its systemic effects on
HN. What you posted was no worse than what many people post, and that's the
problem.

------
rwhitman
"But the list of fake work is long."

I would honestly really love to see a full list of tasks and activities that
could be classified as 'fake work'.

~~~
bwilliams18
Generating that list certainly qualifies as 'fake work'.

~~~
rwhitman
This immediately occurred to me as the reason why such a list is not easily
found.

------
mindcrime
Momentum is definitely a big thing. When you get a little bit, everything
seems to feel a little bit easier. Your morale and confidence peak, it's
easier to stay motivated and focused, and the sky even seems bluer. OK, maybe
not that last bit, but you know what I mean.

We were in a place like that towards the end of last year. We got invited
(finally, after several applications) to the CED Tech Venture Conference,
which was an important chance to raise our visibility, meet investors, etc.,
and I had speaking engagements lined up at All Things Open, Tri-JUG and an
NCTA event. In the span of 2 months we had 4 big chances to be "out there"
getting our name out, and we had some really cool new stuff ready to demo...
life was good.

And then two weeks after All Things Open, I find myself on the back of an
ambulance, being rushed to the hospital with a heart attack. Talk about your
momentum killers. :-(

After that, things went into something of a tailspin. Obviously there was a
period of time when I couldn't have cared less about startups, business, or
even technology. I was just happy to be alive, and was focused on bike riding,
diet, and cardiac rehab. But all through that, I figured it would be easy
enough - eventually - to step back into working on Fogbeam and get things
moving again. As it happens, it hasn't been quite so easy.

I mean, don't get me wrong... I'm back. Definitely, absolutely, 100%, back.
But I can only say that as of maybe sometime in the past month. But there was
a 9 month gap in there where I really just wasn't in the right place mentally
to focus on this. It's hard to explain, as I was back to normal physically
within a couple of months, but the mental recovery was actually the harder
part, and getting back to where I am excited about technology and excited
about building a company took a LOT longer than I expected.

I had a little false start back in Feb., when I wrote some code, did some
stuff, and thought I was back on the horse, but it didn't last. It's been
discouraging to deal with all this, and even more so very exactly _because_
all of this happened when we did have some momentum going. Now I find myself
wondering what it's going to take to get that back.

I guess there are a lot of things that can kill your momentum: the "fake work"
that sama talks about, dealing with fundraising, dealing with acquisition
talks, whatever. But from my personal experience I'll just throw in "health
issues".

I'm sure you guys get (or will get) tired of hearing about this from me, and I
am _generally_ not the preachy type but I'll reiterate this again: pay
attention to your health. No, really, do it. It's super easy to assume you're
indestructible and immortal, and to push aside concerns about health. I know,
I lived that. And the younger you are, the easier it is.

But trust me, it's not a good idea to blow that stuff off, no matter how young
you are. Don't say "I'll wait to get back in shape once we have our exit". I
mean, there probably won't be an exit if you're dead; and if there is, you
won't exactly benefit from it. And remember, on things like heart disease, the
artery damage that leads to heart attacks and the like, can begin really
young. Even as young as your teenage years. So no matter how busy you are, or
how old you are, NOW is the time to start eating right, lose weight, quit
smoking, whatever it is you need to do.

Sorry, I'll step off the soapbox now.

~~~
mreiland
I'm genuinely curious, how old were you when you had the heart attack?

~~~
mindcrime
> I'm genuinely curious, how old were you when you had the heart attack?

I was 41.

~~~
mreiland
I turned 37 a few months ago, it's always scary to hear about it happening to
people close in age.

~~~
mindcrime
True, but look at the bright side... you have an opportunity, if you take it
seriously, to take the measures that can help prevent you from experiencing
what I did. The thing about heart attacks, is that they are very preventable.
OK, if you're 65 and have smoked your entire life, and weigh 500 lbs, you may
not be able to reduce your odds a _lot_. But even then, you can reduce your
risk of a heart attack somewhat. At 37, assuming you're in even halfway decent
shape, you can improve your odds quite a lot by doing a few simple things:

1\. stop smoking if you smoke.

2\. lose weight

3\. eat a healthier diet.

