I haven’t finished reading this, but what strikes me about the advice in the notes is that much of it is either contradictory or there exist counterexamples to the claims. For example, the reader is encouraged to start building, but is told you also need a good idea and that you can pivot but most good companies don’t start with a pivot. Counterexample: Slack was a pivot. We’re also instructed that you should build something that’s hard to replicate, but also that the thing you build first should be simple. What am I supposed to take away from this? If it’s simple, isn’t it almost surely replicable? Also, Netflix is a good counterexample: they just started with a DVD mail service, and were easily replicable by an incumbent, like Blockbuster. And the advice about not creating a market goes against what sometimes occurs through branding. The original Banana Republic sold “safari clothing”. There was no market for this before Banana Republic. Nor was there a market for energy drinks before Red Bull. I’m told that you should have a cofounder, yet is appears that there’s many examples of successful companies without one (eg Amazon, IKEA). I’m not sure if this appears in the document yet, but another piece of conventional wisedom I’ve heard is that you need to work on your startup full time or else (insert bad thing about you not being committed). But what about Nike, whose founder worked for 5 years as an accountant while he developed the business?
My point is that a lot of the advice I’ve heard about startups in general is framed (intentionally or unintentionally) as a series of directives that will optimize your chances of success. Moreover, no other additional context is provided to help you frame the advice, such that you can tell whether or not it’s applicable or appropriate advice to follow. The lack of context coupled with the existence of so many blatant counterexamples and contradictions prevents the advice from being useful.
Starting a company requires a tolerance for ambiguity. If there were a rules based system for how to start a startup, then startups wouldn't exist: they'd be "innovation processes" at big companies, and your advisors would be your bosses
The existence of counterexamples and conflicting advice doesn't mean that advice isn't useful, conflicting advice is just a symptom of startups being uncertain. With a large enough sample size of advice, you can start to make sense of it, understand what's good and bad advice, understand how people's life experience and incentives may color their advice etc. this makes it much easier for you to turn that advice into decisions and actionable steps
If you think about it this way then more advice is better. It's just up to you to synthesize that advice and decide what to do with it
> The problem is that there are so many blatant counterexamples and contradictory narratives that the advice ceases to be helpful.
Because there's no set of instructions that will work for sure.
What one needs to success with a startup is several of these: work hard, work smart, connections, piles of money, idea, marketing, good timing and luck.
You can have most of them and not triumf, you can have only a pair and succeed. With none it's not possible. The ones that seem to matter the most are the ones you come with (money/connections) and the ones that you can't affect much (good timing/luck).
I felt this way going through YC - sometimes different partners gave conflicting advice, and that felt confusing. It took a while for me to look back on the experience and realize it was a feature not a bug.
[edit - disclosure: I was one of the presenters in this series.]
"Assigning single factor causation to the output of complex adaptive system is a triumph of hope over experience."
This is a quote from Tren Griffin about the stock market but it holds true for startups as well. Successful people who help out entrepreneurs often take their survivorship bias'd situations and assign single factor causation to them. Thus you end up with conflicting advice because "sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't".
Generic advice is not hurtful, it's just not contextual. It's your job (the founder) to decide whether it can fit your context or not.
In the end, the best way to learn how to start a startup is to ignore everything and just do it. Other people will tell you the best way to have started their company. No one is going to be able to teach you how to start yours.
To be clear, I'm not saying that there's not good advice floating around. There is. The trick is knowing how to separate the bad from the good, and as someone who's new to the startup world, that's pretty hard (impossible?) to do.
There are counter examples to everything, that doesn’t make it bad advice.
Some people smoke cigarettes their whole life and live until old age without ever getting cancer. Should we conclude smoking does not cause cancer just because there are counter examples?
As you said, the advice is meant to maximize the chance of success. It is still not sufficient or without exceptions.
In the end, advice is only valuable if you put it through your own filter and use your own judgement to make the best decision.
This is definitely something I was thinking about a lot of as I compiled these notes. To be fair, each lecture was a standalone by a different speaker, with different backgrounds, experiences and skills. I'm not surprised that there are some contradictions. Like other commenters have pointed out, YMMV depending on a gazillion unknown factors.
Perhaps here's a meta-lesson to be learned for a right mindset: there are many ways to start (a good news i presume) but less and less ways to grow in a sustainable fashion as your business matures (YC or others can help you with that).
My biggest problem with the advice from YC and Startup school notes like this is that they pretend they're the first to ever discover these ideas or principles. They have experience with many start-ups over the last decade, which is true, but the concepts and ideas here are very old. They're rediscovering the Polio vaccine.
Furthermore, they are extremely biased towards start-ups, which is understandable. You could not easily make a worse financial decision, statistically speaking. But they need most of us to do it for them to stay in business.
Just sharing the notes I compiled while watching the online sessions @ https://startupclass.samaltman.com/. I've been sitting on this for about half a year, and almost forgot I'd compiled it.
I am not in the startup scene but why cant one of the best reason to start a company be to make more MONEY. Why is it always about changing the world and the universe needs me type of stuff. This is too SV cartoonish for me.
