...that a potential cofounder was looking for a billion dollar idea, and wasn't interested in something with an immediate path to 5-10m ARR that solved a boring problem. To me, I want to build something that let's me stay in the game.
Most of the employees in Nigeria here find it difficult to speak up to the management when they observe something isn't right. They just keep it to themselves in order to avoid hard conversation because they don't want to hurt anybody by speaking up. Bad culture.
That other VCs are building relationships with founders while you guys are complaining about it. YC is starting to look predatory, as opposed to provide any real value to start-ups.
@@TheJoshGalt all those relationships are fake as hell and based on work, which is the bottom line. When everyone realizes why they’re communicating with each other it allows for real transparency in my opinion instead of trying to become buddy buddys and “family” like how Facebook would want you to think before they lay you off lol
@@pokegan52 I concede that point to you, every meeting ends with ‘how do we ramp it to a 100 million dollar exit’. That being said, I’ve talked to many angels who have been very helpful with providing roadmaps, even if they aren’t on the cap table
"You gotta create a shared relationship with the truth" - after having suffered 3 years with co-founder problems and misalignments I made this rule for all my relationships going forward (also including with my life partner). Fostering a shared relationship with the truth is the process of coming to the table with each our own world view and not leaving it until we can agree on a common one. It is usually one that isn't fair, but also one that leads us to focus on a common goal so the feeling of unfairness diminishes over time. In my book that is the process of alignment - and it never ends.
I've hit the gym every morning for 24 years as my "pressure release valve." If you don't like lifting weights, creating art is another great "pressure release valve."
Even after listening to you guys for so many days, I made the same mistake by not making the MVP quickly. Now, going to start all over again after a few more months.❤
Uh. this lands perfectly. The partner with the bigger stake is slacking and we're not moving at the speed, we need. I really don't know how to talk to her since she's "the leader" and the technical part. Let's see how this goes.
Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Intro 00:39 - Defining a hard conversation 02:35 - Problem with dishonest people 03:52 - Validating they have made the right decision 06:54 - Company not able to raise the money they want 08:31 - Want to spend more time than office hours 11:37 - Hard conversations with co-founders 13:11 - How to deal with conflicts 15:42 - Hard conversations with employees 18:37 - Nobody's perfect 19:50 - Outro - Knowing the way out
The chapters mentioned in the description are very helpful. One gets to know what to expect, what to listen to and which part can be skipped (as per need.)
Insecurity to get validation from you guys hits so hard. I was that founder. Now I’m bootstrapping an e-commerce store with patent technology and going into the AR HAR AI market next with my line of products
Do apply if instincts tells you Sara. YC maybe a legacy player but they too do need madness. Don’t let it get to you. The feris wheel can and must be realigned
Recently - if a founder is avoiding honestly reporting status and forward looking plans - it's best to confront that right away, and reset expectations.
Love the reference to the West Wing; beginning of series 2. Leo says to Josh. A man falls down a hole and a doctor walks past and throws a prescription to him, then a priest walks past and throws a prayer down. Then the friend jumps into the hole with him and the guy says, what are you doing?! I need a ladder. The friend says, well I’ve been in this hole before and know the way out. It’s a great analogy. I’ve been here before and take my advice if you want to get out of the bind. Thanks Michael and Dalton. Love these chats
2. Decisions taken and convinced by one founder to the other are not always going to work out and hence the hard conversation after a failed outcome is very unpleasant. Mostly it turns out that the Founder who had thought about a strategy initially and convinced the other founder like I mentioned in Point 1 is put down by an Argument "See I told you this may not work" OR "Why did we do it" etc etc. These type of conversations actually become "Blame Game" conversations. The idea is when founders have agreed to take one decision then they both are party to the outcome and not only have this "See I told you this may not work" OR "Why did we do it" when things don't work out
1. When Founders talk about some key decisions - Most of the time decisions are never going to be Right decision / Wrong Decision. Its mostly going to be different views and to move forward one decision has to be agreed upon. In these cases one Founder has to make a decision that we must move forward this direction and try and convince the partner about the same and hence that 1 or 3 hour discussion is required though the strategy / decision was thought and taken by one of the founder. The important part is to know if the other partner is aligned on the decision or not and hence the conversation must not end with something like "It doesn't matter if you are not convinced I want to move forward with it anyway"
4. Most Important - "Learning how to disagree" and able to show that your intentions are for improvement and growth of the company and not to come across as a control freak who wants to show that the all decisions (of any type for any Department) are taken /approved by me.
Very interesting episode!I I wonder how you perceive differences in team dynamics between teams with a founder as a majority share holder versus more balanced teams with 3-4 minority shareholders as founders. What to do if power play takes over the team dynamics?
