
Y Combinator Startup Library 2.0 - tosh
https://www.ycombinator.com/library
======
katm
Hi HN -- Kat here. Catheryn Li and I worked on launching this version of the
library. This is Phase 1 -- we'll be adding more content from YC's archives,
and new content as more is made. Seeing this thread and what you're searching
for will give us a better sense of what we're missing. If you have feedback or
ideas - let us know: catheryn@ycombinator.com and kat@ycombinator.com.

~~~
nyrulez
I spent a lot of time compiling and digging through YC resources in March and
had a few things to share from my experience: (I am behind ycadvice.com)

\- Types of content so I can isolate videos quickly.

\- Sidebar is sorted alphabetically. This way some of the important categories
get buried at the bottom - in our experience, links at the bottom see much
less interaction than at the top. Would it also make sense to have a view
categories are sorted based on their "subjective" importance ? Alphabetical is
awesome for searching a particular thing, but sometimes not so good for
discovering important categories.

\- We never really did this, but having some kind of popular vs less popular
resources is also nice as a future idea.

\- Happy to share our resources/list with you in any way if it helps.

~~~
catherynl
Really cool resource, thanks for sharing your thoughts!

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contingencies
Observation due to current venture: not much of the strategy content applies
to hardware companies (particularly hardware companies not manufacturing
consumer or IOT widgets). Similarly, not much of the funding and regulatory
advice applies to cross-border startups.

Regarding deep tech hardware, on the one hand you have PG stating his support
for from-scratch thinking[0], on the other hand you have this de-facto "ship
and iterate" model from the SaaS world which just doesn't apply to nontrivial
hardware projects.

I have to say this problem isn't specific to YC: the vast majority of advice
liberally distributed to founders by VC and early stage investment world
actors can range from irrelevant to dangerously misleading for founders in
some of these spaces.

The lesson here is: take what you will and treat nothing as gospel.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1172430190401572864](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1172430190401572864)

~~~
mauriziocalo
Two observations:

1) Shipping-and-iterating is _uncomfortably hard_. Putting your product out
there in front of users is _painful_. It's a lot easier to just constantly
brainstorm ideas or hide in the coding cave.

2) As a founder, it's tempting to think that your startup is unique: what
you're building is uniquely challenging, important and highly non-trivial.

Anecdotally, I've seen far too many founders (including my own past self) use
_2_ as an excuse not to do _1_ : most of the time, those never even launch.
And not just in the hardware space, but also in: health-tech, bio, fin-tech,
gov-tech, legal-tech, insur-tech, prop-tech, food-tech, logistics, and even
B2B SaaS ( _" what we're building is hard and needs enterprise-grade
robustness / security"_).

There may be ways to build massively successful companies that don't involve
rapid shipping-and-iterating cycles, and in general there may be ways to build
successful companies while ignoring or even doing the exact opposite of what
YC advises.

But YC would know a few things about hard-tech from having funded possibly
hundreds of such companies, including several massively successful companies.
In fact, the top 3 YC companies of all-time as of 2020 are all in highly-
regulated spaces: Stripe, Airbnb and Cruise [1]. Cruise in particular is a
hardware company (self-driving cars) whose billion-dollar success was largely
due to their ability to ship-and-iterate much, much faster than pretty much
every other self-driving car company out there.

[1]
[https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies](https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies)

~~~
contingencies
Yes that is great advice for _many_ startups _most_ of the time, but my whole
point in the grandparent was that when as a founder you find the hand-me-down
wisdom doesn't fit, don't be afraid to leave it alone and think for yourself.

PS. If your criticism were right my coding cave is a 1000m2 factory, which has
to be some kind of record. /s

~~~
capocannoniere
In your parent comment you mention:

 _> not much of the strategy content applies to hardware companies_

While it's probably a good idea to not blindly follow every single piece of
advice (by YC or anyone), saying that _not much of the content applies_ is
probably a bit of a stretch. Considering how many successful companies YC has
funded in the hard-tech space, I'd be receptive to at least some of their
advice / insights.

You also mention:

 _> you have this de-facto "ship and iterate" model from the SaaS world which
just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware projects._

Again, it may be a good idea to question the advice of "ship and iterate", but
saying _it just doesn't apply to nontrivial hardware project_ is again a bit
of a stretch. As the above commenter mentions, the success of Cruise is a good
counterexample.

