Everything We Teach at YCombinator in 10 Minutes

but this is it like literally this is all the smart stuff I know period and it's all in like maybe 14 slides so it's really fast all right let's go how to start a Technical startup first one two to four co-founders at least 50% engineering they all have to have somewhat around a Year's worth of money in the bank but that doesn't mean a Year's worth of money living in a one-bedroom apartment like in a high-rise that means a years worth of money eating ramen noodles and being very poor and everyone has to have quit

their job this is what you need to start a startup notice no idea is required you just need this that's it second idea I always think that it's better to start brainstorming with your teammates typically one member of the team has the kernel of an idea that'll become the company but it's always best before that gets too solidified to discuss it with your teammates so that everyone Buys in and gets ownership we tend to like companies who are trying to solve personal problems every investor says that the real thing is we like companies where the

founders know what the hell the companies are doing and know what the problem is so if it's not solving your problem it should be solving a problem that you're very very aware of and then the other thing I tell Founders is try to focus on daily and weekly problems as opposed to monthly or yearly problems it's a lot easier to do something like uber the typical person in America has to figure out how to get somewhere three times a day it's a lot harder to do a car sales website the typical person in America only

buys a car once every seven years try to focus on daily and weekly problems it tends to be a lot more successful Market this is an area that like people talk so much about do an hour of research figure out whether there are billions of dollars being made in your Market um and use your competitors product after that I don't care legal if you guys are interested in raising money in the US you're going to have to incorporate in the US that is a very very very simple process for $250 and clerk.com you can have

an American company and you can raise money from American investors yeah it's that's easy let's the mystify that mvp most viable product this is where most companies will screw up actually sorry where most companies will screw up is on team this is the second place most companies will screw up how can you get something into people's hands I can't tell you I've done this many times myself the number one piece of advice we give to YC companies before they launch is launch I can't tell you how many people will just sit there and iterate and

iterate before users ever see anything so when I ask a company how long is going to take to launch I always just ask them why does it take longer than two months like I don't care what it is I don't care if they haven't started yet you should be able to build something in two months and get it in front of users this is just saying it one more time you're nothing into your launch so how do you achieve growth I would say that for the typical Silicon Valley investor this is the number one metric

for determining whether you're going to raise money it's not team it's not past experience it's not fancy investors its growth so um typically you're going to go one of three places one you're going to experiment with ads I tend to like that strategy the least the second if you're B2B you really want to focus on reference customers the customers who you can provide amazing service to who's going to talk to other people in their industry and spread the word about you the last one if you're doing anything related to Consumer whether it's consumer services social

media Etc usage should equal sharing I can't tell you how many Founders I've talked to said oh I'm going to make my thing go viral well if you want to make your thing go viral it doesn't mean just adding a share button the very fact that people are using your product has to create some type of sharing that has to be built in from day one and so don't think of sharing as an extra activity or a side activity think of it as 100% part of using your product all right press a lot of people

think that they need to hire someone to do their PR at Justin TV me my co-founder had a little competition on how much money uh we've wasted and we'd write it up on a whiteboard and every time we wasted money we'd write it up there and add it up uh I've wasted over $150,000 on PR firms so I'm giving those advice because I don't want you to do the same thing 99% of PR in the early stage you can do yourself the best piece of advice I've given I've been given about PR the thing that

completely changed my whole perception is that PR is exactly like business Business Development when you're trying to do a BD deal you get a warm introduction you follow up you build a relationship and you provide something of value when you're dealing with press it's the exact same thing you need to get an introduction from someone hopefully who that reporter is always written about you need to be able to structure your pitch so that it's real news something launching money being raised a significant higher a significant new BD deal you can't just expect the profile piece

and what you need to do is make sure you treat that as a relationship once you have a reporter who's written about you you've got to follow up with them that becomes a very very important relationship that can continue to provide value if you continue to follow up PR very simple and don't spend money fundraising typically companies will come to YC and ask how do we start fundraising and the number one thing we say to them is that if you don't need money people love to give it to you so how do you put yourself

in the position of not needing money one let's not start the company with a $1 million marketing and advertising plan right that's you need money for that um think about how you can structure your company so all you have to do is pay for the living expenses of your co-founders that's it hopefully your MVP requires so little money to get up and running that you can produce some growth without needing it the second thing is that people don't quite understand that speed when it comes to fundraising is extremely important um when you have meetings with

investors you want them to be scheduled as tightly as possible like one week every single introduction meeting you have with an investor um the purpose of this is that one it creates Buzz around your fund raise two It lines all the investors up so if one investor wants to take a step forward you can contact everyone else you just met in the previous week and said hey look we've got someone on hook here do you want to come along or not the biggest mistake we see people make is doing invest ing these investment meetings serially

I'll take one this week I'll take one next week I'll take one the week after that investors move because they have a fear of missing out fomo you're not creating a fear of missing out if you're only talking to them one at a time the last thing is have growth having growth is like the solution to every single problem the more you're growing the more investors are going to invest time finding you as opposed to other way around so you're having problems fundraising how many people right now are looking to fund raise in this audience

okay all right beautiful four things to think about one are you growing I should have asked have you launched if you have a launch plan that requires fundraising change it two are you talking to the Press it's investors jobs when they wake up every morning to find a company to invest in that's their job they try to trick you into thinking that their job is to sit at their desk and wait for you to walk in the front door but that's not their job so you need to be getting the word out about your company

so that they hear about your company from someone else not just you three build momentum make sure you're talking to his as many investors at the same time as possible sometimes this means cheating like often times this means doing stuff like telling the investor you're really busy and you can only meet a month from now so you can spend a whole month lining up other investors for that week that's totally fine that's totally fine the last thing is that try to focus on people especially for your first money people who understand your problem because they've

had it or they have it right now oftentimes customers and potential customers can be great initial investors early stage so operations super super fast the number one problem that companies have is they spend too much money that's the number one problem they have Su spend less money pay yourself less get a crappier office just suck it up and use less money um this is the number one way you can extend your Runway and it's 100% dependent on you no one else the second thing and I can't tell you how many people do this look at

how much you spend every month it's very simple just go to your bank account download your you know the the spreadsheet that says exactly every line item what you spent and read it every month if you're the CEO and you don't know what your expenses are you're not doing your job then figure out how to spend less money that seems pretty simple all right hiring one of the goals I like to kind of instill in people in hiring is figure out how you can increase the average Talent with each hire often times Founders think that

they are like the smartest people in the universe Founders tend to be pretty smart but very very very willing to take on risk and so your first couple employ employees should be a lot smarter and just a little bit more risk adverse than you are if when you're hiring someone you don't think you're increasing the average intelligence of the company you made a mistake because those people are basically your hiring advertisement if those people are smart other smart people going to want to come to your company if those people are not smart everyone knows it

so don't I mean one of the things I always think about is like if you can't hire someone who's smarter than you just do it yourself you know it doesn't hiring a lot of people is not not required um be fair and transparent when you give someone an offer you need to tell them how much stock they're getting they should get stock need to tell them how much stock is outstanding need to tell them whether their salary is you know typical for what you give and if not be honest a lot of the times your

first employees are your most viable and if you show them loyalty they'll show you loyalty back and then the last thing is higher slow my second company social cam had three founders when we sold we had three founders no employees we didn't necessarily want it to be that way but we were able to grow a product to over 20 million downloads with three people so don't tell me that you can't do a lot with just your founding team you can do a whole lot I think Instagram sold for a billion and they were under 20

so high or slow you can do it