Startup School – Paul Graham, Y Combinator

[[w:Paul Graham]], [[w:Y Combinator]]

Recipes for a startup (Headliner)

1. Release Early
1. Minimal bugs with promise of more to come soon.
2. Can make changes based on user feedback, you may realize features are not wanted/not important.
3. Makes you work harder, when you’re working on something internal, problems are intriguing, when it’s out there, problems are issues.
2. Keep pumping out new features
1. One unit of making users lives easier
2. If you run everyday, you’ll prob. run tomorrow. if you skip a week, you’ll feel like a slug and not re-start.
3. Users LOVE sites that get better all the time.  Imagine coming back months later and NOT 1 THING has changed!!!
4. Assume anything you made is far short of what it could be.
5. If your product is finished, then A) it is finished, or B) you lack innovation ;)
3. Go with the wind
1. Design for casual users, power/dedicated users will find what they want.
2. Have a ‘popup‘ when users hit the back button on your site, tell them to "Wait, this site has useful stuff…"
3. Don’t have opaque description of what it does.  1-2 sentences of exactly what it does, for users, investors, employees, …
4. Give users what you got right away (push it towards the front.)  The more in front, the more users will dig down.  Show them, don’t tell.  Nothing explains better then using it.
4. Fear the right things
1. Disasters are normal, a founder quits, servers keep crashing, change your company name, a deal falls through, …
2. Don’t worry about the big companies (google).  Fear the other startups that you don’t even know exist yet – like you, they are cornered animals.
3. Compete against what somebody COULD be doing, not what competitors are currently doing.
5. Commitment is a self fulfilling prophecy
1. Commitment, not intelligence, but determination (this can be a lil depressing.)
2. What students lack in experience, they more then make up in determination.
3. Running a startup is sorta like walking on your hands, it’s plausible, but incredibly difficult.
4. Acquires and Investors judge you by your level of commitment.
5. What motivates investors is not the hope of returns, but the fear of missing out.
6. You can’t fake this – if you have a hacker’s charisma ;)
7. Stubborn is a disastrous quality in a startup.
6. There is always room for new stuff
   
1. At every point in history, ppl have been saying "Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before."
2. It would seem crazy now to make a better search engine then google.  Well in 20 years, will ppl still be searching with something that looks like Google?
3. There is no limit on wealth that can be created (startups make wealth, which means they make things ppl want.)
7. Don’t get your hopes up!!!
1. Startup founders are naturally optimistic.  But treat optimism like a nuclear reactor, it’s powerful but dangerous.
2. Where do you draw the line?  – What do you expect of yourself vs. What do you expect of other people.
3. If you’re doing a deal, just assume it’s not gonna happen.  Then when things work out, you can be pleasantly surprised.
4. Deals are usually dynamic.  There is not a single point where you shake hands and the deal is done.  If the other sides senses weakness, they will be very tempted to screw you in the details.
5. VC’s are professional negotiators, trained to take advantage of weakness.  Don’t bluff them.
6. When somebody says "We want to invest/acquire you"  Your next thought should be "Don’t get your hopes up."

Most college grads still think they have to get a job.  It’s hard to change what’s been banged into our head since we were 3 - that is, we have to get a job after college.

3 Reasons startups fail:

1. Internal Disputes
2. Inertia
3. Ignoring Users (the worst)
1. What can kill a company is founders being stubborn to stick to original plan, that never happens, look at microsoft.
2. Listen to your users, let them drive direction

Econonmically speaking, a strartup is not a way of getting rich, it’s a way of making things happen faster.