The argument against this is that founding a startup, when factoring in the incredibly low success rate, may not be the best strategy to gain money. Joining an early stage startup (with equity) that's clearly on a growth path, or even working for a Google, Facebook, etc. is a much better bet for making money.
Also, startups, where startup means creating a new unproven solution intended to achieve exponential growth, are unfathomably hard. It's hard (in my experience) to stay motivated in the face of startup hardships when one's primary objective is money.
Because most employees assume money is a given, and they align with a mission instead. It is also not socially acceptable to be in something just for the money unless it is wall street.
I recently started out on this road as a solo founder [0], and out of all the given pieces of advice that YC gives, two things are the most conflicting for me:
- This pressure to have a co-founder. I see that quoted as a major reasons for why startups go bust but also necessary for doing anything meaningful. I can imagine there being truth to both statements. I've seen startups go bust in my own network on both sides of the divide. But I feel there isn't enough advice out there for folks who are doing it Solo - that's still a valid design pattern for many startups in the past or present.
- The whole idea of go big or go home - lot of the advice seems to assume you want to be really big one day. There doesn't seem to be enough advice for someone wanting to be a 10M-100M dollar business as their main milestone, not as a path to hit a billion dollar valuation. That kind of assumption results in very different kinds of design patterns, often borrowed from other billion dollar startups that may not make sense to your own little venture in the beginning.
I wish startup advice wasn't universal as every author or speaker would like you to believe - there could be a system where it was doled out based on the current phase and situation, or at least recognizing the fact that there isn't one size fits all for something as varied as starting your own venture.
The old "Business of Software" forums, part of joelonsoftware.com, had lots of good advice for single founders. The term micro-ISV (independent software vendor) was very popular there. Unfortunately, it got shut down few years back.
There's a huge amount of survivorship bias in all such lists. Startups that succeed get analyzed a lot, those that did pretty much the same things but failed don't. To be rigorous about it, you'd have to define things like what's a startup, what constitutes success, what constitutes failure, far more carefully.
That's the good thing about lists that come from VCs. They analyze both the successes and failures, as well as things like risk level. YC also does a great job of not falling into the trap of copying the last superstar.
Hi there! I'm the OP. I'm not affiliated to YC, and I didn't even notice the change till you pointed it out. I haven't been contacted by an admin, so I'm just as in the dark as you are.
Catchy title with strong words ('57-page', 'YC'), no real click-bait but close.
I skimmed the first pages and most of the advice is neither wrong or bad. Still, reading a lenghty 57-note in order to learn is wrong.
You learn by doing. If you want to start something stop procrastinating on HN and execute the first step: found the legal entity for your endeavor. This will keep you busy for the next days, and you learn.
Btw, you don't need to have a good or any idea or co-founder now. This will all come. Just start, make mistakes, stop reading random advice.
Edit: Don't downvote if you disagree, downvote if a comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.
Find the nugget of your idea. Do something to get market feedback.
Eg your idea is Uber for pet food - go interview people leaving a big pet food store and ask them if they’re interested. Old school market research.
Or say your idea is a sports news site for minor teams. Set up an MVP that serves for your local team and promote it, see how many many people go to the site. MVP could be a stream of article links from other sites, or perhaps better a newsletter via email. On site have sign up box for other teams.
Market feedback is key. Once you have a good signal, continue building and gather more feedback.
The Airbnb interview question “if u were diagnosed with 1 year left to live, would you work at airbnb?” sounds to me like "I want to date a stalker." No. No I don't. I don't want an insane employee who may go postal, either.
[+] [-] cmogni1|7 years ago|reply
My point is that a lot of the advice I’ve heard about startups in general is framed (intentionally or unintentionally) as a series of directives that will optimize your chances of success. Moreover, no other additional context is provided to help you frame the advice, such that you can tell whether or not it’s applicable or appropriate advice to follow. The lack of context coupled with the existence of so many blatant counterexamples and contradictions prevents the advice from being useful.
(Note: I edited the last paragraph for clarity)
[+] [-] aaavl2821|7 years ago|reply
The existence of counterexamples and conflicting advice doesn't mean that advice isn't useful, conflicting advice is just a symptom of startups being uncertain. With a large enough sample size of advice, you can start to make sense of it, understand what's good and bad advice, understand how people's life experience and incentives may color their advice etc. this makes it much easier for you to turn that advice into decisions and actionable steps
If you think about it this way then more advice is better. It's just up to you to synthesize that advice and decide what to do with it
[+] [-] JaumeGreen|7 years ago|reply
Because there's no set of instructions that will work for sure.
What one needs to success with a startup is several of these: work hard, work smart, connections, piles of money, idea, marketing, good timing and luck.
You can have most of them and not triumf, you can have only a pair and succeed. With none it's not possible. The ones that seem to matter the most are the ones you come with (money/connections) and the ones that you can't affect much (good timing/luck).
[+] [-] greattypo|7 years ago|reply
[edit - disclosure: I was one of the presenters in this series.]
