Founder Psychology & Resilience
Persistence through the trough of sorrow, retaining willingness to be rejected, avoiding quitting too early, morale management, the true pace of startup income growth, and founder health/burnout.
22%
Best tweets about Startups
50 Best Tweets About Startups (2026)
A curated collection of the sharpest, most-shared X posts about startups—saved so you do not have to dig through the timeline yourself. Updated every two weeks.
Founders and operators on the hard parts—fundraising, hiring, and the decisions nobody warns you about.
- Creators
- 45
- Updated
Original Xholic analysis
What 50 top Startups posts reveal
Across 50 posts from 45 creators, founders and operators discuss the hard parts of startups: fundraising, hiring, cofounders, and resilience. Stance splits 66% supportive vs 34% cautionary; sentiment runs 42% positive, 34% neutral, 24% negative. Media posts post a median all-time score of 54.99 vs 30.95 for text-only, and the top engagement outliers include two accelerator reference lists, a defensibility framework, and a hiring post.
- Dominant tone
- Positive
- Median score
- 34.1
- Leading format
- Question
- Recent posts
- 18%
42% of posts
All-time engagement
100% of posts
Published in 90 days
Conversation map
The themes creators return to
PMF & Early Traction
Signs of product-market fit (organic retention, no-haggle pricing, referrals), launch fast / do things that don't scale, winning few users completely, GTM tactics from YC companies, and shipping what works over the pitch-deck vision.
22%
Fundraising Playbook
How to actually raise: reverse-engineering cap tables, borrowing trust from portfolio founders, building in public so investors come to you, monthly investor updates, revenue as a prerequisite, timing raises, and the danger of oversized pre
16%
Early-Stage Hiring & Recruiting
Founder-led recruiting (never outsource it), the first 10 hires as company DNA, hiring foils who challenge you instead of yes-people, the 'pick any problem' hiring lie, blind references for sales hires, and retention equity grants ('BDE') a
12%
Founding Team & Co-founders
Choosing cofounders, trust and 'vibes' between founders, complementary skill sets, cofounder breakups as a top cause of death, and the cofounder as an axiomatic check on bad advice.
10%
Accelerators & Founder Programs
Curated lists of accelerators and fellowships (YC, a16z Speedrun, Techstars, HF0, South Park Commons, AI-specific and regional programs) with deal terms, deadlines, application strategy, and post-YC-deadline alternatives.
8%
Bootstrapping vs. Venture
The tradeoffs between VC and bootstrap paths: liquidity timelines, control and drag-along clauses, capital efficiency, AI lowering capital requirements, and freedom vs. board pressure.
8%
Defensibility & Moats
What is and isn't a real moat—distribution, speed, and brand vs. the four compounding advantages (switching costs, network effects, scale economies, data effects)—and how to evaluate them before joining a startup.
2%
Tone and stance
SentimentPositive leads
Author postureSupportive leads
Performance benchmark
- Median likes
- 124
- Median reposts
- 11
- Median replies
- 12
- Median views
- 8.2K
Posts with media make up 44% of this collection. Their median all-time score is 55.0, compared with 30.9 for text-only posts.
Format mix
- Question100% · score 34.1
Consensus and debate
Where creators agree, and where they do not
Shared view
Recruiting stays a founder's job
The highest-scoring post in the set (22.76x the median all-time score) argues founders cannot outsource recruiting because early hires are the company's DNA, and offers a test: let candidates randomly interview a teammate and notice who you flinch at.
Shared view
First hires should challenge the founder
The Early-Stage Hiring theme (12% share) posts a median all-time score of 74.85, well above the overall median of 34.14. Posts argue the first 10 hires define company DNA and that founders should hire foils who question assumptions rather than yes-people, citing the idea that a founder's superpower is often their biggest flaw.
Shared view
Ship before it's ready, serve users by hand
The PMF & Early Traction theme (22% share) converges on launching fast, doing unscalable things manually, and winning a small group of users completely, including concrete GTM tactics drawn from YC companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and DoorDash.
Shared view
Build in public so investors come to you
Fundraising posts (16% share) repeatedly advise making investors find you: reverse-engineering target cap tables, borrowing trust from portfolio founders, sending monthly investor updates, and starting relationships 6-12 months before capital is needed. One founder reports raising a $12.5M Series A in under a week without a pitch deck.
Open debate
Early vs. experienced founders
The conversation splits on timing. One widely shared post cites MIT data showing average founders of exited companies were 47, and 45 for the fastest-growing 0.1%, arguing experience is a strong advantage. Counterpoints celebrate young founders' grit and no safety net as reasons they outperform.
