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Startup Playbook

playbook.samaltman.com

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Re: Startup Playbook

#21

Post by jMyles »

> Startups are the point in your life when tricks stop working.

Awesome thesis, hidden in the middle of the text. In some ways, this is a great single sentence answer to the question, "What is a startup, really?"

Re: Startup Playbook

#22

Post by duggan »

jMyles wrote: post #19
taylorwc wrote: post #17

> Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D’Angelo, Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for contributing thoughts to this. ^ this group + @sama... wow. Terrific advice from an amazing list of credible people.

To be honest, I don't think I know a single one of them. Who are they and how can I learn more about what they do and how they formulate such great content?

I think if you Google many of those names, the first thing that will come up is a Wikipedia article about them.

Re: Startup Playbook

#23

Post by webmasterraj »

jMyles wrote: post #21

> Startups are the point in your life when tricks stop working. Awesome thesis, hidden in the middle of the text. In some ways, this is a great single sentence answer to the question, "What is a startup, really?"

This is the tldr of the whole thing

Re: Startup Playbook

#25

Post by birken »

webmasterraj wrote: post #13

> an even bigger problem is that once you have a startup you have to hurry to come up with an idea, and because it’s already an official company the idea can’t be too crazy. You end up with plausible sounding but derivative ideas. This is the danger of pivots. A great point, that I haven't seen in too many places. I sometimes feel like we're seeing too many people who "want to have a startup" for the supposed fame an…

As a counterpoint, the founders of Thumbtack started a startup before they had an idea, picked a very "derivative idea" and still did (and are doing) pretty well. If I had to quantify the motivation of the early team, it was much more about the company being successful than everybody being super passionate about the idea. As long as you can out-execute your competitors and people want your product, it doesn't really matter what your motivation is.

Re: Startup Playbook

#26

Post by jrauser »

jMyles wrote: post #21

> Startups are the point in your life when tricks stop working. Awesome thesis, hidden in the middle of the text. In some ways, this is a great single sentence answer to the question, "What is a startup, really?"

For more on this idea, have a look at pg's Before the Startup:

"So this is the third counterintuitive thing to remember about startups: starting a startup is where gaming the system stops working."

http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html

Re: Startup Playbook

#27

Post by gkoberger »

jMyles wrote: post #19
taylorwc wrote: post #17

> Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D’Angelo, Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for contributing thoughts to this. ^ this group + @sama... wow. Terrific advice from an amazing list of credible people.

To be honest, I don't think I know a single one of them. Who are they and how can I learn more about what they do and how they formulate such great content?

  * Sam Altman – Y Combinator President
  * Paul Buchheit - YC Partner, Gmail founder
  * Erica Carpenter - Y Combinator
  * Brian Chesky - AirBnb
  * Adam D’Angelo – Quora, ex-CTO of FB
  * Drew Houston – Dropbox founder
  * Justin Kan – YC Partner, Twitch, Justin.tv, Socialcam
  * Matt Krisiloff – Y Combinator
  * Aaron Levie – Box founder
  * Gabriel Leydon – Machine Zone founder
  * Jessica Livingston – YC Founder
  * Dustin Moskovitz – Facebook cofounder
  * David Rusenko – Weebly founder
  * Colleen Taylor – Y Combinator

Re: Startup Playbook

#28

Post by crgt »

jMyles wrote: post #19
taylorwc wrote: post #17

> Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D’Angelo, Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for contributing thoughts to this. ^ this group + @sama... wow. Terrific advice from an amazing list of credible people.

To be honest, I don't think I know a single one of them. Who are they and how can I learn more about what they do and how they formulate such great content?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericacarpenter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Chesky

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_D'Angelo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Houston

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Kan

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-krisiloff/41/668/476

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Levie

http://www.vbprofiles.com/people/gabe-leydon-522021ee843bac6...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Livingston

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dustin_Moskovitz

http://david.weebly.com/about.html

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/colleen-taylor

Re: Startup Playbook

#30

Post by sama »

ilurk wrote: post #20
sama wrote: post #4

(This got published a little early because it got indexed. I'm still going through and fixing some typos and will maybe add a few other things.)

I'm just curious. Does the playbook have any game-changing ideas from what was told at the Startup Class videos? And BTW, thanks for all the info YC has been putting out there for free.

No.
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