4\. improve your lipid profile if it's off (talk to your doctor about this)

5\. lower your blood pressure if it's high (again, talk to your doctor. Also,
see: lose weight, and exercise more)

6\. If you're diabetic, manage that. (Talk to doctor, lose weight, exercise
more)

7\. Exercise more.

8\. (possibly) take a fish-oil supplement. There is at least some research
showing that fish-oil can actually reverse existing atherosclerosis. And while
it's not definitive on that point, almost everybody agrees that fish-oil is
good for you. Even my cardiologist recommended it, while he was neutral /
ambivalent on all of the other dietary supplements I asked him about.

9\. It's even less certain, but consider supplementing COQ10, Aged Garlic
Extract, and/or Resveratrol. There are varying levels of evidence to support
using each of these. Don't take my word for it though, look up what's out
there and judge for yourself. IANAD (Doctor)

10\. Read two books: "Cholesterol Clarity" and "Keto Clarity" both by Jimmy
Moore and Eric C. Westman. Consider their advice.

------
sparkzilla
Is it really the case that out of this startup batch that "25% of the
companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-billion dollar
company"? I haven't really looked at this batch, but I highly doubt that 25
out of the current batch have that ability, just on common sense and past
performance.

------
tlogan
This is an excellent blog: "Focus on growth and never lose momentum. Momentum
cures everything. "

I have one question: What to do if your growth flatlines even if you work
super hard? How to approach that problem? (I know that there is no simple
solution for this - but what would general approach to solve lose of
momentum).

------
gtrubetskoy
"I tell founders to consider how directly a task relates to growing." \- but
is it really all about growing?

~~~
angersock
Yes. Next question?

More seriously, if you're taking a company through the investment/VC pseudo-
Ponzi pipeline, you have to grow. Otherwise, early investors don't get an
exit.

~~~
codingdave
OK, lets break that down more though - Imagine this scenario: You are a
founder, you go YC, you grow a bit, but end up with a company that is settling
down into a lifestyle company, while it still satisfies you personally. The
early investors (YC) push for an exit, but they are a minority of the
shareholders. Certainly, you are grateful to them, and have learned much. But
at the end of the day, the growth and big exit is a goal of a minority, not
you personally.

I understand completely why this is a problem for YC. I just don't see it as
being such a problem for the founders.

~~~
clogston
Maybe if YC is their /only/ investor? I'm not familiar with how YC's initial
investment is structured. But your scenario won't exist for many (close enough
to all?) startups who have investors. What likely happened is the startup
either:

1) raised their money in a priced round. It's therefore unlikely they have
unilateral control of the board.

or

2) didn't do a priced round but went with convertible notes. Those initial
investments are now interest-accruing debt on their balance sheet.

In either of those scenarios there's going to be immense pressure to not let
the business get comfortable.

~~~
codingdave
YC's standard deal (at least according to their FAQ) is for 7% equity. So I
think it is quite likely that YC startups do hold the majority interest.

As for other scenarios, I can't really speak to that - I personally have never
been with a company that accepted any deal that included loss of control. I'm
sure it happens, it just doesn't match my experience.

------
espitia
"Stay focused on building a product your users love and hitting your growth
targets."

How can you grow without a product users love? Say your retention rate is
nowhere where it needs to be yet, isn't it counterproductive to work on
getting more users when you those users won't stick around?

------
trcollinson
A lot of comments seem to be making a horrible comparison between
"relentlessly focusing on building a great product and growing" and working
long hours. There is no rule that says you must spend 120 waking hours in the
office to be relentlessly focused on building a great product and growing the
business. In fact, if anything sama is pointing out that people are wasting
time with work that does not focus on building a great product or growing.

A member of a YC batch seems to have only a few obligations. There was
occasional office hours which help to keep the batch on track with objectives
to reach product or growth excellence. They have social events, which are good
for learning and more general. They have a few demo type activities which are,
again, around product and grown excellence. The rest of the time they work
on... product and growth excellence. Do they have to work on things more than
40 hours a week? No. Is there a time clock where they share their hours? No.