Open debate
VC path vs. bootstrapping
Bootstrapping advocates list long liquidity timelines (up to 14 years), drag-along clauses, and board ousters, noting 38% of startups now launch without external funding. Others frame VC's power-law logic as demanding one exceptional edge rather than being well-rounded.
Open debate
Universal advice vs. context
A cautionary voice argues the 'founder advice industrial complex' fails because advice scales but observation doesn't, documenting founders who made opposite decisions on the same problem and both succeeded, while survivorship-bias critiques warn winner stories ignore those who did the same things and failed.
What performs
Patterns behind standout posts
Reference lists dominate engagement
The accelerators theme has the second-highest theme median all-time score at 454.09 (behind only Defensibility at 553.004), and two of the five engagement outliers are curated accelerator lists with deal terms and deadlines. A similar post listing programs still open after the YC deadline also performed far above the overall median.
Media posts nearly double text performance
Median all-time score for posts with media is 54.99 versus 30.95 for text-only. The defensibility theme, despite only 1 tweet (2% share), posts the single highest theme median at 553.004 with a framework arguing only four compounding advantages count as real moats.
Every post carries the QUESTION format label
All 50 posts in the set carry the QUESTION format label (100%). Median engagement across the set is 124 likes, 12 replies, and 11 reposts.
Statistical standouts
- View standout post 1Score 777.0 · 22.76× median
- View standout post 2Score 720.2 · 21.1× median
- View standout post 3Score 577.7 · 16.92× median
- View standout post 4Score 553.0 · 16.2× median
- View standout post 5Score 491.2 · 14.39× median
Creator landscape
Who shapes this conversation
The five most represented creators account for 20% of the selected posts.
1. Bhavyam Arora ✈️ Devcon, Mumbai
@AroraBhavyam
2 posts
2. Big Brain Business
@BigBrainBizness
2 posts
3. Romàn
@romanbuildsaas
2 posts
4. staysaasy
@staysaasy
2 posts
5. Tibo
@tibo_maker
2 posts
6. 1752vc
@1752vc
1 post
Bhavyam Arora leads with program deadlines
AroraBhavyam posts twice with a 414.12 median all-time score, both mapping post-YC-deadline accelerator options with terms and close dates, including Sequoia Arc, HF0, and zero-equity credit programs.
Repeat voices span hiring and endurance
staysaasy posts twice (median 46.21) on retention equity grants for versatile early employees and on never losing willingness to be rejected. tibo_maker pairs PG essay curation with a bootstrapping-over-VC case. Top five of 45 creators account for 20% of placement share.
Since the previous snapshot
What changed since Oct 15, 2026
- 80% of the selected posts remained.
- The creator count changed by +2.
- The leading sentiment remained stable.
How this analysis was made
Themes, sentiment, stance, and post format are classified per tweet. All counts, shares, medians, creator concentration, freshness, and performance comparisons are then calculated directly from the published snapshot.
Xholic's all-time score compares engagement while accounting for reach, post age, and creator consistency. It is used for relative comparisons within this collection.
This report analyzes the exact 50-post snapshot shown below. AI identifies editorial categories and drafts explanations; all statistics are calculated from the snapshot, and every narrative claim is checked against cited posts before publication.
Best Startups tweets
Top Startups tweets from 45 creators
Ranked 01–50
- 01
@naval ·
Founders cannot outsource recruiting. “Recruiting is the most important thing because you need creativity; you need motivated people. Ideally, the early people are all geniuses. They’re self-managing, low-ego, hardworking, highly competent, builders, technical—maybe one or two sellers—but you can’t watch everything. You can’t micromanage everything. The early people are the DNA of the company. When you outsource recruiting, when you have other people hiring and interviewing and making hiring decisions without your direct involvement and veto, that’s a sad day. That’s the day that the company’s no longer being driven directly by you. There’s now a fly-by-wire element in between. There’s some mechanical linkage going through another human, often at a distance. And other people are not going to have the same level of selectivity that you will as a founder. The important size at which a company starts changing is not some arbitrary number, like 20 or 30 or 40. It’s the point at which the founder is not directly recruiting and managing everyone. The moment that there are middle layers of management, then you are somewhat disconnected from the company, and your ability to directly drive a product team that can take the company from zero to one goes away. So we really cannot outsource recruiting. People think you can. They hire recruiters, for example. Maybe you can outsource a little bit of sourcing, but I would even argue that’s difficult. The reason recruiting is so, so, so important—and a lot of it is obvious, I’ll skip the obvious reasons—but one non-obvious reason is that the best people truly only want to work with the best people. Working with anyone who’s not at their level is a cognitive load upon them. And the more people they’re surrounded by who are not as good as they are, the more keenly they’re aware that they belong somewhere else, or they should be doing their own thing. The best teams are mutually motivated. They reinforce each other. Everyone’s trying to impress each other. One good test is when you’re recruiting a new person, you should be able to say to them, “Walk into that room where the rest of the team is sitting. Take anyone you want—pick them at random—pull them aside for 30 minutes, and interview them. And if you aren’t impressed by them, don’t join.” When you do that test, you will instinctively flinch at the idea of them interviewing randomly a certain person that’s kind of in the back of your mind. That’s the person you need to let go. Because that’s the person keeping you from having this high-functioning team that all wants to impress each other.”
