I'll counter with some more basic and more broadly applicable advice.<p>1) Build a product people actually want and need and will pay money for<p>2) Promote yourself incessantly because others will be promoting themselves even more incessantly.<p>3) Spend your money wisely - focus on people, product, and marketing. Don't waste your money on office trappings and stuff that makes you feel good. Save your lunch money.<p>4) Ignore Venture Capital. If you are actually selling something people want, you can grow on revenues. If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want or if your growth is greater than revenue, then the VCs will want to talk to you anyways. Because a) you're growing and b) customers actually want what you have. But don't start by focusing on what VCs want. Focus on what your customers want instead.<p>5) Always be selling. To your customers. To the press. To your employees. To anyone who matters. Never stop talking about your company.<p>6) Always be listening. To your customers. To your employees. The easiest and best ideas come from others.<p>7) Re-invest. Plow your earnings back into the company and promotion.<p>8) It's ok not to have a competitive advantage. What? Ok maybe you need to have some advantage but it doesn't have to be nearly as significant as is stated in this video. You need to have some reason for your customers to buy your product or service instead of competitors', so there's always some advantage. It could be price. Features. better service. But it could also be just a better connection with your prospects. Or perhaps you manage to place yourself in the right place at the right time. Or maybe you're just spending a lot on marketing. If you want to be successful, you need to identify at least one FAIR competitive advantage that your customers care about. And if you want to be super successful, identify one UNFAIR competitive advantage that locks out the competition. That could be an exclusive partnership, some intellectual property advantage, or connections with your customers that your competitors can't easily obtain.<p>This applies no matter if you're running a silicon valley style startup or a cybersecurity enterprise-focused government client startup -- both can make you millions or billions.
- "Product so good that people wanna tell others about it" doesn't mean this is an excuse to hide in a corner and keep building the product. Product can't be "good" if it's not based on frequent and lots of conversations / interactions with users.<p>- The point about "exponential growth in market" is very important if your startup wants to raise money from VCs and has similar goals. Otherwise, focusing on creating value even in mature markets can be a good choice too. Same point applies to the "Huge if it works" point too.<p>- His point about real trend vs fake trend is also a good point for your own product's real usage vs fake usage. Are people "really" engaged and using your product or are they just thinking that it's cool but not really using it?<p>- I have nothing to add to what he said about the team, but team is so important that I wanted to mention it as well.<p>- His point about optimism is another point where team (or advisors or well-wishers) help. A startup is a roller-coaster. You will have days of negativity and doubts. At that moment, a team member (or someone similar) who pushes you and encourages you is very important!<p>- Love the points about "We'll figure it out" and "I've got it"<p>- "Bias towards action" doesn't mean being busy for the sake of being busy. In my career, I've seen so many months wasted because action wasn't based on well-thought-out logic. So, certainly keep bias towards action, but don't use it as no excuse to not think. A good way to not move fast is to move fast in unnecessary directions.<p>- The "Never lose momentum" point is so difficult in real world (unless you're lucky). But, good to be reminded about.<p>- The point about "Distribution startegy" is another great point. Every distribution strategy we are thinking of is going to turn out to be harder than we thought. Still, finding new / unexplored distribution sources compared to your competition can be a great win!<p>- I am sure this wasn't intentional, but I'll say that the talk didn't focus enough on users / customers. In the end, it's all about creating genuine value for the customers / users.
I find Sam Altman's advice on startup completely and utterly useless. They're akin to the "How to become a millionaire" books. I've said this in the past [1] that providing generic advice doesn't work for startups. Every company is unique and they have unique challenges. Instead, Sam should be focusing on bringing stories of various startups in light, interview their founders and have a focused discourse on what worked and what didn't for that __particular__ startup.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17309725" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17309725</a>
Terrific intro to Startup School v2.0!<p>In a similar vein to the question "Why do startups win?", which besides having a rich history of rigorous academic inquiry and to my thinking has never been adequately resolved.<p>One can ask, "Why does Startup School work?" And a chief factor is the imposition of an external hard deadline (Demo Day). As well as the tracking of performance metrics by a team outside the locus of founders.<p>To that end, a "Milestone Tracker" interface that is both public and designed with accountability in mind could be a key component in making things "real" for participants.<p>It also occurs to me that in a class of 15K startups, you are going to receive a lot of "offers" to try products and services from your fellow classmates. Just in the past hour I got $250 in credits from a cloud analytics startup, and a discount coupon from a crowdfunding platform for foodies ;)<p>Manageable for a cohort size in the low hundreds. But perhaps an issue at scale that may result in missed opportunities.<p>It may be a good idea to have a centralized site at startupschool.org/offers with a canonical list of "startup-to-startup" (S2S) deals.<p>Of course it would be differentiated from third-party credits by the likes of GCloud, AWS, Stripe, etc
So has Ycombinator abandoned any hope for VR since he calls it a fake trend in the first five minutes?<p>Just curious because I swear saw a blog where they want VR startups to apply awhile ago but can't find it now.
- Be raised rich and or be surrounded by the rich/powerful(Elizabeth Holmes, Evan Speigel, etc...)<p>- Have rich & powerful friends directly or indirectly<p>- Impress & become friendly with the rich & powerful either through clear data that shows your worth an investment(your startup data shows traction) or lie your butt off; aka fake it before you make it. I always strive(d) for the former as darn my parents and the morality they instilled.