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Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

startupclass.samaltman.com

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Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

#11

Post by tinco »

brandonb wrote: post #7
tinco wrote: post #5

Did he say a panopticon of skills?

Don't you know? It's crucial for startup founders to have an 18th-century dystopian surveillance system of skills. In fact, if you play the video backward, you can actually hear Reid recite the entire text of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. (Seriously, I'd guess he meant "panoply.")

Nice, you went to a better school than Stanford ostensibly ;)

Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

#13

Post by rajens »

For anyone that's looking for a handful of real takeaways- I've put together the 26 quotes that I found interesting from this lecture here: https://medium.com/how-to-start-a-startup/26-quotes-reid-hof...

I've left out a lot of the X or Y slideware related aspirational statements he made. I think his comments on being a contrarian these days and the need for an investment thesis was interesting.

Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

#14

Post by [deleted] »

denismars wrote: post #3
staunch wrote: post #2

Haven't watched this one yet, but all the lectures have had at least one really great insight to learn from. Thanks for uploading them so quickly, it's really nice.

Cool - my favorite part of Reid's lecture in this video is his clarification of what a contrarian founder really means. Don't miss that one!

[deleted]

Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

#15

Post by tytytytyty »

More business graduates gravitating to the "tech" field full of useless piffy advice peddling themselves and their shoddy unoriginal offerings. When will these people realize they are like chefs who can't cook, nobody cares what they think.

I know I'm in the belly of the beast here but you all need to hear it.

Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

#16

Post by Aeoxic »

tytytytyty wrote: post #15

More business graduates gravitating to the "tech" field full of useless piffy advice peddling themselves and their shoddy unoriginal offerings. When will these people realize they are like chefs who can't cook, nobody cares what they think. I know I'm in the belly of the beast here but you all need to hear it.

> More business graduates gravitating to the "tech" field full of useless piffy advice peddling themselves and their shoddy unoriginal offerings.

Ah yes, the "self-made entrepreneurial IT consultants".

Re: Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

#17

Post by scobar »

I found it very interesting when he spoke about founders who've learned to mimic an attribute investors find important. He notes that ignoring a single investor's feedback is fine, but ignoring the world in general is usually disaster.

I imagine the rise of this sort of mimicry leads investors who previously would consider investing in an idea and seemingly great founders to more strongly favor traction. I wonder if the YC partners keep track of the change in the percentage of startups accepted with an idea alone or complete a prototype just before an interview.

I'm also curious about the percentage of successful (or surviving) YC startups that were accepted with no traction versus those accepted with a product that had a quickly growing number of users. This value may be misleading, though, because the sample size isn't enormous, and there are so many other variables that affect the survival of a startup.

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