Week 1
Future Founders Track Welcome (Video)
This course started in 2017.
Hundreds of thousands of people have enrolled in this course. Tens of thousands have graduated. Hundreds of them actually ended up getting funded by Y-Combinator.
Starting-up is the hardest but most rewarding choice you can make for your career
Why To Not Not Start A Startup (Essay)
A 2007 essay by Paul Graham
Notice the double negative in the title, I missed it the first time I read it
This article tries to debunk the several excuses people have for not starting-up
The first batch of Y-Combinator startups was in 2005. One of them was Reddit.
Often its quoted that 10% of startups succeed, but Graham feels its closer to 25%
Even the founders who failed ended up happy. One startup got crushed by Google calendar, but not before selling their software to eBay for a quarter-million dollars. They went on to start-up a new idea.
0% of the first batch had a terrible experience
“If you’re a hacker thinking about starting up a startup and hesitating before taking the leap, you’re part of a grand tradition”. Larry and Sergey felt the same before starting google. Jerry and Filo before Yahoo. This is a good sign, not a bad one.
Applicants decide at the last moment to apply, just hours before the deadline, and go one to become some of the most successful startups that Y-Combinator has funded.
The 16 Excuses People Often Have For Not Starting-Up
Too Young
The median age is 27
Sam Altman was funded at 19, who is now the past-president of Y-Combinator, and the CEO of OpenAI. He is an outlier though.
The question is not about whether you’re above or below a certain birth year, but about your maturity level.
The Kid flake reflex is a good way to test your maturity level. When something is hard for a kid to do, they ask an adult to make it all better. As an adult, you don’t have this default option to defer to someone else.
The other determining factor for maturity level is how a person reacts to a challenge:
Someone who’s not yet an adult will tend to respond to a challenge from an adult in a way that acknowledges their dominance. If an adult says “that’s a stupid idea,” a kid will either crawl away with his tail between his legs, or rebel. But rebelling presumes inferiority as much as submission. The adult response to “that’s a stupid idea,” is simply to look the other person in the eye and say “Really? Why do you think so?”
- Too inexperienced
The best way to get experience is to start a startup. So if you don’t have enough experience with startups, then you should start one, so you can get experience.
Sure you may fail, but failure will get you to the ultimate goal faster than getting a job - Not determined enough
Startups indeed require a strong amount of determination to succeed
However, it’s often the case that people underestimate how much determination they have
Determination grows as they get used to running a startup
The real question is to ask if you’re driven to work on your projects - Not smart enough
If you’re smart enough to worry about not being smart enough, then you probably are.
Although Silicon Valley founders tend to be highly intelligent, many rich people in NYC, LA, etc. are lacking in intelligence but excel in effort
Enterprise software is not as technically difficult and relies more on sales than technology. - Know nothing about business
Your focus should be on creating a product people love, not on a money-making machine
100% of startups that have a product that people love, end up making money some way or another
Having a rock-solid business plan for a product that people hate, will not make any money - No cofounder
This is a legitimate problem since a startup is too much for a single person to handle
Investors always prefer startups with a cofounder
If you’re in school, you’re surrounded by potential cofounders
You need to work with someone to know if they would make a good cofounder - No idea
This is my personal issue. I always feel like my ideas might be interesting, but not realistic, or too many hurdles to overcome, or already done
Not a problem if you don’t have a good idea, since your idea is bound to change anyway. On average, a Y-Combinator startup is 70–100% new by the first 3 months
On the application, they care less about your idea and more about what projects you’ve made in the past
“A need that’s narrow but genuine is a better starting point than one that’s broad but hypothetical” - No room for more startups
Satisfying current need always leads to more new needs
Nearly everyone who works is satisfying some kind of need. Breaking up companies into smaller units doesn’t make those needs go away …We take for granted things that medieval kings would have considered effeminate luxuries, like whole buildings heated to spring temperatures year round. And if things go well, our descendants will take for granted things we would consider shockingly luxurious. There is no absolute standard for material wealth. Health care is a component of it, and that alone is a black hole. For the foreseeable future, people will want ever more material wealth, so there is no limit to the amount of work available for companies, and for startups in particular. - Family to support
Graham suggests that if you have a family, you shouldn’t startup — but not because it's undoable, but because he doesn’t want to take responsibility for potentially hurting a family.
To reduce risk, you can join an existing startup. Being one of the first few members is a lot like being a co-founder
Ideally, start startups when you’re young - Independently wealthy
Most rich people don’t bother with starting-up, since they don’t need the stress or years of commitment.
However, working with interesting people is exciting, and is likely why we have serial entrepreneurs.
Personally, I think wealthy people would shift gears into philanthropic startups or foundations (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). - Not ready for commitment
If you want to spend your time traveling, or playing in a band, etc., then that’s a perfectly good reason not to start a company
If your startup succeeds, it will take up at least 3–4 years. A lot less time if it fails.
If you get a regular job, you’ll end up working there just as long as you would anyway. - Need for structure
History has shown that people like routine, and being told what to do — armies, cults, religions, etc.
Until the company has at least 12~ people, they should be working independently
If being told that you aren’t independent-minded makes you defensive, then you likely are independent-minded enough - Fear of uncertainty
If you go to work for some FAANG company, you can predict with all-too accurately where you will end up in the next few years
With a startup, anything might happen. To help with your fear of uncertainty, it's highly probable that your very first startup will fail.
Hope for the best, expect the worst. In the worst case, it will at least be interesting. In the best case, you get rich. - Don’t realize what you’re avoiding
If you’ve worked for a few years, you know what you can avoid by starting a startup.
Such as BS workplace expectations, for example when you have to pretend to work, even if there’s no work to be done, just to keep up appearances
Working an easy job and getting paid handsomely may be rewarding for a short while, but eventually becomes demoralizing - Parents want you to be a doctor
Parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they were for themselves.
This is expected since parents tend to share more of their child’s ill-fortune rather than the good-fortune
Reward is always proportional to risk. By protecting kids from risk, they are also surrendering rewards
If you are someone who lives to please their parents, the best way to do that is to figure out how to give them what they want, without limiting your exposure to potential rewards — becoming a doctor may be safe and requested by a parent, but no parent would object to having their child as successful as Steve Jobs. - A job is the default
Defaults are powerful since they don’t require a conscious decision to be made
The defaults of the last millennia were to farm in order to feed your family. Then, the industrial revolution changed the norm. People felt afraid to leave their rural village and move to a big city with thousands of strangers. But now, population centers are in those same cities. The norm of working a 9–5 is changing, and we will see a great economic shift in the way we create wealth.
Essay link:
http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html