13 ms·

Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

160 points by joecurry 13y ago

matryoshka 13y ago
This is the way to do it: “Start with a small, intense fire.” Those first customers will make or break you.
pg_is_a_butt 13y ago
lesson 1: don't be a butt. #OOPS
smrtinsert 13y ago
> Principally, he said, just because someone is intelligent, doesn’t mean they can actually run a business and go out and execute. > “You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined,” he concluded. Oh that's nice. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when some kid accepts homecoming king with "Thank you for not choosing the popular jock and electing me, your intellectual superior, as homecoming king".
- soup10 13y ago
  Smart engineer/entrepreneurs #1 mistake is thinking that because they are competent in their field(or got good grates at an elite school) that somehow magically translates to competence in business and entrepreneurship. I know and have met quite a few people that are grinding away at or have made products which have serious business challenges that they underestimate or are blind to and predictably fail to overcome. It's kind of sad when you see a product that has taken a high degree of workmanship/skill/and effort to make, but which has no market. Or the flip side, which is an insufficiently differentiated(aka not better enough than what people are already using) product in highly competitive market.
  - matryoshka 13y ago
    You can say the same about artisans who have spent their lives perfecting their craft but don't know how to get the word out about their creations. So many labor in obscurity and their pieces are stunning.
- emmett 13y ago
  Do you believe the opposite (that you must be very smart to be successful), or are you saying it's not nice to point out the (true) fact that it's not all that important to be very smart? I think "surprisingly" is the key word here. Someone could be quite smart and still surprisingly stupid if you were expecting them to be a genius.
lazyjones 13y ago
> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessment really that small? Or is the quality of selection (due to scaling issues / less time per applicant) nowdays compensated by the effect of YC's reputation?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- syntern 13y ago
  It is very likely that they are not focusing on the information being told, but instead they are picking up non-verbal communication clues.
- feifan 13y ago
  As a founder of a prospective startup, I know that so much can change in a matter of days or weeks — not just about the people/market/concept, but also with the founders themselves as we "grow up". I wonder how many founders came into their pitches throwing red flags, but who would have outgrown them during, or even before, the YC program began.
  - nswanberg 13y ago
    Probably quite a few, especially those like Drew Houston who didn't get in on their first try. Presumably on that first application Drew had some of the same good credentials (MIT grad, perfect SAT score).
    - feifan 13y ago
      It's a shame YC doesn't provide feedback on applications…I'm sure they make notes as they go through the apps (at least for the ones they're not sure about) — would be great for them to have a system to include those notes with their decision notifications!
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
Err, Sam Altman is the only beta tester of a YC-company trying to develop a better email client? Anyone got any more details on this? Is this just an inside joke that I don't get? (Yes I remember the build-better-email-client thing, but actually trying, and using one beta-tester?) To be honest I no longer think an email client is the problem. Its the lack of contact book, integration with all my devices and just generally tying up my orgnaisation for me - frankly a better email client from now is an AI.
- oskarth 13y ago
  What's so strange about that? Personally I think it's a brilliant strategy. It's the logical conclusion of having few users love you, and frankly I can't think of anyone better than Sam Altman to beta test a email app. Once they got him satisfied and hooked, they can easily go for the other big fish in the SF startup scene. I'm sure they appreciate your two sentence dismissal of something you've never seen and haven't heard more than two sentences about.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    I am not dismissing their new email client - I am dismissing the idea that a new successful email client is about email. I have four mail clients and god knows how many messaging clients and VoIP in regular use and none of them manage to do the things I need that are related to messaging other human beings - synchronising address books, synchronising who I talked to about what and when, booking appointments between two people without several emails of a phone call, and generally reminding me what I have forgotten . I struggle to imagine that there is a single email client that will solve this - this is an integration problem - multiple devices, multiple slices of my life. Executives pay good money, very good money, for PAs to solve these problems. And I get more and more frustrated by the siloes of data (Skype, iPhones call log) that actively make it harder for me to get metadata about what I am doing each day. so an email client, by my definition of what a single client is, no, does not seem a good idea. but maybe a cross platform synchronising and intelligent solution, that might be worth getting excited about so that's why I asked if anyone knew anymore. Not a dismissal of their app, a request for more info. And then a strawman of the idea of building a better email client. I think building a better mousetrap is an outdated when a jungle is waiting out there.
vineet 13y ago
The entire video of the interview is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA
waylandsmithers 13y ago
The article mentions that he was a lightning rod and whatnot as the face of YC. I can't help but wonder whether he took a step back to really evaluate what he was doing with his time after all those blogs ran with the "Paul Graham is a sexist piece of shit blah blah blah" backlash stories a couple months ago.
- pg 13y ago
  No, Sam and I had already agreed by then that he'd take over. We just hadn't announced it yet. I do remember thinking though that this was going to be one of the things I missed least.
  - marktangotango 13y ago
    Ha! One wonders what Sam's thoughts were...
6thSigma 13y ago
It's interesting that PG will no longer be reviewing applications. I wonder who the 10 people he referenced who do review applications are.
- pg 13y ago
  http://ycombinator.com/people.html http://ycombinator.com/people.html
  - pchristensen 13y ago
    Is Andrew Mason still involved? He's not on the list.
    - TheMakeA 13y ago
      The page only lists full time partners. There are many more part timers.
martythemaniak 13y ago
I'm very much looking forward to pg's new essays. His pre-YC essays cover a pretty wide spectrum of topics and they were quite influential on me when I read them while still in school. His essays from the last few years are almost exclusively about startups and I think they're a must-read resource. IMO, they contain pretty much all the ideas that make up YC and going through the program will mostly reinforce these ideas in a very effective way, rather than teach some new secret. There's much to be said about technology and its impact on society, so I hope we'll see some great new material.
cjf4 13y ago
"PAWWWWWL, I gotta startup that corrects misspelled 'Role Tide' Tattoos. WATCHU THINK??"
Osmigo 13y ago
>You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined I think one reason we're wrestling with this smart/stupid/success/fail subject is that these words paint with broad brushes. It's not just being smart or stupid, it's what you're smart or stupid about. For example, I knew an uneducated couple who opened a small clothing store. At first, they naively sold merchandise for less than they paid for it. They calculated the markup on belts by adding $4, then adding $3. When I suggested just adding $7, they got angry and said no, you HAD to add $4 first, or it wouldn't work. I would have been fired for pressing the issue. Pretty stupid, eh? Maybe. But they were smart, too, about other things. What other things? Some people get MBAs at Harvard and still can't figure it out. I watched that couple expand into a small chain of clothing stores with an 8-figure annual cash flow, and retire as millionaires. One can only wonder how long they would have lasted in a YC pitch session. My grandmother used to say, "we're all stupid, we're just stupid about different things." The same could be said of "smart," and I believe success reflects a correctness in this rather delicate dichotomy.
- Mz 13y ago
  Family story: Supposedly, some uncle or some such of mine owned land and at some point some large company wanted to buy the mineral rights. They offered him like $9/acre or whatever and he said "Make it $10 and you have a deal." His reason for wanting $10 was to simplify the math: X acres times 10 = just add a zero to the number of acres. He wasn't comfortable with math, but supposedly he made quite good money.
- pbreit 13y ago
  I don't quite understand your markup anecdote. Did time pass between the $4 and $3 markups?
  - Osmigo 13y ago
    No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.
    - 13y ago

