Thanks for your wonderful time to give us valuable information regards idea, product,team,execution.really I came to know how function about team and execution.thanks Sam!
5:00 Relentlessly resourceful = James Bond (what to look for in co-founders who are unflappable, tough, act quickly, are decisive, creative and ready for anything - and initial hires who go on to define your company) 7:05 2 or 3 co-founders is usually best 7:30 Try NOT to hire in the beginning - you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small number of employees. In the beginning, only hire when you have a desperate need to. Later you need to hire fast and scale up the company. The costs of getting an early hire wrong is is really high. 15:00 Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them? You can learn about these things in an interview, but the very best way is by working together. Work with someone on a quick 1 day project, rather than just doing an interview. Ask specifically about projects someone has done in the past, rather than “brain teaser” questions. 16:00 Young technical founders and brain teaser questions (useless) 18:40 Employee equity: aim to give 10% of the company to the first 10 employees, and have them earn it over 4 years as a good rule of thumb. If they're successful, they'll increase the value of the Co. way more than that. Founders are typically very stingy with equity to employees, and very generous with equity to investors (backwards). Employees will only add more value over time, investors typically write a big check and don't usually do much. Employees really are the ones who build the company over years and years. Fight with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get, and be as generous as you possibly can with employees. 22:44 In addition to people who are doing bad at their job, you also want to fire people who are creating office politics, and who are persistently negative. The rest of the company is always aware of people doing things like this, and it's a huge drag and toxic to the culture, and will kill a startup. 23:57 You don't get to make all the decisions, but you do get to choose the decision-makers. And if someone's doing everything wrong, a consistent thing over many weeks or a month you'll be aware of it. Making a couple mistakes vs. screwing everything up is painfully obvious. 27:10 Equity vesting: Y-Combinator will almost never fund a company unless the founders have vested equity in place. 29:10 Execution for most founders is not the most fun part of starting a company, but it is often the most critical. What being a founder means is signing up for this years' long grind on execution. You can't outsource this. *The way to have a company that executes well is to execute well yourself. Everything in a startup gets modeled after the founders - whatever the founders do becomes the culture. If you want a culture where people work hard, pay attention to detail, focus on the customer, and are frugal - you have to do it yourself, there's no other way.* You can't hire a COO while you go off to conferences. *The company needs to see you as a maniacal execution machine.* Ideas by themselves are not worth anything - only executing well is what creates value. A big part of execution is just putting in the effort. 30:30 The 5 jobs / roles of a startup CEO 32:30 Founders are people who that get excited about starting new things. Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot. You'll say no 97% of the time. Most startup founders need to make a conscious effort to do this. Most startups work really hard, but they work really hard on the wrong things and still fail. 32:50 One of the things about starting a startup is that you get no credit for trying. You only get points when you make something that the market wants - so if you work really hard on the wrong things, nobody will care. 33:35 The founder really does set the focus. Whatever the founder(s) cares about and think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focuses on. The BEST founders repeat these goals often - far more than they think they should ever need to. They put them up on the walls, talk about them on one on ones and all hands meetings every week - It keeps the company focused. 34:00 Even if you have 4 or 5 people in a company, a small communication breakdown is enough for people to be working on slightly different things - company looses focus and scrambles. 35:40 Remote co-founding teams slow down the cycle time more than anyone things. 36:36 Startups are all consuming in a way that is difficult to explain. You generally need to be willing to outwork your competitors. 37:38 Facebook has a famous poster "move fast and break things," but at the same time they're obsessed with quality. One of the biggest advantages a startup has is execution speed. You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards for everything the company does, but still move quickly. Move fast and break things, frugal in the right places, but care about quality everywhere. 38:20 Indecisiveness is a startup killer. You need a bias for action. The best founders work on things that seem small, but they move and get things done really quickly. 39:44 The best founders usually respond to emails the most quickly, they make decisions the most quickly, they're generally quick and have a do whatever it takes attitude. Speed is a huge premium. They also show up a lot. "They get on planes in marginal situations." 41:30 Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. You want a company to be winning all the time. If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, things will spiral out of control, snowball downwards. A winning team feels good and keeps winning, a team that hasn't won in awhile gets demotivated and keeps losing. *Always keep momentum is a prime directive for managing a startup.* For most software startups this translates to keep growing, for hardware startups this translates to don't let your ship dates slip. After growth slows down, people start to get unhappy and quitting, and things fall apart. 42:30 Getting the product right in the beginning is the best way not to lose momentum later. Building a great product and it will grow. Save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. Sales fix everything. Fights come out when a company loses momentum (internal disagreement). 45:00 Competitors making noise in the press can crush a company's momentum more often than any external factor. Don't worry about a competitor at all until they're actually beating you with a real shipped product. Press releases are easier to write than code or making a great product. The founder's role is to not let the company get down because of competitors and the press. "The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time." -Henry Ford. These are almost never the companies that put out a lot of press releases.
Curious how the current popularity of ICOs impact equity % of VCs now, both seed and even Series A should a company decide later to ICO. If a company can ICO now and retain 100% control, what value does a VC provide?
This video is full of wisdom. I really appreciate this content being out there for free. Thanks Sam.
thanks for everything Y Combinator, I've learnt boatloads here!! thankyou so much for all the support!!
Thanks for your wonderful time to give us valuable information regards idea, product,team,execution.really I came to know how function about team and execution.thanks Sam!
quite intuitive lectures. good job Sam.
sooooo much value in such a short content
Learning much from this. Thanks SAMA & YC!
This is awesome. I’m watching it again. Thanks
Awesome advice - really encourageing Sam.
If not for you guys this education would've cost us tons of our savings!!