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@shiri_shh ·
list of startup accelerators you can apply to right now: TOP TIER ACCELERATORS - a16z Speedrun ($750k to $1M for ~7 to 10%) - Y Combinator ($500k for ~7%) - Techstars ($220k for ~5 to 7%) - 500 Global ($112.5k for 6%) - LAUNCH ($125k for 6 to 7%) - AngelPad ($120k for ~7%) EARLY FOUNDER PROGRAMS - Pioneer ($20k for 1%) - Entrepreneur First (~$250k for ~9%) - South Park Commons ($400k for 7% + $600k follow on) - Founder Institute (equity based program) - Founders Fellowship ($150k for 5 to 10%) AI FOCUSED PROGRAMS - OpenAI Converge ($1M equity investment) - Betaworks AI Camp ($500k) - AI Grant ($250k uncapped) - AI2 Incubator ($50k to $150k) VENTURE STUDIOS / RESIDENCIES - Sequoia Arc (~$1M) - PearX ($250k to $2M) - HFO Residency ($1M uncapped for 5%) - NEO ($600k uncapped SAFE) - Greylock Edge (SAFE + $500k credits) - Conviction Embed ($150k uncapped MFN SAFE) GLOBAL ACCELERATORS - Seedcamp (€100k to €200k for ~7 to 7.5%) - Startup Wise Guys (up to €65k) - APX (up to €500k, typically €50k for ~5%) OTHERS - Accel Atoms (up to $500k to $1M) - Afore Capital ($100k to $500k) - Berkeley SkyDeck ($200k) - Soma Capital ($100k) - Boost VC (up to $500k for ~15%) - Google for Startups (up to $100k) bookmark this if you're building.
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@deedydas ·
Many startup employees do not recognize the sheer litany of ways that a founder can screw you over without you even knowing. Founder trust is one of the most important things to look at when you’re joining a startup. From cutting you out of M&A, screwing your retention pool, overdiluting your equity, firing you before your cliff, not having attractive options exercise plans, poor 409a price management, not telling you about QSBS / early exercise, blocking you from participating in secondary, obscuring company performance and many more. Many many decisions that are made in rooms you are not in as an employee where the only thing that matters is: “does the founder have your back?” Great startups with untrustworthy founders lead to poor outcomes and often good startups with trustworthy founders lead to great outcomes. Pick wisely.