160 points by joecurry 13y ago

matryoshka 13y ago

This is the way to do it: “Start with a small, intense fire.” Those first customers will make or break you.

pg_is_a_butt 13y ago

lesson 1: don't be a butt. #OOPS

smrtinsert 13y ago

> Principally, he said, just because someone is intelligent, doesn’t mean they can actually run a business and go out and execute. > “You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined,” he concluded. Oh that's nice. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when some kid accepts homecoming king with "Thank you for not choosing the popular jock and electing me, your intellectual superior, as homecoming king".

soup10 13y ago
Smart engineer/entrepreneurs #1 mistake is thinking that because they are competent in their field(or got good grates at an elite school) that somehow magically translates to competence in business and entrepreneurship. I know and have met quite a few people that are grinding away at or have made products which have serious business challenges that they underestimate or are blind to and predictably fail to overcome. It's kind of sad when you see a product that has taken a high degree of workmanship/skill/and effort to make, but which has no market. Or the flip side, which is an insufficiently differentiated(aka not better enough than what people are already using) product in highly competitive market.
- matryoshka 13y ago
  You can say the same about artisans who have spent their lives perfecting their craft but don't know how to get the word out about their creations. So many labor in obscurity and their pieces are stunning.
emmett 13y ago
Do you believe the opposite (that you must be very smart to be successful), or are you saying it's not nice to point out the (true) fact that it's not all that important to be very smart? I think "surprisingly" is the key word here. Someone could be quite smart and still surprisingly stupid if you were expecting them to be a genius.

lazyjones 13y ago

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessment really that small? Or is the quality of selection (due to scaling issues / less time per applicant) nowdays compensated by the effect of YC's reputation?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
syntern 13y ago
It is very likely that they are not focusing on the information being told, but instead they are picking up non-verbal communication clues.
feifan 13y ago
As a founder of a prospective startup, I know that so much can change in a matter of days or weeks — not just about the people/market/concept, but also with the founders themselves as we "grow up". I wonder how many founders came into their pitches throwing red flags, but who would have outgrown them during, or even before, the YC program began.
- nswanberg 13y ago
  Probably quite a few, especially those like Drew Houston who didn't get in on their first try. Presumably on that first application Drew had some of the same good credentials (MIT grad, perfect SAT score).
  - feifan 13y ago
    It's a shame YC doesn't provide feedback on applications…I'm sure they make notes as they go through the apps (at least for the ones they're not sure about) — would be great for them to have a system to include those notes with their decision notifications!