5:00 Relentlessly resourceful = James Bond (what to look for in co-founders who are unflappable, tough, act quickly, are decisive, creative and ready for anything - and initial hires who go on to define your company)
7:05 2 or 3 co-founders is usually best
7:30 Try NOT to hire in the beginning - you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small number of employees. In the beginning, only hire when you have a desperate need to. Later you need to hire fast and scale up the company. The costs of getting an early hire wrong is is really high.
15:00 Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them? You can learn about these things in an interview, but the very best way is by working together. Work with someone on a quick 1 day project, rather than just doing an interview. Ask specifically about projects someone has done in the past, rather than “brain teaser” questions.
16:00 Young technical founders and brain teaser questions (useless)
18:40 Employee equity: aim to give 10% of the company to the first 10 employees, and have them earn it over 4 years as a good rule of thumb. If they're successful, they'll increase the value of the Co. way more than that. Founders are typically very stingy with equity to employees, and very generous with equity to investors (backwards). Employees will only add more value over time, investors typically write a big check and don't usually do much. Employees really are the ones who build the company over years and years. Fight with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get, and be as generous as you possibly can with employees.
22:44 In addition to people who are doing bad at their job, you also want to fire people who are creating office politics, and who are persistently negative. The rest of the company is always aware of people doing things like this, and it's a huge drag and toxic to the culture, and will kill a startup.
23:57 You don't get to make all the decisions, but you do get to choose the decision-makers. And if someone's doing everything wrong, a consistent thing over many weeks or a month you'll be aware of it. Making a couple mistakes vs. screwing everything up is painfully obvious.
27:10 Equity vesting: Y-Combinator will almost never fund a company unless the founders have vested equity in place.
29:10 Execution for most founders is not the most fun part of starting a company, but it is often the most critical. What being a founder means is signing up for this years' long grind on execution. You can't outsource this. *The way to have a company that executes well is to execute well yourself. Everything in a startup gets modeled after the founders - whatever the founders do becomes the culture. If you want a culture where people work hard, pay attention to detail, focus on the customer, and are frugal - you have to do it yourself, there's no other way.* You can't hire a COO while you go off to conferences. *The company needs to see you as a maniacal execution machine.* Ideas by themselves are not worth anything - only executing well is what creates value. A big part of execution is just putting in the effort.
30:30 The 5 jobs / roles of a startup CEO
32:30 Founders are people who that get excited about starting new things. Unfortunately the trick to great execution is to say no a lot. You'll say no 97% of the time. Most startup founders need to make a conscious effort to do this. Most startups work really hard, but they work really hard on the wrong things and still fail.
32:50 One of the things about starting a startup is that you get no credit for trying. You only get points when you make something that the market wants - so if you work really hard on the wrong things, nobody will care.
33:35 The founder really does set the focus. Whatever the founder(s) cares about and think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focuses on. The BEST founders repeat these goals often - far more than they think they should ever need to. They put them up on the walls, talk about them on one on ones and all hands meetings every week - It keeps the company focused.
34:00 Even if you have 4 or 5 people in a company, a small communication breakdown is enough for people to be working on slightly different things - company looses focus and scrambles.
35:40 Remote co-founding teams slow down the cycle time more than anyone things.
36:36 Startups are all consuming in a way that is difficult to explain. You generally need to be willing to outwork your competitors.
37:38 Facebook has a famous poster "move fast and break things," but at the same time they're obsessed with quality. One of the biggest advantages a startup has is execution speed. You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards for everything the company does, but still move quickly. Move fast and break things, frugal in the right places, but care about quality everywhere.
38:20 Indecisiveness is a startup killer. You need a bias for action. The best founders work on things that seem small, but they move and get things done really quickly.
39:44 The best founders usually respond to emails the most quickly, they make decisions the most quickly, they're generally quick and have a do whatever it takes attitude. Speed is a huge premium. They also show up a lot. "They get on planes in marginal situations."
41:30 Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. You want a company to be winning all the time. If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, things will spiral out of control, snowball downwards. A winning team feels good and keeps winning, a team that hasn't won in awhile gets demotivated and keeps losing. *Always keep momentum is a prime directive for managing a startup.* For most software startups this translates to keep growing, for hardware startups this translates to don't let your ship dates slip. After growth slows down, people start to get unhappy and quitting, and things fall apart.
42:30 Getting the product right in the beginning is the best way not to lose momentum later. Building a great product and it will grow. Save the vision speeches for when the company is winning. Sales fix everything. Fights come out when a company loses momentum (internal disagreement).
45:00 Competitors making noise in the press can crush a company's momentum more often than any external factor. Don't worry about a competitor at all until they're actually beating you with a real shipped product. Press releases are easier to write than code or making a great product. The founder's role is to not let the company get down because of competitors and the press. "The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time." -Henry Ford. These are almost never the companies that put out a lot of press releases.
Wow great😀
I don't need to take notes after seeing your wonderful comment😊
Thank you, Sam and Y Combinator.
This is very insightful. Thanks Sam. :)
Learning much from this abt Execution. Thanks alot SAMA & YC!
Where is the next lecture about execution? Sam mentioned that there will be 1 or 2 more
Curious how the current popularity of ICOs impact equity % of VCs now, both seed and even Series A should a company decide later to ICO. If a company can ICO now and retain 100% control, what value does a VC provide?
can you guys refresh the broken links please? lecture transcript , slide and discuss lecture are not avaible anymore
Great advice!
Amazing video! Thanks for sharing
No one will never understand until you succeed
need help,website to get slide seems dead
His voice has changed so much
📈
Dear comment reader, no one cares about you until you succeed . Including me 😂😂
So maybe a public speaking lecture - don't drink or eat into a hot mic!!