The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation.
As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.
We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the best... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year.
Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.
As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.
The most important thing is that there is clear reporting structure and everyone knows what it is.
I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows.
So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
It's difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.
You'll get more support on a hard, important, project than a derivative one.
A third advantage of mission oriented companies, is that people outside the company are more willing to help you.
We hear again and again from founders, that they wish they had waited to start a startup until they came up with an idea they really loved.
Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.
There's no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters.
It's really easy to get PR with no results & it actually feels like you're really actually cool, but in a year you'll still have nothing.
If you don't love and believe in what you're building, you're likely to give up at some point along the way.
It takes years and years, usually a decade, to create a great startup.
A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them.
The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
If you have several ideas that all seem pretty good, work on the one that you think about, when you're not trying to think about work.
Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.
In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.
There are exceptions of course, but most companies start with a great idea - not a pivot.
One of the keys to focus, and why I said cofounders that aren't friends really struggle, is that you can't be focused without good communication.
The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
