For anyone that's looking for a handful of real takeaways- I've put together the 26 quotes that I found interesting from this lecture here: <a href="https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/26-quotes-reid-hoffman-on-how-to-be-a-great-founder-ff99c713a199" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/26-quotes-reid-hof...</a><p>I've left out a lot of the X or Y slideware related aspirational statements he made. I think his comments on being a contrarian these days and the need for an investment thesis was interesting.
Great lecture - one of the best so far IMO.<p>From the comments, it looks like a lot of people are struggling with this one because Reid Hoffman was (absolutely) lacking in specific, concrete advice.<p>I think it's missing Reid's point -- everyone here is either (well, likely) thinking about founding something, or well on their way.<p>When he poses his questions, I think that he's trying to help us reflect on where we are, and how we can tackle the hazy questions (flexible v. persistent, short term v. long term, etc.) that will drive our decisions. This midway course lecture isn't about giving lessons -- it's about helping us to reflect.
Some of my takeaways:<p>"Product distribution is more important than what the product is."<p>It's not enough to be contrarian. You should also be right.<p>"It's useful to be able to recognize whether you are on track or not. To have both that belief, but also paranoia, about am I tracking over my investment thesis."<p>You need to be able to articulate the vision well.<p>One of the founders needs to be able to build networks of people.<p>What is my distribution edge? What is the hack that I know that other people don't know?<p>Just as you spend 20+ hours with a possible CEO, go in depth in conversations with a potential co-founder to identify all the parameters and set expectations. Go over the parameters that might lead to a divorce.
This talk might have been brilliant, but I wasn't really able to take away any concrete lessons or advice from it. In my opinion it was far too vague. I've really enjoyed the other talks though.
I found it very interesting when he spoke about founders who've learned to mimic an attribute investors find important. He notes that ignoring a single investor's feedback is fine, but ignoring the world in general is usually disaster.<p>I imagine the rise of this sort of mimicry leads investors who previously would consider investing in an idea and seemingly great founders to more strongly favor traction. I wonder if the YC partners keep track of the change in the percentage of startups accepted with an idea alone or complete a prototype just before an interview.<p>I'm also curious about the percentage of successful (or surviving) YC startups that were accepted with no traction versus those accepted with a product that had a quickly growing number of users. This value may be misleading, though, because the sample size isn't enormous, and there are so many other variables that affect the survival of a startup.
I don't mean to be flippant but can someone separate out the concrete recommendations from the abstract motivational speaking?<p>All I hear is a series of "X or Y?" slides, which sort of imply there's a decisive answer on the way, but when you peer through the verbiage it ends up being some form of "Do both!"
This one hurts because its true:
“If I ever hear a founder talk about oh this is how I have a balanced life so on and so forth — they’re not committed to winning.”
So that you know that the work-life balance in SV is not anyone's priority, no matter what we say or jazz hands or post in lovely medium blog posts.
Haven't watched this one yet, but all the lectures have had at least one really great insight to learn from. Thanks for uploading them so quickly, it's really nice.
More business graduates gravitating to the "tech" field full of useless piffy advice peddling themselves and their shoddy unoriginal offerings. When will these people realize they are like chefs who can't cook, nobody cares what they think.<p>I know I'm in the belly of the beast here but you all need to hear it.