Everything else: demo day, what investors you get, how much you raise, what press covers you -- it is all window dressing.
I just gave a talk to the W2021 YC batch. It's my favorite startup audience to talk to. Here are some of the highlights:
Everything else: demo day, what investors you get, how much you raise, what press covers you -- it is all window dressing.
1/ What is \u201cproduct/market fit\u201d? I\u2019m not sure I can give you a definition. But maybe I can share what the subjective difference is in how it feels when you have it and when you don\u2019t. Founding a startup is deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus: pushing a boulder up a hill.
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) July 27, 2019
YC is really an accountability framework for you to make fast progress in finding PMF. No one wants to be the person that shows up during office hours and reports that nothing got done the last two weeks.
You should outline your values up front. Then make decisions in accordance with your values. I can’t tell you what they should be (and no one else can).
Start with values. Values will keep you together when you face stressful decision points (selling the company, shutting down, pivoting).
With your cofounders, build trust through vulnerability, clear communication, clear areas of responsibility.
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Every single time I set foot in every store/restaurant/place of business in Latin America. Only if they are not completely ignoring me from jump. Or following me bc obviously I came to carry out my plans to rob a store that is approximately 2 sq ft. big.
The part that’s also relevant is I’m oftentimes viewed as respectable-negro adjacent in the dominant culture imaginary. So what of those who are never identified as such? I always think about that. I get surveyed & harassed bad...yet and still there’s levels to the profiling.
When I have to do errands in Panama City, I make sure to apply makeup, perfume, an outfit with cleavage, or booty emphasis, heels and an “expensive” purse. There are STARK differences in the service and treatment I get when I do this vs. when I don’t. STARK. Pero, *STARK.*
LatinAmerica is psychotic in identifying who has money and who doesn’t based on how they are dressed, and how they imagine, carrying themselves. An “elegantly dressed” Black person will face less violence on an errand-run versus one who isn’t. This isn’t absolute so sit down plis
And then the times when I am dressed super-revealing. All of the help and care in the world from male workers. The same white mestizo men who would ordinarily follow me to “prevent theft” are happily helping me find things. Again, race, color, gender, class and more.
That \u201chere\u2019s a White customer, they\u2019re automatically more important\u2014despite the fact neither have you spent money yet so I can\u2019t even claim a paying customer is more important than a browsing customer\u2014so lemme interrupt helping you to go to them\u201d thing just happened to me again.
— \U0001f183\U0001f181\U0001f184\U0001f173\U0001f188 (@thetrudz) January 8, 2021
The part that’s also relevant is I’m oftentimes viewed as respectable-negro adjacent in the dominant culture imaginary. So what of those who are never identified as such? I always think about that. I get surveyed & harassed bad...yet and still there’s levels to the profiling.
When I have to do errands in Panama City, I make sure to apply makeup, perfume, an outfit with cleavage, or booty emphasis, heels and an “expensive” purse. There are STARK differences in the service and treatment I get when I do this vs. when I don’t. STARK. Pero, *STARK.*
LatinAmerica is psychotic in identifying who has money and who doesn’t based on how they are dressed, and how they imagine, carrying themselves. An “elegantly dressed” Black person will face less violence on an errand-run versus one who isn’t. This isn’t absolute so sit down plis
And then the times when I am dressed super-revealing. All of the help and care in the world from male workers. The same white mestizo men who would ordinarily follow me to “prevent theft” are happily helping me find things. Again, race, color, gender, class and more.
