
How to Start a Startup, Lecture 7: How to Build Products Users Love, Part I - stasy
http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec07/
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systemtrigger
Outstanding talk and q/a from a startup grandmaster. Kevin reveals wise
strategy and insight repeatedly. In particular I liked the simplicity of
everyone storing their self authored todo lists on the company dropbox and
using these lists to hold one another accountable. Another point that hit home
was the idea of respecting one another's time and what that means if you think
it through. From the q/a I wonder what the other two YC companies are that
have the same sort of disciplined remote working style that Wufoo has. Since
only 3 YC companies have made remote working work, if Kevin Chris and Ryan had
it to do all over I wonder if they would choose the remote approach again. My
impression is yes, because of the efficiencies gained when remote work is done
well.

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rubiquity
I believe RainforestQA is one of the other remote startups.

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jipiboily
Yes, we have some remote employees. I am myself in Quebec province, Canada. We
have people in Brazil and in different US states too.

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kevin
You can access the slides for the talk here:
[https://kivo.com/p/Ga9PIsNe](https://kivo.com/p/Ga9PIsNe)

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ttty
I like this slide based rendered as pages

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_pius
Many gems in this talk. Loved the mindset of not only recognizing the value of
first impressions, but recognizing that opportunities for first impressions
are everywhere.

~~~
kiernan
Definitely my favourite talk so far, thanks Kevin.

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graycat
Kevin, Nice lecture: Lots of good ideas backed with lots of good experience.

In my start-up, currently I'm just doing the technical part of writing the
code, etc. to get the _product_ to work well, but a little before or after
going live with a version 1.0 I will need to consider your ideas and likely
use several of them.

Your ideas, and experience, on managing a team, including people working from
home, was terrific, by far some of the best team management ideas and
experience I've heard.

Some of what you are suggesting is close to at least three ideas in E. Fromm,
_The Art of Loving_ , e.g., that important qualities are caring, respect, and
responsiveness.

A fourth Fromm idea is _knowledge_ , that is, for a couple to "give knowledge
of themselves to each other". Since the relationship between a business and a
user/customer is not really like a romantic couple, Fromm's idea does not
fully carry over to a business relationship, but maybe some of it does: The
company should try to get the customer/user to give the company, or at least
the company's customer support, _knowledge_ of how they think/feel about the
product/service. Also, your idea of giving a user a list of product
enhancements "since you were gone" (nice wording, suggestive of the caring,
longing, pathos in the old movie _Since You Were Away_ ) can be viewed as the
company _giving knowledge of themselves_ to the user/customer. Nice.

Some of your descriptions of your UX seem to want to give the company a
_personality_ , and I can't help but think of the guest post

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/guest-post-how-to-
social.htm...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/guest-post-how-to-social.html)

by Fakegrimlock, robot dinosaur.

A few weeks ago, Fred Wilson, of AVC.com, posted that post again and said that
it was the most popular post on AVC.com or some such.

Have you seen that post? Do you see some similar or different views?

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kevin
I've not seen that post, but I'll read anything with dinosaurs in it. Fromm's
ideas are very interesting to me. The one you think doesn't apply (about
getting users' feelings), actually does. I talked about it a bit in the
lecture, but you can read something more detailed here about our emotional
dropdown field:

[http://www.particletree.com/features/on-asking-users-for-
the...](http://www.particletree.com/features/on-asking-users-for-their-
feelings/)

~~~
graycat
Yes, your "emotional dropdown field was terrific. Yes, of course it was in
your lecture, but I typed quickly and don't have the transcript yet so missed
that connection.

 _Nice_ lecture!

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rajensanghvi
24 Quotes that I took away from Kevin's Lecture...all 140 characters or less.

[https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/24-quotes-from-
kev...](https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/24-quotes-from-kevin-hale-
on-building-a-products-users-love-fe60d5451a08)

~~~
kevin
Ugh. Definitely not Bartlett's material. I now see why pg writes down all his
presentations.

~~~
mrev19
To me your talk was very authentic. I felt like I was having a beer with you
and you were just laying out in an hour how you see things. It was super
impactful and totally changed the way I think about a number of things. A big
part of that was from realizing how deeply you've internalized and proven
these concepts and strategies, and that came across through the delivery. It
felt like an interaction, and an interaction can't be reduced to quotes or
soundbytes.

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wellboy
Awesome lecture. A summary of the points that hit home for me

1\. Really try create amazing first moments in your product

2\. There are many first moments in your product, every feature of your
product has a first moment

3\. The little things that tell your users who is behind the company are VERY
IMPORTANT, ROARRR tooltip, a little poem in sign up forms. It's the little
things

4\. Deeply implement Support Driven Development in your company culture

5\. Let your users know what happened since they have been gone. --> set up a
drip campaign, which reminds users who haven't logged in for a while

6\. Send handwritten thank you cards to your BEST customers is very valuable

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bigbang
Awesome talk. Really got me into thinking on paying more attention to design
of login/checkout pages.

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albakes
Great lecture, Kevin.

What is your opinion on using platforms such as oDesk.com for tracking remote
workers?

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kevin
Never used them, so I don't really have an opinion on oDesk specifically. I
like my process to be as simple as possible and rely on hiring remarkable
people. Those people tend to just do their jobs and do them well.

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scobar
If you could redo the hand-written Christmas cards to show appreciation to
customers, would you still send every customer a card at first, or would you
start with the weekly schedule you transitioned to later? Thank you for the
great talk.

~~~
kevin
Hmmm...I don't know. It was great being able to send all the customers a card
that first year. That said, if we had done it every week, we probably would
have gotten through all of them too. I actually liked the weekly cards better
than the Christmas cards because the former were unexpected by our users,
which makes for the best gifts. More of the xmas cards were probably taken for
granted.

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jonalmeida
Notes: [http://jonalmeida.com/posts/2014/10/19/htsas-
lec07/](http://jonalmeida.com/posts/2014/10/19/htsas-lec07/)

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withaspark
This was by far the most amazing lecture yet. Practical, actionable, and
concise. Major kudos to Kevin Hale; this has helped me so much.

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purephase
Anyone know if you can get these in a podcast format?

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quaunaut
If you're using an iOS device, the iTunes store has the "How to Start a
Startup" podcast which is an audio-only version of all of the talks.

~~~
kevin
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-start-a-
startup/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-start-a-
startup/id922398209?mt=2)

