BC STARTUP
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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:

 Finding product market fit is the critical thing to do in a startup.

Everything else: demo day, what investors you get, how much you raise, what press covers you -- it is all window dressing.
Many founders don’t want to talk to their customers because it makes them vulnerable, because it's hard work, because it's scary. Creating a tight feedback loop with customers is the one thing that will help you discover PMF.
If a customer isn't one of your cofounders, try to create a customer panel that allows as tight of a loop as possible. Call them daily. Put them in your Slack.
My Twitch cofounder Emmett Shear has a great analogy on PMF here: it's like rolling a boulder downhill. https://t.co/WEORUcnB4c
At Atrium, I confused myself on whether we had PMF because I was really good at sales. Basically, I was really strong and could roll the boulder uphill more easily. But it was still uphill.
It is often very unclear from the outside who is doing well or not in Silicon Valley. Example: people thought https://t.co/JQ2skuQnoc sucked, but Atrium was super successful. If you read the outside narrative you would be confused.
The outside narrative is irrelevant to your startup. Only focus on PMF. Just talk to your customers and build your product. Fuck the outside world.
You should be willing to toil on PMF in obscurity for as long as it takes. The best companies start with a narrow wedge of PMF and it turns out that many people want it.
Most founders start motivated extrinsically (money, success, security) but the best founders shift to being motivated intrinsically (they are doing things that give them joy). Intrinsic motivation will keep you working when extrinsic motivation will not.
It is ok to have extrinsic motivation - even if some of those desires aren’t the most attractive things to admit to yourself.
You can find investors without YC. You can raise money without YC.

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.
Work is a kind of habit. If you want to be productive, set up the frameworks for yourself to improve your work habit. Make it easy, make it accessible, make it rewarding.
Example: I used to eat pizza every day for lunch, and then would take a nap. I thought I was just a tired motherfucker. But it turns out if I change my work diet, I am more productive.
On balancing ruthlessness vs compassion/kindness in a startup:

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).
How to create a great cofounder team dynamic:

Start with values. Values will keep you together when you face stressful decision points (selling the company, shutting down, pivoting).
Make sure there are clear cofounder roles and a clear decision making structure. Have this conversation up front even if it is uncomfortable.

With your cofounders, build trust through vulnerability, clear communication, clear areas of responsibility.
Everyone wants famous investors to invest. Famous investors won’t make your company. Finding PMF will.
When you are successful, everyone will want to help you out, whether they invested or not. When you are failing, no one will want to help you, whether they invested or not.
Getting rich won’t solve your problems. You will still experience stress. Yes, this may be sound ridiculous. True equanimity can only come from getting right with your inner work.
More knowledge drops and summaries from my podcast The Quest on my free newsletter: https://t.co/U09RoOa8HI
One other thing I forgot: work with people who put a smile on your face. Life is short!

More from Justin Kan

Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
Just got a tip that Citadel reloaded their shorts before they told Robinhood to stop trading $GME.

If this is true, Ken Griffin and the Robinhood founders should be in jail.

This is class warfare.

@aoc there should be a congressional hearing
TRADING
Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
1/ Throughout my startup career, I’ve seen many founders have an aversion to sales. This is a mistake that can kill your startup.

2/ Sales is often viewed as either a saving grace or proof that the product isn’t good enough (because it should sell itself). Neither are ever true. Some common mistakes that result in...

3/ Mistake 1: Hire a sales rep before reaching product/market fit to get your initial batch of customers. This is a mistake because founders need to work through their MVP with early adopters to truly understand what it is they’re selling.

4/ Mistake 2: Reach product/market fit, need to scale, and rely entirely on self-serve. For enterprise products that require big commitments and internal shifts, almost no product is self-explanatory enough to sell itself.

5/ Mistake 3: Make a first sales hire who isn’t scrappy enough to help mold the sales process from scratch. Some salespeople are amazing at their jobs, but not cut out to establish the processes that others end up following. This skillset is what @rdedatta calls a “sales ninja”.
STARTUPS
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Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
1/ Silicon Valley has changed a lot over the past 13 years since I started my first company (an AJAX calendar called Kiko that was funded in the first batch of YC).

2/ Tech has gone from an industry no one cared about, to every random person I knew in college rushing to be part of it, to the evil industry destroying the fabric of society

3/ Starting a startup is easier than ever. Lots of resources: YC, more financing at the seed stage, much more information online. Starting a company is no longer a risky path.

4/ New businesses in every industry are now being built with methodologies that used to be just for tech startups (fast iteration, access to venture capital). Applies to D2C companies like Allbirds, full stack companies like Atrium, etc.

5/ Personally, I’ve felt recently that the overall risk appetite of the people working in tech has changed. People used to want to join frontier companies building something fun / cool; now everyone seems to be optimizing for salary / career stability.
ALL
Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
With @ycombinator #demoday kicking off, @atrium gathered advice from past YC founders.

.@jaltma from @latticeHQ says “Don’t confuse investor interest with product-market fit. You’re about to be on the receiving end of a lot of hype and FOMO - use it to your advantage by taking the money and then keep your burn and ego low.”

