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Mediocre founders spend a lot of time talking about grand plans, but they never quite make a decision.
It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
The other piece besides focus for execution is intensity. Startups only work at a fairly intense level.
Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.
By the way, that's my number one piece of advice if you're going to join a startup: pick a rocket ship.
The crowd's a really powerful force on the Internet, and people finally understand how to harness that.
I think as a rough estimate, you should aim to give about 10% of the company to the first 10 employees.
It's better to have no cofounder than to have a bad cofounder, but it's still bad to be a solo founder.
Every thing at a startup gets modeled after the founders. Whatever the founders do becomes the culture.
The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.
Long term thinking is so rare anywhere, but especially in startups. This is a huge advantage if you do it.
The reduction in compassion that happens when we're all behind computer screens is not good for the world.
The only way to generate sustained exponential growth is to make whatever you're making sufficiently good.
You want to think about what is the path for my first 10 or 15 employees going to be as the company grows.
Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done.
Sometimes people think Y Combinator has big ideas about themes. But really, we just fund the best startups.
You want an idea that not many other people are working on, and it's okay if it doesn't sound big at first.
There's no way I know, to get through the pain of a startup without belief that the mission really matters.
When it comes to starting startups, in many ways, it's easier to start a hard startup than an easy startup.
You should think about for the next 10 years, you're going to be giving out 3-5% of the company every year.
... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.
If you don't love and believe in what you're building, you're likely to give up at some point along the way.
As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.
If you have a startup that's keeping it up at night because you think it's so great, then you should do that.
The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won.
Because it's one of these sort of connections between nodes- every pair of people adds communication overhead.
Someday, you need to build a business that's difficult to replicate. This is an important part of a good idea.
Whoever Boost works with, Sprint will work with. And whoever Sprint works with, Verizon and AT&T will as well.
Momentum and growth are the lifeblood of startups. This is probably in the top three secrets of executing well.
A lot of people treat choosing their cofounder with even less importance than they put on hiring. Don't do this.
What being a founder means, is signing up for this years long grind on execution - and you can't outsource this.
You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.
A winning team feels good and keeps winning. A team that hasn't won in a while gets demotivated and keeps losing.
So it's worth some real up front time to think through the long term value and the defensibility of the business.
I think that inexpensive sources of planet-friendly energy are one of the most important things for us to pursue.
A third advantage of mission oriented companies, is that people outside the company are more willing to help you.
The best ideas often look terrible at the beginning the truly good ideas, don't seem like they're worth stealing.
All companies that grow really big do so in only one way: people recommend the product or service to other people.
I think the best thing you can do is be aware that as a first time founder you are likely to be a very bad manager.
The best founders work on things that seem small but they move really quickly. They get things done really quickly.
Very ambitious startups often take a long time to work - or sometimes they take a very long time to look ambitious.
Before 20 or 25 employees, most companies are structured with everyone reporting to the founder. It's totally flat.
If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.
To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.
The thirteenth search engine- and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless.
Most startups are not nearly focussed enough. They work hard...maybe, but they don't work hard on the right things.
Many founders hire just because it seems like a cool thing to do, and people always ask how many employees you have.
Most investors are obsessed with the market size today and they don't think about how the market is going to evolve.
In the early stage of a startup, hiring senior people is usually a mistake. You just want people that get stuff done.