Granted they are often out of their normal environment and very excited so
they do work more than 40 hours. But that is a choice not a requirement. There
are many examples of founders who bring spouses and children and find time
during their batch for having great family experiences and good work/life
balance.

The issue seems to be when they get home. They no longer spend 40 hours
working on growth and product excellence. They work on marketing themselves.
They work on raising more money. They work on PR. They lose the product and
grown momentum.

We need to stop turning this into a conversation about how "start up founders
must give up work/life balance to succeed". No one is suggesting that. What is
being suggested is that you take what you learn in a 3 month period and use it
after that three month period. Don't work longer, work smarter.

Edit: If the down voters would care to discuss why they object to this
opinion, do feel free.

------
GiusCo
Are there statistical differences in slumping rate between pure-software
startups vs domain-specific startups that use software as a tool? Numbers,
please. Thanks.

------
vasilipupkin
don't you think part of it is, startups that are not clearly hotshots that are
going to raise a ton of cash quickly end up needing to focus on fundraising,
and, as an investor, I would expect significant adverse selection on those
startups that didn't land big time backers right away

------
lordnacho
Make them stay for longer. That way the good habits are more likely to build.
Have you considered that?

------
throwaway41597
typo: "Many YC startups learns these lessons" (s/learns/learn/)

------
Uptrenda
So tl; dr: keep working hard.

~~~
eloff
Not hard. Smart. Work on the right things is what the article is all about.
You missed the point.

------
subdane
Something about "startups fail because they simply don't listen to us, get
confused, and stop working" feels wrong coming from the President of YC. It
bothers me that there's no institutional or personal responsibility being
taken. It also bothers me that the risk the founders took isn't being
acknowledged - that all the failures are being placed back on the founders'
shoulders. YC selected these founders from thousands in an incredibly
selective process. Why is Sama crapping on alumni? Wouldn't you want your
president going to bat for you and defending your efforts?

~~~
coffeemug
_> Why is Sama crapping on alumni?_

I don't think he's doing that at all. He merely observed a negative pattern
that many startups tend to fall into by default, and warned people about that
pattern. The tone of the post is clearly "it's easy to make this mistake,
don't make it", not "if you make this mistake you're an idiot." The latter
interpretation is perhaps the least charitable you could have picked.

I do think there is a kernel of truth in your comment. YC tests a lot of
assumptions and tries a lot of things. Many of the tests work out, some don't.
This means that at some point they've necessarily given founders bad advice
that people then went on to execute on. I think that's something worth
acknowledging explicitly (e.g. "hey, we thought this was right but it turned
out to be wrong; sorry"). But there is a huge gap between that, and what you
referred to as "crapping on alumni".

------
powera
I know that Sam knows 100 times what I do about failing startups, and that
some probably do fail for this reason. But I think this meme that "your
startup probably failed just because you stopped trying hard enough" is awful.

Even Sam says IN THIS ARTICLE that "Also, very small startups can grow by
sheer force of will, even with a bad product." Looking at the TechCrunch
reviews, I think probably half of these companies will turn out to be pretty
bad products in hindsight that could never have gone anywhere.

~~~
sama
That's why I said:

"instead of relentlessly focusing on building a great product..."

But I think it's probably very difficult to tell a great/bad product from
reading a paragraph on TechCrunch.

~~~
powera
I wouldn't say that any of these are bad based on TechCrunch; I mean more that
there were something like 3 products that sell machines that sell food, and
there's a chance in 10 years we'll say "there was no way that a food-machine
product could have become a large business". And regardless of how hard they
all work, I don't think it's possible that there will be 3 different "billion-
dollar businesses" here.

~~~
boomzilla
First I agree with you that I don't get a lot of YC startups, including the
food selling machines at their current state. I do think that one of the more
inefficient aspects of life is how humans handle food, from producing,
transporting, storing to cooking/eating. There are just too much waste in
every step of that chains. More depressingly, this is waste that doesn't
necessarily go back to support the environment like the salmon leftover from
the bears. Improving efficiency in any step in this chain is huge for
humankind, and potentially worth a lot of money too. I don't know if the YC
food startups have that goal in mind, or they are more going for the "oh this
is cool" aspect.

