
Startup advice - sama
http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice
======
diego
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."

~~~
jonnathanson
_"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.

~~~
einhverfr
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
_"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.

~~~
einhverfr
Sorry, I am afraid the expression of agreement couched in sarcastic opposition
didn't come across very well.

We are in agreement here.

The only possible disagreement is whether focusing on what people "want" is a
useful metric. People may think things are cool. The better view in my sense
is to focus on what people find useful.

------
dvt
(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
> (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>), 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.

------
cuttooth
"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
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.

~~~
danielweber
Without a face in the boardroom, how do you stop yourself from being diluted
out to nil?

~~~
sama
This usually only happens if the company is failing, in which case your stock
is close to worthless anyway.

------
immy
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

------
darrellsilver
Now working on <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
Presumably because for investors, aptitude is invariably acquired through
experience.

~~~
darrellsilver
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.

------
7Figures2Commas
> 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
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
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.

------
tptacek
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.

~~~
adharmad
_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)._

But did he take the advise himself with Loopt..?

~~~
jammur
He ran it for 7 years before being acquired, and is still working on it at
Green Dot. I would consider that taking his own advice.

------
chasing
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
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.

------
zbruhnke
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

------
ahsanhilal
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.

------
fi8on
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.

------
stevenj
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
1) realize that there is no 3 point list to success

2) ???

3) profit!

------
tzaman
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
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.

------
ntoshev
_50\. You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental
refinement, or complex coordination._

How can complex coordination create value? An example, perhaps?

~~~
gsmaverick
I would guess that Uber is a good example.

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

~~~
immy
yo Eric, check out some of Nir Eyal's talks <http://vimeo.com/63534588>

------
ChuckMcM
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.

------
famousactress
What does "Schleps are good" mean?

~~~
gmonaco
Read "Schlep Blindness" from PG[1].

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html>

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

~~~
gyardley
That guy? Paul Graham.

From <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
What is he talking about? He isn't talking about a saying like "stubborn as a
mule", is he?

~~~
youngerdryas
He is saying disregard personal hygiene deficiencies.

~~~
mrperl
Likely he means, "totally committed, focused and in the moment", like a party
animal, and without existential doubts about being in your startup.

------
amirmc
_"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
People bounce from one idea to the next without exploring an idea deeply.

------
_pmf_
> 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
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.

------
d0m
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!

------
agranzel
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>

------
daniel-cussen
95 theses, huh? Like Martin Luther?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses>

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

~~~
simonw
It was acquired by Green Dot last year.

------
acgourley
_75\. Give your investors something to do._

sama can you clarify - as you could take it a couple ways

~~~
sama
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.

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

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

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

------
richkuo
"22. Don’t die."

aka "Don't YOLO"

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

