
Things I learned at YC - aelaguiz
http://aelag.com/58-things-i-learned-at-yc
======
edw519
I like lists like this because they're so quick and easy to read, you only
have to learn 1 or 2 new things to get great ROI.

For me, the items fall into 4 categories:

1\. Go without saying, but need to be said anyway:

    
    
      - Real businesses have customers
      - It gets harder, not easier
      - Investors are normal people too
    

2\. Interesting observation:

    
    
      - Being committed in the face of contrary evidence can sometimes be a game-maker. Generally though it’s just stupid.
      - Even very successful people frequently misunderstand their own success
      - There is no one thing that makes a company work.
    

3\. Sound important, but really aren't:

    
    
      - Everyone is basically scared of everyone else at first
      - Bring a notebook; don’t take notes on your phone. People think you are tweeting or something.
      - People without life responsibility (kids, wife, etc) are at a serious advantage in the beginning stages
      - Every guy has thought about starting a dating site
    

4\. Insightful:

    
    
      - If it seems hard but important and you try to outsource it, you'll probably get screwed. Potentially for a long time.
      - The more stability the rest of your life has, the easier it’ll be to deal with the massive instability of a startup
      - Small problems between team members will become big problems given time
      - Stop dancing around the thing and say the thing (I love this one.)
    

Great list! Thanks for sharing, Amir.

~~~
salemh
_\- Even very successful people frequently misunderstand their own success_

Do you think this is related to impostor syndrome[1], or something different?
Perhaps not as "harsh" as impostor syndrome?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

~~~
dhimes
I think it's partly to do with the fact that in a complex system it's
sometimes pretty difficult to clearly identify lines of cause and effect, but
most smart people will think about it until they've satisfied themselves that
they have figured it out.

This is why I'm not so sold on advice given by 'one-hit wonders,' people who
scored big with a startup and are now seen as gurus because of it. I'm
interested to hear what they say, but I'm skeptical.

------
sillysaurus2
_Frequently YC’s advice is applicable at the aggregate but not individual
level. Like in the grand scheme the biggest number of successful startups
would be produced if all of them followed this advice, but you personally
would not have your YC Expected Value maximized by following it._

This is the most interesting and counter-intuitive point, I think.

~~~
wellboy
Gosh I love this thread.

That's the most important point about how to take advice if you put it in a
formula, it's basically the mathematical explanation.

The way it has been phrased on numerous other blog post was to take advice not
literally, but to see where the other person is coming from and how the advice
is applicable to your startup specifically.

My most favourite way to phrase it is to try to find the 10% of advice out of
the 100% that the person gave you, that is valuable for your startup.

------
robin_reala
_If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective,
we 'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How
To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys."_

~~~
logicallee
I would normally agree with you, but the fact that there are 58 of them
actually makes this a more meaty article.

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jacquesm
That's a pretty good list, actually. Thanks for posting this, I'm sure that
any start-up could do a lot worse than to print this out in big type and
staple it to their wall.

------
mattsfrey
\- Just shut up and get a .com

This one is so hard, I've spent probably over 100 dollars in the past on those
magical domain name thinker upper tools

------
pkorzeniewski
One thing that bothers me with advices like this is the overall negativity.
Yes, we all know creating a profitable startup isn't easy, but hearing over
and over again "You will fail many times", "Its get harder not easier" and so
on is really demotivating. Seriously, are there no entrepreneur stories that
had a great idea from the beginning, executed them smoothly without any
outside financing and achieved success? And by success I mean satisfying
income that allows them to work full-time on their startup and live on a
decent level. Not everyone wants to build The Next Great Thing, acquire
hundreds of thousands users, generate mutli-million revenue and so on.

~~~
dkersten
_Seriously, are there no entrepreneur stories that had a great idea from the
beginning, executed them smoothly without any outside financing and achieved
success?_

Of course there are, but what use is telling people that they can execute
smoothly and be successful (without outside funding) and everything will be
great when this isn't how it works for the majority of people. I understand
that being told that its hard and you will fail is demotivating, but telling
people otherwise isn't going to help them because it _is_ hard and most people
_will_ fail many times before they become successful. Maybe it should be seen
as a perseverance test - if you can still stay motivated after being told
these demotivational things, then its an indicator that you might just have
what you need to persevere and make it.

The 90% of startups failing thing is true - I see it all around me, I even
experienced it myself. You may think it doesn't apply to you (as I did in my
previous startup), but chances are it does. I think its best to prepare people
for this reality and help them persevere and learn and become stronger. Even
if its demotivating...

------
xSwag
Can sombody please expand on: _If there is no competition you’re probably
screwed._ Are there any cases when this is not applicable?

(I recently started a website that nobody else seems to have done before --
web version of a desktop based tool)