I wanna get good at these conversations, just because sometimes I feel If I say honest thing, I might loose out friend or colleague, but yeah it's opposite too, when my friend tells my mistakes, I first think may be he is 50% wrong but later after good thought, I get to find my mistakes.
Love you guys but welcome to human psychology. I don’t think this is about the flaws of founders so much but simply human communication and relations. We also have to learn to navigate the shortcomings most have in the way we communicate and seek support and connection with one another.
It’s important for me to let you know both of you are simply awesome. I want to give back in a small way by sharing this content with my LinkedIn network.
I keep watching this video hoping for something useful to take away from it but so far (halfway) it just seems to be a couple yc people laughing about how bad founders are. "Co-founders" wasn't too bad but mostly common sense. Just skip to that one if you want to get something from the video.
If entrepreneurs in YC are having such rookie psychology, not sure what founders outside are upto. Maybe founders need to have a hard life story where validation, appreciation, awards, etc don't matter. Just customers, employees and money are the only things to matter
So YC in other words is saying they want cultist Solo Founders who do believe in if you ask everybody you will never know!! Emerging Markets it is than hopefully with YC or otherwise.
What did you learn from a hard conversation you've had recently?
...that a potential cofounder was looking for a billion dollar idea, and wasn't interested in something with an immediate path to 5-10m ARR that solved a boring problem. To me, I want to build something that let's me stay in the game.
Most of the employees in Nigeria here find it difficult to speak up to the management when they observe something isn't right. They just keep it to themselves in order to avoid hard conversation because they don't want to hurt anybody by speaking up. Bad culture.
That other VCs are building relationships with founders while you guys are complaining about it. YC is starting to look predatory, as opposed to provide any real value to start-ups.
@@TheJoshGalt all those relationships are fake as hell and based on work, which is the bottom line. When everyone realizes why they’re communicating with each other it allows for real transparency in my opinion instead of trying to become buddy buddys and “family” like how Facebook would want you to think before they lay you off lol
@@pokegan52 I concede that point to you, every meeting ends with ‘how do we ramp it to a 100 million dollar exit’. That being said, I’ve talked to many angels who have been very helpful with providing roadmaps, even if they aren’t on the cap table
"You gotta create a shared relationship with the truth" - after having suffered 3 years with co-founder problems and misalignments I made this rule for all my relationships going forward (also including with my life partner). Fostering a shared relationship with the truth is the process of coming to the table with each our own world view and not leaving it until we can agree on a common one. It is usually one that isn't fair, but also one that leads us to focus on a common goal so the feeling of unfairness diminishes over time. In my book that is the process of alignment - and it never ends.
Impossible with a narcissist/sociopath/psychopath. I've been there.
You guys are a godsend. My new favorite mentors in spirit for the last several years. !
cant get enough of these two, so educational and hilarious at the same time!😂
I've hit the gym every morning for 24 years as my "pressure release valve." If you don't like lifting weights, creating art is another great "pressure release valve."
This is why disagreeableness is counter intuitively a good trait for success
Even after listening to you guys for so many days, I made the same mistake by not making the MVP quickly. Now, going to start all over again after a few more months.❤
Uh. this lands perfectly. The partner with the bigger stake is slacking and we're not moving at the speed, we need. I really don't know how to talk to her since she's "the leader" and the technical part.
Let's see how this goes.
Thank you so much for sharing this with us on UA-cam ❤️🔥from Seoul 🇰🇷
Such great points love this duo!!!
Hard conversations are just healthy debate that makes us stronger
Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) -
00:00 - Intro
00:39 - Defining a hard conversation
02:35 - Problem with dishonest people
03:52 - Validating they have made the right decision
06:54 - Company not able to raise the money they want
08:31 - Want to spend more time than office hours
11:37 - Hard conversations with co-founders
13:11 - How to deal with conflicts
15:42 - Hard conversations with employees
18:37 - Nobody's perfect
19:50 - Outro - Knowing the way out
The chapters mentioned in the description are very helpful. One gets to know what to expect, what to listen to and which part can be skipped (as per need.)
Insecurity to get validation from you guys hits so hard. I was that founder. Now I’m bootstrapping an e-commerce store with patent technology and going into the AR HAR AI market next with my line of products
You should apply to YC ;)
Do apply if instincts tells you Sara. YC maybe a legacy player but they too do need madness. Don’t let it get to you. The feris wheel can and must be realigned
How is Michael’s skin so good..?
