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
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
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.
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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.
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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”.
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Atharva Kharbade
Atharva Kharbade
@athrvakhrbde
Startup Bharat: @naval & @balajis

The full Clubhouse session in text

Thread Continued

1/

Naval: The Boston ecosystem has always regretting that they've sort of lost these companies.

India has to make sure it doesn't lose as entrepreneurs. And the way to do that is to give them the freedom to innovate. Everyone should be an entrepreneur.

2/

Everyone has a phone should be able to get a job through the phone. There's one level beyond that, that comes after that, which is everyone has a phone, should be a creator for the phone. And that's what platforms are enabling.

3/

There's the old, famous New Yorker cartoon with a dog on the internet, on the computer and it says on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Well, yeah, on the internet, nobody knows who you are or where you are or what you are. All they care about is your output

4/

And that is incredibly liberating for a country that's so large and has such a good English speaking population, India can win, it just has to remove shackles.
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Alex Garcia \U0001f50d
Alex Garcia 🔍
@alexgarcia_atx
Four simple headline formulas you can use on your ads or landing pages:

1. [Introduce The Product] x [Say What It Does]
2. [Value Creation] x [Tackle The Objection Behind It]
3. [Define The Outcome] x [Explain What Creates The Outcome]
4. [Be Specific] x [Add Your Hook]


If this helped you, then I think you'll enjoy my newsletter centered around growth marketing :)

- One case study every Thursday
- 40k+ marketers and founders read it
- Only goal is to make you a better marketer
- 3 min a week

Join us here
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Хајде да направимо мали осврт на случај Мика Алексић .

Алексић је жртва енглеске освете преко Оливере Иванчић .
Мика је одбио да снима филм о блаћењу Срба и мењању историје Срба , иза целокупног пројекта стоји дипломатски кор Британаца у Београду и Оливера Иванчић


Оливера Илинчић је иначе мајка једне од његових ученица .
Која је претила да ће се осветити .

Мика се налази у притвору због наводних оптужби глумице Милене Радуловић да ју је наводно силовао човек од 70 година , са три бајпаса и извађеном простатом пре пет година

Иста персона је и обезбедила финансије за филм преко Беча а филм је требао да се бави животом Десанке Максимовић .
А сетите се и ко је иницирао да се Десанка Максимовић избаци из уџбеника и школства у Србији .

И тако уместо романсиране верзије Десанке Максимовић утицај Британаца

У Србији стави на пиједестал и да се Британци у Србији позитивно афирмишу како би се на тај начин усмерила будућност али и мењао ток историје .
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This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
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