Lessons from Y Combinator Tuesday Dinners
Y Combinator is without a doubt the highest rated accelerator in the world. It’s highly selective and it’s difficult to get accepted in the program. Only 1.3% of the companies who apply get selected (Harvard has a 5.9% acceptance rate and Stanford has 5.1%). If you get into the program, you are plugged into the startup and the valley ecosystem. Being a part of the community significantly increases your chances of success. Marc Andreessen says it’s like “getting plugged into the matrix”. This is what YC does for you.
You get access to some of the best people in the industry including a network of founders. YC has done a great job organizing the program around founders and the resources they need. They don’t breathe down your neck and tell you what to do. They help you with focus, resources, and advice to achieve one thing — growth.
Last year, we had the great fortune of getting accepted to the W2016 batch. It was a life changing moment for us. We learned a lot during our 3 months at YC. We got help for everything from company strategy to writing PR emails. I think it would’ve taken us years to learn as much on our own as we did in a few months.
An interesting thing you get to experience during the program are the problems other companies face. As Jessica Livingston says — all companies are a shit show behind the scenes. I had heard it before but really understood it only by being around them.
Although we only got to see behind the scenes of the companies that were in our batch, there is a lot to learn from other companies, founders, and investors who have done it before. One of the features of the program are Tuesday dinners where the dinner is followed by industry speakers who shares their experience. The talks are off the record allowing for more candid conversations. Speakers share personal and behind the scenes stories. Each talk usually provides insights into various aspects of building a company including hiring, building a product, fundraising etc. These Tuesday dinner talks include a combination of people with significant experience (founders and investors) and founders who are further along in building a company.
Here I share the key lessons I took away from the talks and speakers at our W2016 Tuesday dinners. There is a lot to learn from the 2 hour talks (that includes questions). However, here I focus on one key lesson I took away from each talk. I hope these lessons are useful for other founders working on building a lasting company:
Jan 12 — Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Founders of Reddit
- Listen to users closely in early days even if it means making unusual choices rather than copying what’s out there
Jan 19 — Ben Silberman, Founder and CEO of Pinterest
- Be true to yourself as a founder, don’t try to be someone else or copy their success path
Jan 26 — James Park, Co-founder and CEO of Fitbit
- Things will go wrong multiple times; there may be times when you are close to failure but you shouldn’t stop believing in what you are doing
Feb 2 — Reshma Shetty, Co-founder and CEO of Gingko Bioworks
- Don’t be afraid to think big
Feb 9 — Joe Gebbia and Nate Blecharczyk, Co-founders of Airbnb
- Persistence and a belief in your product are the 2 major reasons for success
Feb 16 — Michelle Zatlyn and Matthew Prince, Co-founders of Cloudflare
- A strong trust and belief in your co-founders is extremely important before working together
Feb 23 — Michael Moritz, Chairman of Sequoia Capital
- Passion is for Saturday nights with your wife. Great founders are obsessed with solving problems/building companies
March 1 — Ron Conway, Legendary angel investor and founder of SV Angel
- Investments in legendary companies of today was not obvious in their early days
March 8 — Mock pitches, Paul Buchheit with Jared Friedman and Dalton Caldwell
- Constantly practice and improve pitches based on feedback
March 15 — Emmett Shear — Cofounder of Justin TV & Twitch
- Following your passion and talking to users are key in making a company successful
March 29 — Ali Rowghani, Former CFO of Twitter and Partner at YC Continuity Fund
- As the company grows, founders need to change focus from building a product to building a company
Thanks to Renuka Kumar for helping with drafts of this.
