Things I learned at YC

I like lists like this because they&#x27;re so quick and easy to read, you only have to learn 1 or 2 new things to get great ROI.<p>For me, the items fall into 4 categories:<p>1. Go without saying, but need to be said anyway:<p><pre><code> - Real businesses have customers - It gets harder, not easier - Investors are normal people too </code></pre> 2. Interesting observation:<p><pre><code> - Being committed in the face of contrary evidence can sometimes be a game-maker. Generally though it’s just stupid. - Even very successful people frequently misunderstand their own success - There is no one thing that makes a company work. </code></pre> 3. Sound important, but really aren&#x27;t:<p><pre><code> - Everyone is basically scared of everyone else at first - Bring a notebook; don’t take notes on your phone. People think you are tweeting or something. - People without life responsibility (kids, wife, etc) are at a serious advantage in the beginning stages - Every guy has thought about starting a dating site </code></pre> 4. Insightful:<p><pre><code> - If it seems hard but important and you try to outsource it, you&#x27;ll probably get screwed. Potentially for a long time. - The more stability the rest of your life has, the easier it’ll be to deal with the massive instability of a startup - Small problems between team members will become big problems given time - Stop dancing around the thing and say the thing (I love this one.) </code></pre> Great list! Thanks for sharing, Amir.

<i>Frequently YC’s advice is applicable at the aggregate but not individual level. Like in the grand scheme the biggest number of successful startups would be produced if all of them followed this advice, but you personally would not have your YC Expected Value maximized by following it.</i><p>This is the most interesting and counter-intuitive point, I think.

<i>If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we&#x27;d appreciate it if you&#x27;d crop it. E.g. translate &quot;10 Ways To Do X&quot; to &quot;How To Do X,&quot; and &quot;14 Amazing Ys&quot; to &quot;Ys.&quot;</i>

That&#x27;s a pretty good list, actually. Thanks for posting this, I&#x27;m sure that any start-up could do a lot worse than to print this out in big type and staple it to their wall.

- Just shut up and get a .com<p>This one is so hard, I&#x27;ve spent probably over 100 dollars in the past on those magical domain name thinker upper tools

One thing that bothers me with advices like this is the overall negativity. Yes, we all know creating a profitable startup isn&#x27;t easy, but hearing over and over again &quot;You will fail many times&quot;, &quot;Its get harder not easier&quot; and so on is really demotivating. Seriously, are there no entrepreneur stories that had a great idea from the beginning, executed them smoothly without any outside financing and achieved success? And by success I mean satisfying income that allows them to work full-time on their startup and live on a decent level. Not everyone wants to build The Next Great Thing, acquire hundreds of thousands users, generate mutli-million revenue and so on.

Can sombody please expand on: <i>If there is no competition you’re probably screwed.</i> Are there any cases when this is not applicable?<p>(I recently started a website that nobody else seems to have done before -- web version of a desktop based tool)

<i>- The most elusive skill seemed to be knowing what to invent and what to steal</i><p><i>- Everyone’s problem is money until it’s hiring</i><p>Two I liked, highlighting subtle but critical pain&#x2F;points.

Thanks for sharing this! However, i think there is a bit of a contradiction in following 2 points:<p><i>- The more stability the rest of your life has, the easier it’ll be to deal with the massive instability of a startup</i><p><i>- People without life responsibility (kids, wife, etc) are at a serious advantage in the beginning stages</i><p>So what would your conclusion be here? Are people with stable love-life in advantage, or are single people the ones that have better chances?

&quot;The best companies didn&#x27;t have political alliances because their product was awesome and they mostly knew it. The second best companies had fantastic political alliances and an okay product &#x2F; traction.&quot;<p>Political alliances with whom exactly?<p>&quot;Every guy has thought about starting a dating site.&quot;<p>That one cracked me up.<p>&quot;If there is no competition you’re probably screwed.&quot;<p>Maybe, but if the second best will be close in quality to the best one in your vertical, you won&#x27;t have a very valuable company. See Peter Thiel&#x27;s comments in his PandoMonthly interview.<p>&quot;It gets harder, not easier&quot;<p>Can you give some examples? Being able to build a team should make things easier on the founders, as they no longer have to be great at everything. I&#x27;ve seen founders get more relaxed as the business matured.<p>&quot;All the technology heavy startups wanted to try to somehow outsource their marketing or customer acquisition&quot;<p>I&#x27;ve seen this a lot and guilty of it myself.

&quot;- Never discredit teams in YC if they are still showing up to the events together and seem to be working&quot;<p>Is it accepted to discredit them&#x2F;talk crap about them if they&#x27;re not doing this?

I think there is an important reason why people keep starting dating sites, and a good one. One of the things you should always have when starting a company is a way to make money (no matter how far in the future, speculative, or whatever, there should be some possibility of making money). What is something that humans have shown a willingness to pay for since the dawn of time?

Thanks for this. Very insightful.<p>I did a Startup Weekend a few months ago and the biggest lesson I learnt there was &quot;Listen, listen, listen!&quot; as well as &quot;Ask for help, you don&#x27;t have all the answers&quot;.<p>The peopl are there to help and they are either volunteering their time to do so. Take full advantage of that.

&quot;The best companies didn&#x27;t have political alliances because their product was awesome and they mostly knew it&quot;<p>Even if you have a great product, some industries, like advertising or public sector, are an order of magnitude harder to sell to if you&#x27;re not <i>really</i> well connected.

Nice list! Some solid bits of advice there. I&#x27;ve been working over a year with a buddy on something we&#x27;re looking to release before the new year. As the last couple weeks count down, I wish I had that advice e-mail address lol.

Old people have got to get over this stigma of taking notes on electronic devices. It&#x27;s the 21st century, and we have the technology, but everyone wants to be a hipster and it&#x27;s just stupid.

Let me guess: 1) Add as much items to a list as possible?

I read this carefully. Thanks for posting. Applying to YC this time around, with a lot of glee and enthusiasm.

&gt; Every guy has thought about starting a dating site<p>That was good.

One more would be to never give up even if you may be dead 3 hours later.

More advice from a failed YC company (an acquhire is not a success). I understand the desire to salvage something from the experience, but I only take advise from those more successful than I am. There are so many of those.