With @ycombinator #demoday kicking off, @atrium gathered advice from past YC founders.
More from Justin Kan
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.
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.
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
More from Startups
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our team have built identity, commerce and payment systems that support BILLIONS of people, and they are now building the next platform to do that: @fast
we have a chance to fix commerce, to fix the way the internet works, for BILLIONS of people
we need more help, we need your help
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reach out to us:
@domm @PeterGrassi1
[email protected]
[email protected]
let me pitch why you need to join 🚀
when we put our Fast Checkout button on websites LOTS of people start using it to buy things
our goal is to put out Fast button on EVERY website in the world
the speed of our growth is primarily limited by our engineering resources
we already have some of the best in the world, our VP of engineering built much of Apples identity infrastructure before building Uber's new commerce stack
we engineers who have spent decades among the earliest engineers at LinkedIn, Nest, Google, Cisco, Lyft, Uber & more
our team have built identity, commerce and payment systems that support BILLIONS of people, and they are now building the next platform to do that: @fast
we have a chance to fix commerce, to fix the way the internet works, for BILLIONS of people
we need more help, we need your help
there is not often an opportunity as big as this, make the best career decision of your life and get ready for huge professional growth
reach out to us:
@domm @PeterGrassi1
[email protected]
[email protected]
let me pitch why you need to join 🚀