Dream Come True!
Since 2014, I’ve been listening to YC lectures on ‘How to Start a Startup’ and have been watching YC founders talk about their stories. My dream was to meet some of these founders in real life. I finally got the opportunity to do that by enrolling in YC’s Startup School program for my startup — Heapclub!
Startup School was… amazing! I attended live lectures of entrepreneurs such as Sam Altman, Patrick Collison (Stripe), Ooshma Garg (Gobble), Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail), Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), Harj Taggar (Triplebyte) and many other inspiring entrepreneurs. It was an incredible experience. Meeting tons of early stage founders that were trying to make something people want was super energizing and motivational! Below are some notes I took during my time at Startup School.
1. Make something people want
“About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the phrase that became our motto: Make something people want. We’ve learned a lot since then, but if I were choosing now that’s still the one I’d pick.”
- Paul Graham (essay on “Be Good”)
Users are like sharks. They’ll buy your product if they want it. Otherwise they’ll ignore it. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into it. The only thing that matters is whether or not you build something they want. Founders often get confused and even upset when users ignore their product even after putting a lot of work into it. That’s because they didn’t make something people wanted.
On one side of the pendulum, a lot of people think that startups are about having fancy offices and hiring sales teams to advertise their products. Wrong. Many successful companies were built in garages by founders that didn’t know anything about running a business but were able to create great products.
On the other side of the pendulum, many people think that startups are about wearing t-shirts and building things in the garage. Wrong. Whether you build things in the garage or inside a fancy office is irrelevant. Startups are about making something people want. You can do that in your bathroom, dining table, garage, penthouse, or a fancy office.
The best way to know what people want is to build something you want for yourself. Think about a hair-on-fire problem you have. How much are you willing to pay someone to fix that problem? If you’re willing to pay a lot of money, fix it yourself and sell it to others. If it solves your problem, it will most likely solve other peoples’ problem. That’s how I started my startup. You can read about it here.
2. It’s better to have a 100 users that love your product than to have a thousand users that kinda like it.
In the early days of your startup, you only have two options: 1. Make something that a small number of users really love or 2. Make something that a lot of people kinda like. You want to go with the first option. Always. Make something that a small group of people love. Don’t worry about scaling yet.
When I was working on Heapclub, I could have made many types of study groups. I chose algorithm study groups because that’s what I personally enjoyed (and needed) the most. I now have hundreds of people around Bay Area signing up for Heapclub (only 10 engineers get accepted into the program!). Rather than making 3 or 4 random study groups and stuffing 50 people in them, I decided to create a very specific type of study group and only accept 10 engineers. These engineers love Heapclub!
3. Your fancy resume (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.
Your education background, past experience, articles about you on Techcrunch, or even millions of dollars of investment money are irrelevant to users. Users don’t care about that. Most will never bother looking up your company on Crunchbase (unless they’re Startup geeks). They’ll swipe left if your product sucks, and swipe right if it solves their problem.
4. You’ll know if you have Product Market Fit (PMF)
There are tons and tons of articles online about PMF. Most do a lousy job explaining it. Here’s what it really is:
PMF is just a fancy way of saying that your company is running into serious scaling problems because there’s so much demand for your product.
It’s very difficult to get there. If you’re wondering whether or not you have a PMF, you certainly don’t. You’ll know for sure when you get there so stop worrying about it. Just focus on making a great product that a small number of users can’t live without. Ignore people that advertise growth hacking strategies. They’re a bunch of scammers trying to take all your hard-earned money.
5. Startup = Growth
The main difference between small businesses and startups is that small businesses are structured to serve limited number of users while startups are structured to serve unlimited number of users.
In the early days of staring a startup, don’t focus too much on growth. You should be focusing on making something that a small number of people want (if you don’t think they’ll cry if you were to shut down your startup, you will never have PMF). Also don’t forget to do things that don’t scale initially. Eventually however, start thinking of scaling. If you’re not thinking of scaling, you’re not a startup. You’re a small business.