~~~
contingencies
I think you are ignoring the reasonable point and splitting hairs. One might
equally say few/none of the US examples would have been possible outside of
the US market (where "ask for forgiveness" is not an option), or that Cruise
never shipped.

------
dvaun
Does anyone from HN have any resources specifically for non-profits and non-
profit startups?

I do love the quantity of information that's available here. Now, although YC
is clearly for-profit, I'd love it if there were more resources about some of
the non-profits that they have funded over the years.

Searching for 'non-profit' comes up with 4 relevant results[0]. I've read
through these previously and have taken some of their advice for a non-profit
startup that I've began working with[1]. That being said, I've done a lot of
research elsewhere (e.g. looking through comments on Goodreads and Reddit
about books for non-profits, tax advice, etc.) since I can't glean info from
HN or YC as I usually can for other topics.

I'd love to read through any interesting resources about non-profit
development if there are HNers that have some. Any takers?

Edit: I should clarify that I've signed up and invited some of the others from
our non-profit for Startup School. We haven't participated yet because we are
still hashing out features for our MVP and figuring out a fundraising
strategy.

[0]: [https://www.ycombinator.com/library?query=non-
profit](https://www.ycombinator.com/library?query=non-profit)

[1]: [https://www.policedap.org/](https://www.policedap.org/)

~~~
ceolin
It's not from YC but this Tech Nonprofit Playbook is pretty useful:
[https://www.ffwd.org/playbook/](https://www.ffwd.org/playbook/)

~~~
dvaun
I'm taking a look at it now, thank you very much!

------
nyrulez
As YC fans, we also built [https://ycadvice.com](https://ycadvice.com) which
also offers a more comprehensive view on all YC resources ever released for
startup founders. (700+ and deeply categorized)

------
briandoll
I'm a little surprised only 9 of the 302 articles appear to focus on
marketing. For anyone looking for marketing specific guidance, we've got a lot
of free materials on our blog:
[https://www.reifyworks.com/writing](https://www.reifyworks.com/writing)

We've helped 80+ developer-focused companies over the last few years as a
consultancy, after our careers as founding marketing leaders.

The Heavybit Library is also really incredible, with lots of video content
(transcribed, searchable) with a similar focus to what's here.
[https://www.heavybit.com/library/](https://www.heavybit.com/library/)

~~~
conductr
Maybe just vocabulary?. I searched sales, conversion, and pricing and found a
bit of info on each. To me, these are all tactical components of the marketing
strategy. So the subject focus content is appreciated. Maybe others are
different in this regard, but I just would never think to search marketing as
it’s so open ended.

------
fossuser
Great - I had been trying to find this talk to link to someone a couple of
times over the last few months and was bummed that all the links were dead.

Looks like it’s working now.

[https://www.ycombinator.com/library/76-how-to-invent-the-
fut...](https://www.ycombinator.com/library/76-how-to-invent-the-future-ii-
sus-2017)

~~~
tosh
thanks, I was also looking for Alan Kay's talk recently!

------
wmab
This is a great resource, and some thoroughly well researched pieces included,
thanks for bringing it all together!

One category that seems notably missing is exits. I'm sure this is some of
interest to 100% of the community, and doesn't seem as widely discussed as
fundraising, but arguably more important.

A lot has changed in viewpoints since PG's 'Don't Talk to CorpDev'[1].
Consensus is moving towards developing relationships with partners being a
benefit. ONe of the best pieces I've read on the subject is Patrick Lowndes' 4
part documentation on selling VendorHawk to ServiceNow[2].