~~~
yurisagalov
Actually, in your case you still have competition - You're competing against
the desktop-based tool. People coming to your service will be choosing between
your tool, and the desktop-based variant.

In regards to the original statement -- if there's no competition there's a
possible risk that there's no market. It's not always the case (once in a
while you really did create something that nobody knew they needed until you
give it to them), but it can be dangerous to delude yourself into thinking you
came up with that one product.

More often, no competition means no market and no market means it doesn't
matter how good your product is -- nobody wants it.

~~~
badclient
I'd make a distinction between _no market_ and _no existing market_. Generally
creating markets is much harder and riskier but often more profitable if you
succeed.

Example: BuddyMedia created the social media management tools market; hundreds
of startups are now in that market.

~~~
yurisagalov
You're right. After I posted my response I was thinking of making that
distinction and actually talk about the idea of first mover disadvantage (HBR
covers it well : [http://hbr.org/2001/10/first-mover-
disadvantage/ar/1](http://hbr.org/2001/10/first-mover-disadvantage/ar/1))

------
001sky
_\- The most elusive skill seemed to be knowing what to invent and what to
steal_

 _\- Everyone’s problem is money until it’s hiring_

Two I liked, highlighting subtle but critical pain/points.

------
endriju
Thanks for sharing this! However, i think there is a bit of a contradiction in
following 2 points:

 _\- The more stability the rest of your life has, the easier it’ll be to deal
with the massive instability of a startup_

 _\- People without life responsibility (kids, wife, etc) are at a serious
advantage in the beginning stages_

So what would your conclusion be here? Are people with stable love-life in
advantage, or are single people the ones that have better chances?

~~~
Iftheshoefits
I interpreted that as concerning two different domains with respect to a Start
Up (or any immature business, really).

With respect to stability: Persons with lots of frequently changing variables
in their lives (e.g. frequent beginnings/endings to relationships, moving
around, etc.) have less stability. Adding the instability that comes with a
turbulent, chaotic tech start up just compounds the issue and taxes one's
resilience even more, because inevitably one will have to pay attention to
instabilities other than business related ones.

With respect to responsibility: having kids, a spouse and other similar
obligations (can) act as a tether and definitely act as dividers of attention.
A spouse and children necessarily require attention that could otherwise be
focused on the business. This is really much more of a problem for individuals
who aren't already financially secure and depend on some relatively secure,
stable income to support their lives.

The common element in both cases is time and attention: living an unstable
life increases the probability of something other than the business acting as
competition for attention, and living a life with other responsibilities
"baked in" guarantees competition for attention.

------
peterjancelis
"The best companies didn't have political alliances because their product was
awesome and they mostly knew it. The second best companies had fantastic
political alliances and an okay product / traction."

Political alliances with whom exactly?

"Every guy has thought about starting a dating site."

That one cracked me up.

"If there is no competition you’re probably screwed."

Maybe, but if the second best will be close in quality to the best one in your
vertical, you won't have a very valuable company. See Peter Thiel's comments
in his PandoMonthly interview.

"It gets harder, not easier"

Can you give some examples? Being able to build a team should make things
easier on the founders, as they no longer have to be great at everything. I've
seen founders get more relaxed as the business matured.

"All the technology heavy startups wanted to try to somehow outsource their
marketing or customer acquisition"

I've seen this a lot and guilty of it myself.

------
GrinningFool
"\- Never discredit teams in YC if they are still showing up to the events
together and seem to be working"

Is it accepted to discredit them/talk crap about them if they're not doing
this?