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- 3.2KLikes
- 505.9KViews
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@lennysan ·
Moats! Does anyone have one anymore? Yes. Yes, they do. But only a small subset of what people call moats create real long-term value and defensibility. Not actually a moat: 1. Distribution: This does matter more than ever. Building products has gotten easier, but getting them to customers has not. Distribution, however, does not create durable defensibility. It helps create the raw ingredients for one, but it is not itself a moat. 2. Execution: Yes, speed is critical for startups. But a company that has to sprint forever is not a good business. Ultimately, it will misstep, slow down, and competition will catch up. Speed gives a company more shots on goal as it tries to build a great product and a great business, but it must eventually find something more durable. 3. Brand: The idea is that when everyone is building the same thing, the most resonant brand will win. But for startups, brand works more like customer acquisition spend: Put money in, get growth out. It’s not something that will effectively keep others from competing long-term. Brand can become a true moat over time (as with Coke or Nike or Apple), but it just takes too long to really matter for most startups. What you're looking for is compounding advantages: a self-reinforcing flywheel that gets stronger and stronger over time, ultimately making a company very hard to compete with long-term. There are only four compounding advantages that really matter. Every major tech company has at least one: 1. Switching costs: The more deeply embedded a product is in the way a customer works, the harder it is for that customer to switch. This increases retention and revenue per customer, which can be reinvested into the product. 2. Network effects: The more users a product has, the better it gets for everyone. This increases engagement and attracts more users. 3. Scale economies: The more volume a company has, the larger and more efficient its operations can be. This lowers unit costs, funding lower prices or a better product at the same price, further driving up volume. 4. Data effects: The more usage a product has, the more data it generates. This data can be used to improve the product and increase usage. If you can’t see the potential for any in the startup you’re considering joining, that’s a red flag. In today’s incredible post, @danhockenmaier shares a simple framework you can run in about an hour after getting an offer: 1. Identify a startup’s compounding advantage 2. Gauge how strong it could get 3. Measure whether it’s working Inside: dozens of real company examples, the specific metrics to track, and benchmarks for what good and great look like. Read it here: https://t.co/jMdyoPpeF6
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@DeRonin_ ·
All the best startup accelerators to apply in 2026 (below FULL spreadsheet): [ Top-Tier ] 1. Y Combinator (~$500k, 7% on $125k + uncapped SAFE) 2. a16z Speedrun (~$500k for 10% + $500k follow-on) 3. Techstars (~$220k, bumped from $120k in fall 2025) 4. Founders Inc (~$100-250k for 4-7%) 5. Sequoia Arc (~$1M, terms per company) 6. South Park Commons (~$1M total, $400k for 7% + $600k guaranteed) 7. HF0 (up to $1M uncapped for 5%, repeat founders only) 8. On Deck ODX (DISCONTINUED 2022, skip) 9. Pear VC PearX (~$250k-2M for ~10%) 10. 500 Global Flagship (~$150k for 6%) [ AI / ML Specific ] 11. AI Grant (~$250k for 7%, Nat Friedman + Daniel Gross) 12. AI Fund (~$1M+, Andrew Ng, studio model) 13. NVIDIA Inception (credits + perks, no equity) 14. Microsoft for Startups (up to $150k Azure credits, no equity) 15. Google for Startups AI Accelerator (credits, no equity) [ Vertical / Deep Tech ] 16. SOSV (~$525k across IndieBio, HAX, Orbit) 17. IndieBio (biotech, ~$525k = $250k for 6-8% + Genesis SAFE) 18. HAX (hardware, ~$525k via SOSV) 19. Greentown Labs (cleantech, workspace + grants) 20. Activate (deep science fellowship, 2-yr stipend) [ Crypto / Web3 ] 21. a16z crypto CSX (~$500k for 7%, SF in-person) 22. Alliance (~$500k, ALL18 starts Sept 7) 23. Outlier Ventures Base Camp (~$250k, per-chain verticals) 24. Coinbase Base Builder (varies, mostly non-dilutive) [ International / Regional ] 25. Seedcamp (~€350k-1M first check, rolling, Europe) 26. Entrepreneur First (~$250k = $125k for 8% + uncapped MFN) 27. Antler Disrupt US (~$400k = $250k for ~9% + uncapped) 28. Brinc (~$100k, Asia + Middle East) 29. Station F (Paris campus, hosted-program terms) 30. Founder Institute ($499-999 fee + 2.5% Equity Collective warrant) [ Pre-Seed / Idea Stage / Niche ] 31. Z Fellows (~$10k for 1%, pre-product) 32. ERA NYC (~$100k for 8%, generalist) 33. The Residency (community-first, no standard check) 34. Plug and Play (varies, often non-dilutive) 35. Build For Tomorrow (community + grants) Four things worth knowing: 1. small program acceptance rates are higher than YC, not because they're easier, because the funnel is smaller. apply to 5-7, not 1 2. brand premium on YC is real but not infinite. Arc + Speedrun + HF0 carry signal too 3. "$X for Y%" is the only number that matters. uncapped MFNs are not free money, they dilute you on the next round 4. avoid any list still quoting Techstars at $120k, ODX as active, HF0 at $100k, or Founder Institute as "$10k for 4%". all wrong Shared with you those where I am going to apply with my ideas and products Terms shift annually. Verify on each program's site before applying gl with successful raising
