Whatever the founder cares about, whatever the founders think are the key goals, that's going to be what the whole company focusses on.
Don't let the company get distracted or excited about other things. A common mistake is that companies get excited by their own PR.
You certainly don't need to have everything figured out in the path from here to world domination.
Remember that the idea will expand, and become more ambitious as you go.
Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.
So always keep momentum, it's this prime directive for managing a startup.
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.
You need this sort of a tailwind to make a startup successful.
The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR 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.
Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.
You need to figure out what the 2 or 3 most important things are, and then just do those.
Starting a business is like riding a wave between life and death. If you can hang on long enough, you're bound to succeed
Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.
Every thing at a startup gets modeled after the founders. Whatever the founders do becomes the culture.
The way you get deals done and the way you get good terms, is to have a competitive situation.
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.
You want to continue to be run by great products, not process for it's own sake.
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.
As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.
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.
Most founders have not managed people before, and they certainly haven't managed managers.
In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.
M&A negotiations feel really fun. This is one of the biggest killers of companies, is they entertain acquisition conversations.
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