~~~
aelaguiz
Clearly not. It means that a team who is doing the YC activities and working
hard always has a chance even if they don't appear to have found a market.

~~~
GrinningFool
Fair point. I think I was making a slightly more nuanced interpretation than
the author intended.

------
the_watcher
I think there is an important reason why people keep starting dating sites,
and a good one. One of the things you should always have when starting a
company is a way to make money (no matter how far in the future, speculative,
or whatever, there should be some possibility of making money). What is
something that humans have shown a willingness to pay for since the dawn of
time?

------
exo_duz
Thanks for this. Very insightful.

I did a Startup Weekend a few months ago and the biggest lesson I learnt there
was "Listen, listen, listen!" as well as "Ask for help, you don't have all the
answers".

The peopl are there to help and they are either volunteering their time to do
so. Take full advantage of that.

------
jmngomes
"The best companies didn't have political alliances because their product was
awesome and they mostly knew it"

Even if you have a great product, some industries, like advertising or public
sector, are an order of magnitude harder to sell to if you're not _really_
well connected.

~~~
dclusin
It seems like this is largely the point of a startup accelerator. In exchange
for equity you get cash, advice, and introductions to investors who have
connections in the relevant area.

------
Justen
Nice list! Some solid bits of advice there. I've been working over a year with
a buddy on something we're looking to release before the new year. As the last
couple weeks count down, I wish I had that advice e-mail address lol.

------
stephengillie
Old people have got to get over this stigma of taking notes on electronic
devices. It's the 21st century, and we have the technology, but everyone wants
to be a hipster and it's just stupid.

~~~
harlanlewis
Whether you have someone's attention is obvious regardless of what they're
holding, so I don't care about that. If someone is rude enough to give only
partial attention while they tweet through a conversation, that's fine and
I'll deal with it as appropriate.

That said, I have noticed a high correlation between taking notes on a phone
and taking really shitty notes - a few characters instead of a sentence, no
connections between related ideas that came up at different times, no
drawings, interruptions for futzing with the lackluster select/editing tools
on touch devices.

But maybe all that doesn't matter and it's not the tool at all. Maybe it's
that the only people who try it don't know how to take notes while being
engaged in a conversation.

------
emeidi
Let me guess: 1) Add as much items to a list as possible?

------
GuerraEarth
I read this carefully. Thanks for posting. Applying to YC this time around,
with a lot of glee and enthusiasm.

------
vldx
> Every guy has thought about starting a dating site

That was good.

~~~
the_watcher
I laughed at this too, as a few years back at a startup program (hard to
describe, not quite hackathon, really idea lab) I spent a weekend working on
the exact same idea as Grouper (3 on 3 dates). We didn't keep going as the
founder lost interest when some advisors told him online dating was over (in
the disruption sense).

------
nephorider
One more would be to never give up even if you may be dead 3 hours later.

------
codex
More advice from a failed YC company (an acquhire is not a success). I
understand the desire to salvage something from the experience, but I only
take advise from those more successful than I am. There are so many of those.

~~~
pg
Actually Amir's company is still operating. But even if it weren't, you'd be
mistaken. People who fail have some of the most valuable insights. I learned
YC's motto "Make something people want" from failing to do it myself.

~~~
codex
I agree. However, people who fail also have terrible insights; for some, that
contributed to their failure. And there's no reason to believe the specific
reasons for their failure will be applicable to you. In the NFL, teams which
lose tend to keep losing even though they have plenty of opportunity to learn.
Teams are salary capped, so there is no intrinsic advantage.

All successful companies are alike. Each failure fails in its own way.

~~~
teleclimber
I really disagree. I think people learn more from failures. In many cases it
seems the successful ones don't really truly know why they were successful.

Of course they did a lot of things right and it's worthwhile to listen to how
they accomplished that, but if you were to duplicate exactly what they did you
wouldn't necessarily be successful. So clearly there is something more to it.

In any case, there will be bad advice coming from both successes and failures.
To eliminate all the "failures" as having "terrible insights" is short-
sighted.

PS: I'm NOT a YC alum. And my bootstrapped company is running with revenues.

~~~
nostrademons
I think people learn more from success than from failure, but they learn more
from failure than from doing nothing. Since typically your choice is between
trying and not trying and not between succeeding and failing, your dominant
strategy should be to try and let the cards fall where they may.

Aside from that, most of the people reading are in the "doing nothing"
category (I'm largely in this category myself when it comes to startups,
though I have tried and failed before), and so it behooves them to listen to
the failures. :-)