It would be great if YC are willing to share their views on harnessing
partnerships, inflection points (ie, it's not always best to raise the next
round, and an inflection point should bring together all the options),
creating a competitive bidding process, due diligence, how investors think of
exits etc etc etc.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html)
[2] [https://patricklowndes.com/2018/07/16/getting-
acquired-1-of-...](https://patricklowndes.com/2018/07/16/getting-
acquired-1-of-4-engaging-corp-dev-for-partnership-or-acquisition/)

------
longtermdd
It feels like a lot of unstructured content to be honest. Where to start?
Where to finish? What's critical and what's just entertainment? I was a little
disappointed to be honest. Expected a ton of NEW content instead of a "google
for YC". I will keep to Google to search for amazing HN content
(site:ycombinator.com)

~~~
luxurytent
It’s in the name: library

Run free :)

------
nojvek
Holy moly. This is massive. I kept on infinite scrolling for at-least 5
minutes and it still kept on loading.

If we feed the transcriptions to GPT3, would it start giving great startup
advice and building startups for us?

~~~
omarhaneef
Rumor has it that everything after the first three lectures is just GPT3
running the first three lectures with deepfake videos.

------
the_duke
Since this library doesn't cover any actual books, I'd love to hear from
current/previous founders:

Which books had the biggest impact on your startup endeavours?

~~~
khazhoux
Heh, I'm personally interested in a slightly different question: have any
books _actually_ , _really_ made an impact on your startup endeavors? I
suppose I'm jaded at this point, but having read so many books whose takeaways
can be easily summarized in 4-5 sentences, and with so much advice either very
obvious, very difficult, very dependent on specific circumstances and
situation, I no longer believe in the value of business/entrepreneurship
texts.

( _massive spoilers_ : talk to customers early, build your product quickly,
get feedback often, make decisions quickly, raise more money than you think
you need, when you become CEO your job duties will be very different than what
you might expect, build something people love (genius-level advice), ...)

~~~
codingdave
General business books, pop culture leadership books and the like, no. Not at
all. But I've also been in this game for a couple decades. Books can be
helpful if you are newer to the industry.

Books about my specific subject area? Absolutely. Once you get into the weeds
of your own niche, they are a huge help to knowing the niche.

------
ariofrio
Great resources. Quick bug report:

Might want to add `overflow: hidden` on the container with `border-radius`
(.SharedDirectory-module__section___1ljf9). Currently hovering over the first
link shows a background over the rounded corners.

------
bigpumpkin
I would love more content on product design for mobile/ mobile web. Especially
how the design should not just look good but also help users to keep using the
product. Seems to be a common pain-point for founders.

------
desireco42
Even though anyone can just signup and be a member, I feel profoundly proud I
am in this club :).

Online version of YC is great resource and good way to do things now that we
don't want to meet in person as much.

------
alienonwings
Since I am new on the forum here, would anyone be able to recommend some good
materials for me to get hold of development or product ownership for
electronics products/embedded systems products?

------
elpakal
One of the things I love most about YC is hearing about previous YC companies
and what they did to succeed (eg, Airbnb). It would be cool to have a filter
or tag by company - but this is really cool!

------
sillysaurusx
Is there any way to see the old library other than wayback machine?

~~~
katm
[https://www.startupschool.org/library](https://www.startupschool.org/library)

------
bg24
It does not matter whether you work in startup, or large company, or founding
a startup. It does not matter whether you are a gen-x/y/z.

This is an invaluable resource!!!

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akerro
I get this is YC where investors are involved (required part?), but are there
any good resources on organic growth?

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tosh
context: just got relaunched
[https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1291409140946833408?s=20](https://twitter.com/mwseibel/status/1291409140946833408?s=20)

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kgc
It's like PG's blog but distributed among more minds.

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alexpetralia
Love the transcripts! Thanks for this thoughtful addition.

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akerro
This is great for coreboot right?

~~~
tecleandor
I think you confused the Intel leak thread with this one ;)

~~~
akerro
yes i did

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gk1
Down: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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ultimoo
Hug of death? Getting a 502.