.@typesfast from @flexport says “I like to remind myself that even Bruce Springsteen still gets nervous before his concerts. Remember that, and then try to focus on what investors want: First, not to be bored. Second, to get rich(er).”

.@collinmathilde from @frontapp says “Leverage your data to tell a story about what the business has achieved and where it is going. Metrics are necessary, but they are too often shared without a narrative arc.”

.@drusenko from @weebly says “Make it relevant. Investors can live in their own world, so try to find an angle that they can relate to.”
STARTUPS
Justin Kan
Justin Kan
@justinkan
10 months ago we shut down Atrium after raising $75m in venture capital. Anyone hearing that knows I made tons of mistakes along the way. Someone asked me today what my biggest lessons learned were. Here they are:

Start with the mission
.

It is very hard to write the mission after the fact. You should start with a clear reason to exist and filter early hires for believers.

Start remote. SFBA is over for startups: the cost of housing and rent gives you much worse operating leverage. Many talented people choose jobs they want to be flexible re: location. Remote is better at this time in the market.

I wrote that before COVID, now it's extra true.

There is no skipping of the R&D phase of a company - if you try to skip this you miss the part where you are forced to develop something differentiated. Very hard to solve this with money.

Don’t build a services company. It’s more work to manage everyone and the reward isn’t there at the end of the day.
STARTUP LESSONS

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Brock Briggs
Brock Briggs
@BrockHBriggs
I currently intern for a venture accelerator where I listen to and provide feedback on pitches from startups looking to get funded.

Here are 7 things I've learned so far 👇

1/ Forget the elevator pitch

Be able to describe what your business does and how it does it in one sentence.

VC's have short attention spans. Explaining what you do quickly means you understand your business and the value it offers.

2/ Tell a story

Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end - the same way a good pitch does.

Beginning: What is the problem?
Middle: What did you do about it?
End: Where is it going?

3/ Explicitly define the problem

Explain in detail what the issue is your customer has and WHY they have that problem.

Just because you have sales doesn't mean you're solving a problem.

Good businesses with exponential potential solve problems.

4/ Understand why you're different

If you're a first-mover in a good business, you will have competitors.
If you're not a first-mover, you already have competitors.

Know what value you bring that others do not. Why did customers choose you and why will they continue to?
STARTUP
Atharva Kharbade
Atharva Kharbade
@athrvakhrbde
Part-II
Startup Bharat: @naval & @balajis

The full Clubhouse session in text

Thread Continued

16/

Naval: It's funny because right now there's like that dude, where's my flying car mean, which is like, we were promised flying cars, but instead we got, 280 characters, 140 characters, and there's some truth to that. But at the same time, We're going to get our flying cars.

17/

We have drones that are flying overhead. How long before those things are carrying larger and larger payloads, but carry humans all the way. Maybe not, but there's lots of other electric plane companies coming.

18/

We have electric cars, we have rockets. If you can look at like bird and lime and so on that electric scooter revolution, that's a bigger deal than people think.

19/

One of the big problems with a developing country like India is you just have horrible pollution and traffic. But you can see how over time that in the West, a lot of non-electric vehicles are being replaced by electric vehicles not because they're cooler or necessarily...
STARTUP
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Frank Rotman
Frank Rotman
@fintechjunkie
1/23: One #startup trap to avoid (founders and VCs) is to fall in love with a value prop that can’t be delivered IRL now. Good diligence will surface disconnects but they’re often brushed under the rug by #VCs who believe fixing delivery over time will be fine. Unpacked:

2/23: The foundational reason why this matters from day 1 is that building a franchise of loyal customers is difficult for any #startup to pull off but the challenge is amplified if the #startup has to rebuild its franchise as it scales.

3/23: Broken or unfulfilled promises lead to customer behaviors that have real consequences. Poor ratings and reviews. High customer service costs. High complaint volume. Low engagement. High attrition/returns/cancelations. Low organic growth.

4/23: Undoing damage takes time and sometimes is nearly impossible. Convincing inactive customers to “retry” your product isn’t easy. Overcoming bad reviews can be a Herculean task. And resources will be thrown at fixing past sins at the expense of new functionality.

5/23: And guess what happens when #VCs dig into questionable early performance numbers? These conversations tend to revolve around caveats, apologies and synthetic analysis that bakes in significant improvements (many of which are still “unknown” in nature).
STARTUP
Ryan Breslow \U0001f57a
Ryan Breslow 🕺...
@theryanking
How to run a company (in priority order):

1: Define a crystal clear north star

Great companies know their destination.

Everyone rowing in one direction.

The best north star? A SIMPLE, measurable metric.

Get it right, and watch the magic unfold! 💫

2: Hire uncomfortably good people

Ah, my favorite line!

Hire people you have no right to hire.

Who are so good it makes you nervous.

Who force everyone to step up their game.

Always level up 🦾

3: Create a culture of urgency

Nothing is more powerful than a group of people making every day count 🔥⚡️🚨

4: Make sure no one gets blocked

You’re paying good people good money.

