Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
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Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#2I don't think I want to change the world right now. I really don't. Does that make me a bad person or unfit to be an entrepreneur?
All I want to do is solve a real problem for some segment of a large market and make their lives a little easier. I want to build as much value as possible for my customers, so that they are willing to pay good money for my software. And yes, I want to get rich.
I agree that optimizing solely for a quick flip is not the best way to build a successful business. I would rather optimize for growth and creating value for customers and investors.
But questions like "Why is there so much materialism? Why is it so competitive?" strike me as absurd. If you accept the premise that a startup is a business and a fundamentally Capitalistic(rather than Marxist) endeavor, why wouldn't there be materialism and competition? Isn't that the point?
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#3Most of that sounds pretty good, but I have to disagree with this bit:
Ask yourself: would you sell your company? Would you sell it for $20 million? If you answered yes, at this stage, find a new idea. You don’t love it enough.
That strikes me as an over-generalized view. Different people have different circumstances that are going to affect that decision. Somebody who has already had a successful exit and is already set financially, or someone who is very young, might have a different threshold for when they would or wouldn't sell, versus someone who's older and who has never had an exit.
In my own case, as a 37 year old who's never had the "big exit" I can say that there are few - if any - ideas that I wouldn't sell for $20 million (assuming I owned a significant chunk of equity at exit and was going to be walking away with multiple millions of dollars personally.)
Sorry, but the chance to assure myself of financial independence now and for the foreseeable future, and to buy myself the ability to work on whatever I want in the future, could conceivably trump my allegiance to pretty much any idea I might be working on at the moment. I'm not saying it would necessarily be a slam dunk decision, or a decision I'd make on the spur of the moment... but it would be awfully tough to say no to an exit like that, knowing that I'm not getting any younger, and that another chance might not come along.
That said, if I were running a company, and owned enough equity to maintain control, and had to face that decision, I would say "no" if I believed the $20 million exit was far less than what we would eventually achieve, and/or if staying the course were the right thing to help more of the founders / early employees ultimately realize their own degree of financial freedom.
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#4>Would you sell it for $20 million? If you answered yes, at this stage, find a new idea.
Selling a business for $20M would make it a lot easier to get traction for your next idea.
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#5Most of that sounds pretty good, but I have to disagree with this bit: Ask yourself: would you sell your company? Would you sell it for $20 million? If you answered yes, at this stage, find a new idea. You don’t love it enough. That strikes me as an over-generalized view. Different people have different circumstances that are going to affect that decision. Somebody who has already had a successful exit and is already…
viz. Bill Gates, who is changing the world and doing good in more tangible ways than almost any startup, despite having built up Microsoft with the clear focus of make money and dominate the market first, change the world later.
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#6>Would you sell it for $20 million? If you answered yes, at this stage, find a new idea. Selling a business for $20M would make it a lot easier to get traction for your next idea.
I think he's not suggesting it's bad to sell your company, but rather that going into a new one with the idea that you're only there to make money is a bad idea.
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#7Most of that sounds pretty good, but I have to disagree with this bit: Ask yourself: would you sell your company? Would you sell it for $20 million? If you answered yes, at this stage, find a new idea. You don’t love it enough. That strikes me as an over-generalized view. Different people have different circumstances that are going to affect that decision. Somebody who has already had a successful exit and is already…
viz. Bill Gates, who is changing the world and doing good in more tangible ways than almost any startup, despite having built up Microsoft with the clear focus of make money and dominate the market first, change the world later.
Let's be fair to Microsoft--their mission statement was "a computer on every desk and in every home, all running Microsoft software". By the time Gates stepped down as CEO, they achieved that. For all its flaws and the sorry state it finds itself in today, Microsoft was more worldchanging than most startups.
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#8I don't think I want to change the world right now. I really don't. Does that make me a bad person or unfit to be an entrepreneur? All I want to do is solve a real problem for some segment of a large market and make their lives a little easier. I want to build as much value as possible for my customers, so that they are willing to pay good money for my software. And yes, I want to get rich. I agree that optimizing so…
I don't necessarily want to change the world either, but I do want to change my little corner of it. I think that is more than good enough.
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#9>Would you sell it for $20 million? If you answered yes, at this stage, find a new idea. Selling a business for $20M would make it a lot easier to get traction for your next idea.
I think he's not suggesting it's bad to sell your company, but rather that going into a new one with the idea that you're only there to make money is a bad idea.
or he's a shill for the "very rich" (lol) VCs at ycombinator trying to optimize for homeruns rather than community feel-good 20mm exits
Re: Are you sure you want to start a company? (A Letter to Y Combinator Applicants)
#10I would totally be open to the possibility of selling my company someday, it's just that they would have to be just as crazy as me to take me up on my terms. Not everything revolves around $$$.