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@andruyeung ·
YC and dropout culture have convinced us the ideal founder is 22, straight out of school, but the data tells a different story. Some interesting data: - An MIT study of 2.7 million US founders found that the average founder was 47 when starting a company that later exited through an acquisition or IPO. - The same study cited that the founders of the fastest-growing 0.1% of U.S. startups were 45 years old on average when they started their companies. - A 50-year-old founder was approximately twice as likely as a 30-year-old founder to produce an acquisition or IPO. - Founders with at least three years of relevant industry experience were twice as likely to build a top-0.1%-growth company as founders with none. So it seems that experience is one of the strongest advantages a founder can have. Two lessons here: 1. It's never too late to start 2. It might actually be TOO early to start; getting work experience is worth considering
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- 149.2KViews
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@AroraBhavyam ·
yc closed yesterday. if you haven't applied anywhere yet, here's what's still taking founders right now 👇 - @spc founder fellowship closes aug 2 (few days left). $1M total ($400k upfront for 7% + $600k in your next round). 8-week bootcamp in sf, nyc or bangalore. pre-idea is fine. - @techstars anywhere closes sep 8. $220k, remote-first, all sectors, 3-month program. - @500GlobalVC rolling all year. $150k for 6%, flagship runs out of palo alto, apply anytime. - @AntlerGlobal day-zero investing, apply anytime, up to $500k. next cohorts: germany sep 14, uk sep 22, singapore + nairobi oct 5, dubai + riyadh oct 11 (sf/nyc/austin rolling). - @HF0Residency rolling. 12-week live-in residency in sf, $1M uncapped SAFE for 5%. repeat/technical founders only. stack these on top, zero equity: - @nvidia inception, free to join. up to $100k aws + $100k dgx cloud credits + preferred gpu pricing. - @msft4startups founders hub. up to $150k azure credits + $200k in business tools. missing yc isn't the setback. 99% of applications anyway get rejected, so keeping your options open is always good! follow @arorabhavyam for weekly content around founders, startups and AI! 🫡
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- 33KViews
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@AroraBhavyam ·
yc closed july 27. spc closed aug 2. ef london closed aug 4. if you missed them, here are 6 underrated programs still open and barely anyone's talking about them: @sequoia arc - closes aug 17. sequoia's own 7-week program for pre-seed/seed founders. $500k-1m, open to americas + europe, and it's an open call so no warm intro needed. @CharacterCap labs (by @jazer & @jakek) - closes sept 23. a 5-week sprint program built 100% around finding product-market fit. $200k for 5%, @solofounders - cohort 5, starts sept 10, apps open now. built only for solo founders. $100k for 2.5%, 3 months in sf @GreylockVC edge - rolling. 3-month build program for pre-idea to seed. plus $500k+ in cloud credits. @fdotinc (founders inc) - rolling. $100k-$250k first checks + a 42,000 sq ft sf campus with a real hardware lab. @1517fund - rolling. backs dropouts, students and deep-tech scientists, no degree required. $1k+ micro-grants to get started + pre-seed checks. everyone's fighting to get into yc. smart founders are quietly applying to these. 💀 follow @arorabhavyam for weekly content around founders, startups and AI! 🫡
- 13Replies
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- 380Likes
- 32.1KViews
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@johnrush ·
Everything I ever learned bootstrapping startups from 0 to $1M ARR multiple times. This is my Founder Guide: https://t.co/o3mvaqnaPg ┣ 📁 Ideation ┃ ┣ 📁Finding Ideas That Work ┃ ┗ 📁Domain Names ┃ ┣ 📁 Validation ┃ ┣ 📁De-risk Before You Build ┃ ┣ 📁B2B vs B2C ┃ ┗ 📁Local vs Global ┃ ┣ 📁 Building ┃ ┣ 📁MVP Fast (code, no-code, AI) ┃ ┗ 📁First 100 Users ┃ ┣ 📁 Growth Channels ┃ ┣ 📁The Channel System ┃ ┣ 📁Social Media (X + LinkedIn) ┃ ┣ 📁Reddit + Communities ┃ ┣ 📁Launchpads ┃ ┣ 📁Listings + Sponsored Spots ┃ ┣ 📁Affiliates ┃ ┣ 📁Partnerships + Integrations ┃ ┣ 📁Paid Ads, Giveaways, Deals ┃ ┣ 📁Email Newsletters ┃ ┗ 📁Influencers ┃ ┣ 📁 SEO ┃ ┣ 📁SEO + Content ┃ ┣ 📁Directories ┃ ┗ 📁AI SEO (chatbot rankings) ┃ ┣ 📁 Product + Revenue ┃ ┣ 📁Product-Market Fit ┃ ┣ 📁Pricing Strategies ┃ ┣ 📁Landing Pages + Copy ┃ ┣ 📁Onboarding + Activation ┃ ┣ 📁Sales