281–290 of 458 posts
Given YC's increasing more social and larger-world problem solving focus, is being Silicon Valley-centric still a core goal of YC? Are you planning on coming back to the East Coast?
The East Coast is not the first place I'd go to find more people who want to focus on solving larger problems. If anything, I think I'd probably go further west...
Any ideas how your 'YC cities' thing is going to look?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do try to talk about this but should talk about it more. It turns out that most people (and certainly most journalists) want to talk about/write about the success cases. I'll think about how to best do this.
I'd like to know about this too. With all the startups you see, what are the common patterns to failing? A missing skill, lack of belief, timing, weak message etc? If appropriate, how to recognise the warning signs to correct and avoid being the next failure.
Andy Grove (Intel) used to say "Only the paranoid survive", so true,
I used to be amazed that the first thing startup's did was try to imitate the god's with furniture and building's, and the trappings's of wealth. I think your first $10M gross you need to stay lean&mean, complacency is the opposite of paranoia.
In a interview with B-Gate he said his recurrent fear early on was making payroll, cash-flow is a real problem. Keeping the expenses low, and keeping lots of cash on hand to make that payroll in good & bad times is a key often missed, of course a few times the VC's may step in to make that payroll, but that's not really a startup, its more of a parent paying the bill's.
I think a key is getting all the employees to understand that their 24/7 task is to do activity's that bring in the money, when this is done the money flows. Money is the blood of politics and business, if you see a 'failed' biz, its because their revenue came to a halt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No particular shape, but in general we'd rather see it be overweight tech. If no one on the team is good or is willing to get good at sales and 'business', that's a problem.
Have you seen a startup team that is "overweight" non-tech actually be successful? eg. 3 sales and business, one tech/developer
As a middle-aged developer, I've seen a lot in my lifetime, but I believe that right now, even though in some ways I'm much more hopeful for the future than I've ever been, I feel like there are many huge time-bombs out there in the world that make focusing on a startup just to have a chance to become financially successful a petty and, for some, a possibly futile ordeal.
For example: political divisiveness/change/chaos, scary world leaders and potential world leaders discussing/threatening/testing nuclear weapons, wars for and against religions involving terror, causing mass death, spawning racism and restricted freedoms, other random shootings/acts of violence, discord and violence between people that are racially targeted and those who want to serve the public to protect people regardless of their race, terrible diseases/epidemics some without cures or growing resistance to cures that we've long depended on, weather related natural disasters, economic troubles, etc. The list goes on and on.
Given the climate of the world today and all of our problems, what things do you want to see- not just in the startups that you and/or YC as a whole want to help, but across the board? And what do you say to those that think that just don't feel safe enough to invest the time, money, and effort on a startup which has a greater chance of failure than success when they could just be working a stable job to try to save enough to survive what is ahead?
Two related questions. It's known YC prefers teams. Do you have a preferred shape or size for the team (2 tech, 1 marketing, or 1 tech, 1 web, 1 marketing and business etc); is any combination shown to be more likely to succeed within YC? How do you view teams too heavy on tech? It's common for a group of tech people to have the idea, but as a team have some gaps on say the marketing side, and probably other areas. A…
No particular shape, but in general we'd rather see it be overweight tech. If no one on the team is good or is willing to get good at sales and 'business', that's a problem.
Two related questions. It's known YC prefers teams. Do you have a preferred shape or size for the team (2 tech, 1 marketing, or 1 tech, 1 web, 1 marketing and business etc); is any combination shown to be more likely to succeed within YC? How do you view teams too heavy on tech? It's common for a group of tech people to have the idea, but as a team have some gaps on say the marketing side, and probably other areas. A…
1) Dig into exact contributions to campaigns for past roles. Ask for the logic around decisions. Often marketers talk about their campaigns results but really they were a body in a room with little input. Dig for detail and motivations to decisions and you will find out who is who.
2) Look for initiative. Many marketeers repeat what is always done optimising here and there. Especially for dynamic businesses i'd look for people that see the world independently of their enviroment, have the initiative to shift how things are done. This is someone that will deliver results vs turn wheels for the sake of it.
3) Look for someone that has experience working big and small companies. The big brands will train comms, project management and procedure. Small brands should give the 'getting it done' skills, generalist experience and show they can get technical/dirty hands. Larger brand experience can look impressive but often the work is more project management for agencies and doesnt suit hand on. Likewise if you're business is big enough to run agencies if someone has always been hands on they can be weak project managers and communicate needs ineffectively.
4) Find someone that can analyse data vs report it. There's a big difference in the 2 and the former is surprisingly rare.
5) Avoid anyone that shows narcissistic tendency or is generally 'me' focused. This personality tends to be bad comms people (especially with social) as they see the world from their POV, not the customers.
6) Give marketers product input. They should have their finger on the customer pulse and valuable views on what sell/motivates users. Dont let tech side shut out marketing.
7) Don't go cheap. I often see startups advertising low paid roles a couple years experience, while they pay for experienced developers. Half the price sounds great but they will bring a fraction of the value.
8) Make sure they have a budget. This goes well with the above point. Generally I'd say a 10-20x marketing salary would be a good rule of what you should be looking to spend if bringing a permanent marketing role in.
9) Sales and marketing are not the same thing. Know what you need. They dont often come all-in-one.
10) While not an absolute I usually check linkedin contacts to skill endorsements ratio. Typically this ratio is higher for the people I know are good marketers. I wouldn't make my decision by this but is seems one of those soft indicators.
11) When you interview give a 10min exercise before to discuss and cover up real-time actual skills. E.g. show them some relevant to role campaign materials (e.g. landing pages/EDM's) and ask them how they would improve. Ask them what they would do with $50k. Typically I add in some spelling/grammar mistakes to also look for attention to detail as it tends to be a 'you have it or you dont' skill (like initiative) and not something you can train up.
...hope that's useful...not a rant :)
What do you think of the women in tech movement, and other diversity initiatives?
I'm supportive, obviously. I think in some ways diversity in tech is very bad (e.g. very many, or perhaps nearly all, of the CEOs of 'unicorns' are white men). I think YC has made good but not great progress here. I don't pretend to know all the answers. About 11% of the founders that apply to YC are women, and I've heard that's a fair bit higher than what other investors see. We fund women (and Black and Latino foun…