Good ambient sunlight: no sunburn/overexpose to direct sunlight+ no underexposure, working sweat glands and obviously no medical skin conditions
Probably also UA-cam compression lol
Recently - if a founder is avoiding honestly reporting status and forward looking plans - it's best to confront that right away, and reset expectations.
West Wing is my favorite f**ing show. Hearing Michael Seibel talk about West Wing made my day.
Love the reference to the West Wing; beginning of series 2. Leo says to Josh. A man falls down a hole and a doctor walks past and throws a prescription to him, then a priest walks past and throws a prayer down. Then the friend jumps into the hole with him and the guy says, what are you doing?! I need a ladder. The friend says, well I’ve been in this hole before and know the way out. It’s a great analogy. I’ve been here before and take my advice if you want to get out of the bind.
Thanks Michael and Dalton. Love these chats
these videos are so good
Love the videos! Hey would you guys consider getting set up with better microphones. I noticed with most of the YC videos the sound is really lacking.
2. Decisions taken and convinced by one founder to the other are not always going to work out and hence the hard conversation after a failed outcome is very unpleasant. Mostly it turns out that the Founder who had thought about a strategy initially and convinced the other founder like I mentioned in Point 1 is put down by an Argument "See I told you this may not work" OR "Why did we do it" etc etc. These type of conversations actually become "Blame Game" conversations. The idea is when founders have agreed to take one decision then they both are party to the outcome and not only have this "See I told you this may not work" OR "Why did we do it" when things don't work out
1. When Founders talk about some key decisions - Most of the time decisions are never going to be Right decision / Wrong Decision. Its mostly going to be different views and to move forward one decision has to be agreed upon. In these cases one Founder has to make a decision that we must move forward this direction and try and convince the partner about the same and hence that 1 or 3 hour discussion is required though the strategy / decision was thought and taken by one of the founder. The important part is to know if the other partner is aligned on the decision or not and hence the conversation must not end with something like "It doesn't matter if you are not convinced I want to move forward with it anyway"
you two just provided a perfect example of how to have an easy conversation 😂
kidding aside, great insights 👍
Thanks really useful. I am currently in YCombinator.
4. Most Important - "Learning how to disagree" and able to show that your intentions are for improvement and growth of the company and not to come across as a control freak who wants to show that the all decisions (of any type for any Department) are taken /approved by me.
Very interesting episode!I I wonder how you perceive differences in team dynamics between teams with a founder as a majority share holder versus more balanced teams with 3-4 minority shareholders as founders. What to do if power play takes over the team dynamics?
Invaluable advice as always!
The most important thing is that you have to approach hard conversations in a non judgemental and neutral way, discconecting from any emotion
That’s true but, you don’t rant to come off as inhuman either.
Do you guys have dedicated mics? Might be worth it if you don't
3. I agree with everything else you have mentioned and learnt few new points for sure
Love this topic here, great points
I wanna get good at these conversations, just because sometimes I feel If I say honest thing, I might loose out friend or colleague, but yeah it's opposite too, when my friend tells my mistakes, I first think may be he is 50% wrong but later after good thought, I get to find my mistakes.
very useful. Disagreeing is a skill!
Love you guys but welcome to human psychology. I don’t think this is about the flaws of founders so much but simply human communication and relations. We also have to learn to navigate the shortcomings most have in the way we communicate and seek support and connection with one another.
Thanks for sharing!
Good information
It’s important for me to let you know both of you are simply awesome. I want to give back in a small way by sharing this content with my LinkedIn network.
The hardest conversation you could have with your co founder is the conversation you probably haven’t had yet
I love your sarcasm 🤣
I think this was a good topic, however I don't really agree with few points - (trying to have Hard Conversation)
Is it bad if you like hard conversations? I mean rather have 10 hard conversation to recieve than 1 easy 1
I keep watching this video hoping for something useful to take away from it but so far (halfway) it just seems to be a couple yc people laughing about how bad founders are. "Co-founders" wasn't too bad but mostly common sense. Just skip to that one if you want to get something from the video.
YC should start looking at founders who are not SaaS. Real product founders are going to be big in deglobalization.
Parachute may expensive
☝ . . . The PSYCHOLOGY & ART of (though, sensitive) Socratic argument . . .
These are the definition of 2x speed videos
If entrepreneurs in YC are having such rookie psychology, not sure what founders outside are upto. Maybe founders need to have a hard life story where validation, appreciation, awards, etc don't matter. Just customers, employees and money are the only things to matter
Sounds like marriage
🥇😁
So YC in other words is saying they want cultist Solo Founders who do believe in if you ask everybody you will never know!! Emerging Markets it is than hopefully with YC or otherwise.