Most great companies in tech have been built by personal referrals for the first...at least 100 employees and often many more.
Really dig into projects people have worked on and call references; that is another thing that first time founders like to skip.
So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.
These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.
If you're not in college and you don't know a cofounder, the next best thing I think is to go work at an interesting company.
Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.
In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
... fire fast when it's not working. It's better for the company, it's also better for the employee.
... We probably funded a rate of something like one out of ten solo teams.
Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.
You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
... the thing we see wrong with YC apps most frequently, is that people have not thought about the market first and what people want first.
Just put a little pin in your mind: when you cross 50 employees, there are a new set of HR rules that you have to comply with.
Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed
The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.
You need someone that behaves like James Bond more than you need someone that is an expert in some particular domain.
You want to continue to be run by great products, not process for it's own sake.
If you pivot, do it fully and with conviction. The worst thing is to try to do a bit of the old and the new-it's hard to kill your babies.
Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.
M&A negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies, is they entertain acquisition conversations.
Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.
Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.
