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Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

startupclass.samaltman.com

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Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#61

Post by TimPC »

ThomPete wrote: post #59
pbreit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still going to plenty of "finding your own way". I suspect most founders and early employees could find a lot of useful information in the material.

Not disagreeing. But whether it's actionable is what I would question.

Not spending on PR or going to conferences pre-product is highly actionable for a large number of start-ups who do the opposite. Balancing the early team to be able to execute a product people love before scaling a marketing organization is highly actionable as well. The advice on doing a start-up for the right reasons is the most actionable of all.

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#62

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

birken wrote: post #39
7Figures2Commas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the holdings disclosed at the time of Facebook's IPO, and even accounting for the rise in the company's stock, I doubt very much that employee #100 at Facebook is sitting on $200 million in gains from his or her options or RSUs. In the case of Dropbox, looking at what the Box founders own according to Box's S-1[1] probably provides a more realistic comp. One thing worth noting is that Dustin's slide apparent…

When Google went public the valuation was ~$23 Billion (they raised just under $2 billion in the IPO) [1]. However to your point this was around 6 years after founding, whereas Facebook was valued at ~15 billion by Microsoft in 2007, 3 years after it was founded. I had a friend who turned down a job at Facebook in late 2008 because he felt the 15 billion valuation was very high and it limited his upside. And before a…

Yes, you are correct.

Your friend didn't necessarily make a bad decision. Facebook traded as low as ~$18/share in 2012 and didn't get back to its IPO closing price until mid-2013.

According to a media report[1], at one point, even employees who joined the company as late as the end of 2010 were underwater. So anybody (you, me, your friend) could have purchased FB shares with a cost basis lower than that of many employees.

Given this, it's somewhat disingenuous for Dustin to use Facebook's current valuation to demonstrate "getting rich at a startup." It's actually a better demonstration of "getting rich trading the stock market." Adding insult to injury is the fact that the investor with long-term capital gains receives more favorable tax treatment on his or her gains than employees usually receive.

Incidentally, employees who don't exercise and sell as soon as they can are effectively investing their hard-earned gains back into their employer's stock. Depending on how well the company's stock does, and when sales are timed, this can either be a really profitable thing or a really unprofitable thing.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-lockup-release-2012-...

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#63

Post by TimPC »

ThomPete wrote: post #53
TimPC wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree strongly. These lectures are about 40 minutes and seem jam packed with good advice. A start-up isn't a formula but it does follow certain trends. Doing it wrong is a disaster and if you're taking on what can be a 10 year commitment without spending less than 20h exploring advice from some of the best data and people in start-ups you probably have misaligned your priorities. I suspect heeding the advice in th…

Doing it wrong might actually sometimes mean doing it right. Ycombinator companies have access to this advice yet most of these companies fail. Thats just how it is. You can get structural advice from a laywer the rest is up to you to explore.

YCombinator companies have a far higher success percentage than the general start-up population. Most fail is hardly a criticism when the default environment is 90% of start-ups fail. Moving 90% to 60% for example means your chance of success quadruples, but it still meets your criticism of "most fail".

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#65

Post by bequanna »

tucaz wrote: post #19

I've been watching it for 8 minutes as of now and despite the fact that the content looks good it really bores me to death that he is reading the whole thing like a robot. It does not sound like a natural converstation or presentation. Does anyone else share this feeling?

I disagree.

The content is great and communicated well.

Some people prefer making presentations having only some general idea of what they are going to say before hand. Other people spend a good deal of time thinking about exactly what they want to say and how they want to say it. Both presentation styles are perfectly valid.

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#67

Post by ThomPete »

TimPC wrote: post #63
ThomPete wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing it wrong might actually sometimes mean doing it right. Ycombinator companies have access to this advice yet most of these companies fail. Thats just how it is. You can get structural advice from a laywer the rest is up to you to explore.

YCombinator companies have a far higher success percentage than the general start-up population. Most fail is hardly a criticism when the default environment is 90% of start-ups fail. Moving 90% to 60% for example means your chance of success quadruples, but it still meets your criticism of "most fail".

The reason they don't fail is most likely more to do with the fact that yCombinator is already a powerhouse more than with the advice.

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#68

Post by simonebrunozzi »

I also don't agree that working on a startup should mean no work-life balance. There's a limit to how productive you can be, and working 90 hours/week is not going to make you more productive than working 45 hours/week. If you work too much, you'll do more mistakes. Ryan Carson, founder of TeamTreeHouse, can teach us a lot about it. http://ryancarson.com/

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#69

Post by ThomPete »

TimPC wrote: post #61
ThomPete wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing. But whether it's actionable is what I would question.

Not spending on PR or going to conferences pre-product is highly actionable for a large number of start-ups who do the opposite. Balancing the early team to be able to execute a product people love before scaling a marketing organization is highly actionable as well. The advice on doing a start-up for the right reasons is the most actionable of all.

And yet the reality is that this worked for some. There is no meta advice, no big secret besides find out how to make it work for you.

Re: Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]

#70

Post by napoleond »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #58

Sam: "Step 1, build something that users love" How does this compare with an MVP approach where you put something out there first and test the market. Then there is the issue of runway. With enough time, you can start with an MVP and iterate in private beta until users love it, but in many cases a founder is not going to have that kind of runway. They have just enough resources to put something together, and they're…

The two concepts are not mutually exclusive. If you target a big enough pain point, your first users will love the product even if it lacks polish. It's also important to remember that MVP != shit. It is the minimum viable product; in the context of the YC motto it's the minimum product that a small, core group of users will love.

This is all theoretical on my part, FWIW--I have not successfully built such a thing on my own yet.

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