Make sure they don’t get stuck!

Demotivating for them 🤦

Disastrous for the bottom line.
STARTUP
Chaitanya Mehta
Chaitanya Mehta
@cmehta85
Building an #MVP is the first step in building a #startup. Whether a feature should be added or not, better to launch early with less or late with more are questions founders struggle with. Below 👇👇👇 is a #tweetstorm on @mwseibel's 'How to plan an MVP'
STARTUP

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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.


4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
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Brian Armstrong
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@brian_armstrong
1/ Productivity tip: when I keep procrastinating on something I often trick myself by saying, "ok just work on it for the next 20 minutes" or some short period of time, "and then you can chill/relax guilt free" and give myself some treat (sugar, netflix, etc)

2/ Usually at the 20 minute mark (sometimes I set a timer) I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that I don't want want to stop and end up working on it for the next hour or two. But getting started seems to be the hardest part.

3/ Key to this: you have to actually be ok with stopping after 20 minutes and being guilt free if that's how you feel. So it's not a trick, i have the option every time, I just often don't want to use it once i'm in the zone.
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Black movie goers know which movies are for us and which films aren’t. We really don’t like our stories being made into films that center (and humanize) people that hate us. The filmmakers/studio know that by naming the film “The Green Book”, black movie goers...

...are going to be expecting a story about black people trying to safely navigate the country (real history) and instead will get a white savior film. Like folks went to see Detroit thinking it was about the riots...

Anywhoo, I know Mahershela is fantastic in it. He was the best thing about the trailer. As rich as the history behind the creation of ‘The Green Book’ is/was, as amazing as Dr. Don Shirley’s story is, WHY is this film about a random, racist driver and his family?

This feeds into the ignorant anti-Black American stereotype of “Black Americans don’t have any culture/history/mythology” or whatever. That our stories are still both being used while simultaneously erased in 2018 is wild to me. It’s gonna clean up come award season. 🤦🏾‍♀️

And now, if black filmmakers WANTED to make a film about The Greenbook, guess what it can’t be called🙃. Just like if someone wanted to make a film about the actual Detroit riots, guess what it can’t be called? Then those filmmakers would run into...
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Angad Singh
Angad Singh
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𝙎𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙢𝙮 𝙬𝙞𝙨𝙙𝙤𝙢 𝑾𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒃𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒇 𝒕𝒐𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒘 𝒖 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒇𝒇 𝒊𝒏 50𝒌 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒑 𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒔𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒈𝒊𝒄
Simple and effective way 2 make Money


Idea 1:- Use pivot level like 14800 in case of nifty and sell 14800straddle monthly expiry (365+335) exit if nifty closes on daily basis below S1 or above R1

After closing below S1 if it closes above S1 next day or any day enter the same position again vice versa for R1

Idea2:- Use R1 and S1 corresponding strikes multiple
Incase of R1 15337 take 15300ce
N in case of S1 14221 use 14200pe
Sell both and hold till expiry or exit if nifty closes below S1 or above R1 around closing
If the same bounces above S1 and falls below R1 re-enfer same strikes

Use same criteria for nifty, usdinr and banknifty

(This is must)Use this margin rule for 1lot banknifty pair keep 4Lax margin
For nifty one lot keep 3Lax
For usdinr 100lots keep 4Lax

I bet you if you do this on consistent basis your ROI will be more than 70% on yearly basis.

Couldn't explain easier than this

Criticisms are most welcomed.
OPTIONSLEARNINGS , MONTHLY OPTIONS SELLING , OPTIONS LEARNING
Chuck Wendig
Chuck Wendig
@ChuckWendig
TRUMP: "I've decided to eat babies."

PEOPLE: "He can't eat babies, that's super illegal."

TRUMP, on TV, eating babies, not even cooking them first: "People are saying that I really am the best baby-eater, folks."

NYT: "Trump Vs. Babies: The Rhetoric On Both Sides Must Stop"

Jeff Flake tweets: "It is a sad day in America when this callous man can eat babies live on TV"

Jeff Flake, 10 seconds later, votes to help him install a series of 4,000 new judges that are very, very pro-babyphagia.

Judge Kavanaugh, found drunk in a Capitol Hill closet: "I LIKE BEER. OKAY? I LIKE BEER AND I LIKE BABIES AND THAT'S NOT SO WRONG. THAT'S RIGHT. I LIKE BABIES DIPPED IN BEER. I JUST DIP EM. IN THE BEER. THE BABIES. THE BABIES I EAT. OKAY? THAT'S AMERICA."

Mike Pence, wringing his hands about the baby-eating: "We must take care of our children. Our youngest must be protected on this troubling day."

Mike Pence then invites a Baby Chef to say a prayer.

Twitter Users: "It's a distraction technique! Trump eating babies is trying to DISTRACT YOU from ALL THE OTHER HORRORS, which are themselves distractions from the BABY-EATING. It's DISTRACTIONS ALL THE WAY DOWN."

Trump: *eats tons of babies at a rally*

*literal tons of babies*
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