No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.
We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.
... for the top twenty most valuable YC companies, all of them have at least two founders.
... you want to be proud of how much you can get done with a small numbers of employees.
One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.
There are 3 things I look for when I hire people. Are they smart? Do they get things done? Do I want to spend a lot of time around them?
You need unstoppable people. You want people that are just going to get it done.
I think the best thing you can do is be aware that as a first time founder you are likely to be a very bad manager.
We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do.
A winning team feels good and keeps winning. A team that hasn't won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing.
... We probably funded a rate of something like one out of ten solo teams.
Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.
You think you have this great idea that everyone's going to come join, but that's not how it works.
If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.
One of the pieces of advice that we give at YC is: try to work together on a project rather than just doing an interview.
I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
Firing people is one of the worst parts of running a company. Actually in my own experience, I think it is the worst.
Cofounder relationships are among the most important in the entire company.
At YC we have this public phrase, and it's relentlessly resourceful.
At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
... 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.
Really dig into projects people have worked on and call references; that is another thing that first time founders like to skip.
Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.
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