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

Err, Sam Altman is the only beta tester of a YC-company trying to develop a better email client? Anyone got any more details on this? Is this just an inside joke that I don't get? (Yes I remember the build-better-email-client thing, but actually trying, and using one beta-tester?) To be honest I no longer think an email client is the problem. Its the lack of contact book, integration with all my devices and just generally tying up my orgnaisation for me - frankly a better email client from now is an AI.

oskarth 13y ago
What's so strange about that? Personally I think it's a brilliant strategy. It's the logical conclusion of having few users love you, and frankly I can't think of anyone better than Sam Altman to beta test a email app. Once they got him satisfied and hooked, they can easily go for the other big fish in the SF startup scene. I'm sure they appreciate your two sentence dismissal of something you've never seen and haven't heard more than two sentences about.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  I am not dismissing their new email client - I am dismissing the idea that a new successful email client is about email. I have four mail clients and god knows how many messaging clients and VoIP in regular use and none of them manage to do the things I need that are related to messaging other human beings - synchronising address books, synchronising who I talked to about what and when, booking appointments between two people without several emails of a phone call, and generally reminding me what I have forgotten . I struggle to imagine that there is a single email client that will solve this - this is an integration problem - multiple devices, multiple slices of my life. Executives pay good money, very good money, for PAs to solve these problems. And I get more and more frustrated by the siloes of data (Skype, iPhones call log) that actively make it harder for me to get metadata about what I am doing each day. so an email client, by my definition of what a single client is, no, does not seem a good idea. but maybe a cross platform synchronising and intelligent solution, that might be worth getting excited about so that's why I asked if anyone knew anymore. Not a dismissal of their app, a request for more info. And then a strawman of the idea of building a better email client. I think building a better mousetrap is an outdated when a jungle is waiting out there.

vineet 13y ago

The entire video of the interview is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA

waylandsmithers 13y ago

The article mentions that he was a lightning rod and whatnot as the face of YC. I can't help but wonder whether he took a step back to really evaluate what he was doing with his time after all those blogs ran with the "Paul Graham is a sexist piece of shit blah blah blah" backlash stories a couple months ago.

pg 13y ago
No, Sam and I had already agreed by then that he'd take over. We just hadn't announced it yet. I do remember thinking though that this was going to be one of the things I missed least.
- marktangotango 13y ago
  Ha! One wonders what Sam's thoughts were...

6thSigma 13y ago

It's interesting that PG will no longer be reviewing applications. I wonder who the 10 people he referenced who do review applications are.

pg 13y ago
http://ycombinator.com/people.html http://ycombinator.com/people.html
- pchristensen 13y ago
  Is Andrew Mason still involved? He's not on the list.
  - TheMakeA 13y ago
    The page only lists full time partners. There are many more part timers.

martythemaniak 13y ago

I'm very much looking forward to pg's new essays. His pre-YC essays cover a pretty wide spectrum of topics and they were quite influential on me when I read them while still in school. His essays from the last few years are almost exclusively about startups and I think they're a must-read resource. IMO, they contain pretty much all the ideas that make up YC and going through the program will mostly reinforce these ideas in a very effective way, rather than teach some new secret. There's much to be said about technology and its impact on society, so I hope we'll see some great new material.

cjf4 13y ago

"PAWWWWWL, I gotta startup that corrects misspelled 'Role Tide' Tattoos. WATCHU THINK??"

Osmigo 13y ago

>You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined I think one reason we're wrestling with this smart/stupid/success/fail subject is that these words paint with broad brushes. It's not just being smart or stupid, it's what you're smart or stupid about. For example, I knew an uneducated couple who opened a small clothing store. At first, they naively sold merchandise for less than they paid for it. They calculated the markup on belts by adding $4, then adding $3. When I suggested just adding $7, they got angry and said no, you HAD to add $4 first, or it wouldn't work. I would have been fired for pressing the issue. Pretty stupid, eh? Maybe. But they were smart, too, about other things. What other things? Some people get MBAs at Harvard and still can't figure it out. I watched that couple expand into a small chain of clothing stores with an 8-figure annual cash flow, and retire as millionaires. One can only wonder how long they would have lasted in a YC pitch session. My grandmother used to say, "we're all stupid, we're just stupid about different things." The same could be said of "smart," and I believe success reflects a correctness in this rather delicate dichotomy.

Mz 13y ago
Family story: Supposedly, some uncle or some such of mine owned land and at some point some large company wanted to buy the mineral rights. They offered him like $9/acre or whatever and he said "Make it $10 and you have a deal." His reason for wanting $10 was to simplify the math: X acres times 10 = just add a zero to the number of acres. He wasn't comfortable with math, but supposedly he made quite good money.
pbreit 13y ago
I don't quite understand your markup anecdote. Did time pass between the $4 and $3 markups?
- Osmigo 13y ago
  No, sir. That was all at once. I was expected to stand there with a calculator, add $4 to the wholesale price, then add another $3.
  - 13y ago