Sam Altman
There's at least a hundred times more people with great ideas than people that are willing to put in the effort to execute them well.Collection: Ideas
In YC experience, 2 or 3 co-founders seems to be about perfect.Collection: Team
Companies that I've been very involved with, that have had a very bad first hire in the first 3 or so employees never recover from it.Collection: Team
... you can think about that for everyone you hire: will I bet the future of this company on this single hire? And that's a tough bar.Collection: Team
It's become popular in recent years to say that the idea doesn't matter.Collection: Years
Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It's easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.Collection: Building
Most of the best hires that I've made in my entire life have never done that thing before.Collection: Team
The most common post YC failure case for the companies we fund, is they're incredibly focussed during YC on their company... and after they start doing a lot of other things. They advise companies, they go to conferences, whatever.Collection: Common
Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.Collection: Thinking
Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that's sort of just the sad reality.Collection: Reality
The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.Collection: Working All The Time
For most software startups, this translates to keep growing. For hardware startups, it translates to don't let your ship date slip.Collection: Growing
Employees will only add more value over time.Collection: Team
Or a way to stay on strangers couches, that just sounds terrible all around.Collection: Sound
One of the biggest advantages that start ups have is execution speed and you have to have this relentless operating rhythm.Collection: Execution
The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won.Collection: College
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.Collection: Goal
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.Collection: Struggle
... We probably funded a rate of something like one out of ten solo teams.Collection: Team
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.Collection: Thinking
Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.Collection: Thinking
Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.Collection: Mistake
You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.Collection: Needs
Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.Collection: Ideas
Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.Collection: Team
So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.Collection: Momentum
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.Collection: Team
You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.Collection: Successful
The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.Collection: Firm
... 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.Collection: People
Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.Collection: Moving
You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.Collection: Important
Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeedCollection: Long
Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.Collection: Caring
Every thing at a startup gets modeled after the founders. Whatever the founders do becomes the culture.Collection: Culture
The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation.Collection: Way
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.Collection: Successful
You want to continue to be run by great products, not process for it's own sake.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Believe
As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.Collection: Band
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.Collection: Baby
Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.Collection: Track
Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.Collection: People
In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.Collection: Senior
M&A negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies, is they entertain acquisition conversations.Collection: Fun