Sam H. Altman (an American entrepreneur, investor, programmer, blogger, CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator) shares his thoughts on “How to Succeed with a Startup” (16:06 min) at Y Combinator startup school. The short talk is densely packed with highly valuable and useful information.
Key Points
- A product so good that people tell their friends. If you get this right, you have already done about 80% of the work.
- Easy to understand.
- Look for a market that is already undergoing exponential growth or is soon to do so.
- Learn how to differentiate between real trends vs. fake trends.
- Real trend: early adopter use the platform/product/service and tell their friends how much they love it. You want to look for intense usage pr. user (spend hours every day using it).
- Evangelical founder, usually the CEO.
- Ambitious vision. Ambitious projects are interesting. Startups focusing on something that matters will gravitate talent.
- Confident and definite view of the future. Be confident in your convictions and flexible.
- Huge if it works. Works best towards investors and attracting talent.
- “The team you build, is the company you build“. All successful founders goes through a transition where you go from building a product to building a company, and building a company really is about the team.
- You need the spirit of optimism in your team. “We’ll figure it out.”
- You need people who are idea generators.
- Ownership: “I’ve got it”
- Action bias, just do it / gets it done.
- As a founder, never loose momentum.
- What will be your competitive advantage over time, what will create the monopoly effect?
- Have a sensible business model from the start.
- Traits for the best founders: frugality, focus, obsession, love.
- Look for ideas that sound bad, but are good.
- Startups beat big companies in fast changing markets.
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