[+] [-] mbesto|7 years ago|reply
This is a quote from Tren Griffin about the stock market but it holds true for startups as well. Successful people who help out entrepreneurs often take their survivorship bias'd situations and assign single factor causation to them. Thus you end up with conflicting advice because "sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't".
Generic advice is not hurtful, it's just not contextual. It's your job (the founder) to decide whether it can fit your context or not.
[+] [-] theli0nheart|7 years ago|reply
To be clear, I'm not saying that there's not good advice floating around. There is. The trick is knowing how to separate the bad from the good, and as someone who's new to the startup world, that's pretty hard (impossible?) to do.
[+] [-] owens99|7 years ago|reply
Some people smoke cigarettes their whole life and live until old age without ever getting cancer. Should we conclude smoking does not cause cancer just because there are counter examples?
As you said, the advice is meant to maximize the chance of success. It is still not sufficient or without exceptions.
In the end, advice is only valuable if you put it through your own filter and use your own judgement to make the best decision.
[+] [-] charleswzx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thegabriele|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jialutu|7 years ago|reply
- Peter Thiel
[+] [-] teamsignup|7 years ago|reply
Youtube was a hard pivot from a video dating site.
[+] [-] shamino|7 years ago|reply
Furthermore, they are extremely biased towards start-ups, which is understandable. You could not easily make a worse financial decision, statistically speaking. But they need most of us to do it for them to stay in business.
[+] [-] charleswzx|7 years ago|reply
I hope some of you find this useful (:
[+] [-] dragonsh|7 years ago|reply
Many suggestions are practical with case studies.
[+] [-] tomglynch|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trampi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _the_inflator|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] objektif|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YazIAm|7 years ago|reply
Also, startups, where startup means creating a new unproven solution intended to achieve exponential growth, are unfathomably hard. It's hard (in my experience) to stay motivated in the face of startup hardships when one's primary objective is money.
[+] [-] mathgladiator|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nyrulez|7 years ago|reply
- This pressure to have a co-founder. I see that quoted as a major reasons for why startups go bust but also necessary for doing anything meaningful. I can imagine there being truth to both statements. I've seen startups go bust in my own network on both sides of the divide. But I feel there isn't enough advice out there for folks who are doing it Solo - that's still a valid design pattern for many startups in the past or present.
- The whole idea of go big or go home - lot of the advice seems to assume you want to be really big one day. There doesn't seem to be enough advice for someone wanting to be a 10M-100M dollar business as their main milestone, not as a path to hit a billion dollar valuation. That kind of assumption results in very different kinds of design patterns, often borrowed from other billion dollar startups that may not make sense to your own little venture in the beginning.
I wish startup advice wasn't universal as every author or speaker would like you to believe - there could be a system where it was doled out based on the current phase and situation, or at least recognizing the fact that there isn't one size fits all for something as varied as starting your own venture.
[0] https://stockquanta.com
[+] [-] radmuzom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottlocklin|7 years ago|reply
I don't know why people think otherwise. Do you think venture capitalists are your friends? Pretty sure they're not!
[+] [-] distant_hat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muzani|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midway|7 years ago|reply
I didn't know that users could change the title of their submission. How is this possible or is this actually a post by YC?
If latter, a hint would be great that this might be YC promoted content and not actual user content.
[+] [-] charleswzx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paintbox|7 years ago|reply
Folks probably downvoted you because they deemed your tone unwelcome here.
[+] [-] midway|7 years ago|reply
I skimmed the first pages and most of the advice is neither wrong or bad. Still, reading a lenghty 57-note in order to learn is wrong.
You learn by doing. If you want to start something stop procrastinating on HN and execute the first step: found the legal entity for your endeavor. This will keep you busy for the next days, and you learn.
Btw, you don't need to have a good or any idea or co-founder now. This will all come. Just start, make mistakes, stop reading random advice.
Edit: Don't downvote if you disagree, downvote if a comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.
[+] [-] randomsearch|7 years ago|reply
Find the nugget of your idea. Do something to get market feedback.
Eg your idea is Uber for pet food - go interview people leaving a big pet food store and ask them if they’re interested. Old school market research.
Or say your idea is a sports news site for minor teams. Set up an MVP that serves for your local team and promote it, see how many many people go to the site. MVP could be a stream of article links from other sites, or perhaps better a newsletter via email. On site have sign up box for other teams.
Market feedback is key. Once you have a good signal, continue building and gather more feedback.
[+] [-] spencerwgreene|7 years ago|reply
I predict this posts hits 100 points and then it crashes. (Currently at 31.)
[+] [-] sdrothrock|7 years ago|reply
https://docdro.id/tOVflQx
[+] [-] ignoramous|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoah|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TravelAndFood|7 years ago|reply
Welp, I'm over 22, guess I'm never starting a company.
[+] [-] Zigurd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namaljayathunga|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mluggy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charleswzx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] poirier|7 years ago|reply
Appreciate the share.
[+] [-] charleswzx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suzairshah|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charleswzx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thebentarrow|7 years ago|reply