for Builders ┃ ┗ 📁Multi-Product Thinking ┃ ┣ 📁 Strategy ┃ ┣ 📁Building vs Marketing ┃ ┣ 📁Bootstrapping vs VC ┃ ┣ 📁Solo vs Team ┃ ┗ 📁Power Laws ┃ ┣ 📁 Company Ops ┃ ┣ 📁Operations + Support ┃ ┣ 📁Legal Setup ┃ ┗ 📁Banking + Money ┃ ┣ 📁 Founder Life ┃ ┗ 📁Focus, Burnout, Longevity ┃ ┣ 📁 Case Studies ┃ ┣ 📁SocialBot to 20k MRR ┃ ┣ 📁Unicorn Platform ┃ ┣ 📁SEObot ┃ ┣ 📁Index Rusher ┃ ┣ 📁DevHunt ┃ ┗ 📁TinyAdz ┃ ┣ 📁 Appendices ┃ ┣ 📁Checklists ┃ ┣ 📁Tooling Setups ┃ ┣ 📁The Rules (28 lessons) ┃ ┣ 📁Business Models Menu ┃ ┣ 📁Directory Monetization ┃ ┗ 📁Conclusion: Start Now ┃ ┗ 📁 Mini Apps ┣ 📁Growth AI Agent ┣ 📁Business Idea Generator ┣ 📁Idea Validation Scorecard ┣ 📁Domain Name Suggester ┣ 📁Business Name Generator ┣ 📁Competitor Finder ┣ 📁Pain Mention Finder ┣ 📁Launch Day Checklist ┣ 📁First 100 Users Playbook ┣ 📁Build-in-Public Generator ┣ 📁Roast My Landing Page ┗ 📁AI Lead Magnet Generator
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- 30.2KViews
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@Founder_Mode_ ·
Marc Andreessen explains the 3 Necessities for Start-up Success: "The general criteria for a successful high-tech startup, in my view, you see different sort of rules of thumb from different people. But the three big things you always come back to are, is there a big market? And by the way, that comes in two parts. Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and sort of displace incumbents or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big? So big market. Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that causes you to basically justify having a new company? And that's really important. And the way I always think about that is, is there a 10X change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10X faster or 10X cheaper or 10X better? And if it's not 10X, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs, we really have to ask ourselves like, is it really worth doing? Because it's really hard. I mean, it's really hard to start new companies. new companies generally shouldn't exist. Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. And so for a new company to exist, it not only has to like come in and go into business and bring a product to market, but it has to bring a product to market that's so much better than what already exists that it punches through the sort of status quo. And most customers in most markets are pretty happy buying from the current suppliers and so there has to be a real kind of edge on the thing and we look for that in either a technology change, usually a technology change or an economic change. which are often the same thing. And then the third is team. Is the team outstanding? And if you think about this as an entrepreneur, it becomes a question of the founding team. Some companies are solo founders and they can work, but generally most of us, like myself, we're human beings, we're mortal. You want to have a founding team of complementary skill sets. And so you want to have at least one super strong technologist, quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist and then it often helps to have somebody who's like a product or who's a market or sales person or has a sort of really good understanding of business on the team, certainly helps a lot. And so we sort of look at market, product, and team. And the reality is you need all three. I would say, interestingly, if you're going to compromise as an investor, if we're going to compromise on one of those, it would actually be the product. And the reason I say that is because a great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution than a poor market. Because the problem with a poor market, a small market, is even if you do a great job on the product, there just aren't that many customers. It's hard to ever get big."
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- 11
@garrytan ·
There are two loops in every founder's head. The autism loop: run your own model to the floor, ignore consensus, hold a thesis when everyone says you're wrong. That makes conviction. The empathy loop: feel what the user feels, sense what the market wants before it has words. That makes traction. Most people crank one and starve the other. Pure conviction builds something brilliant nobody wants. Pure empathy builds consensus mush. PG put the whole job in four words: make something people want. The autism loop makes the something. The empathy loop knows it's wanted. The founder is the bridge. Most great founders show up dominant in the first loop. That's why they're contrarian enough to try at all. The work is grafting on the second. There is no place in the world that helps founders make the two loops work together to make great startups than Y Combinator. It is the most gratifying part of our work.
- 84Replies
- 66Reposts
- 742Likes
- 39.5KViews
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@andrewchen ·
“ok this startup is cool but …” 1980: … what if IBM builds this? 1995 … what if Microsoft builds this? 2010 … what if Google builds this? Today … what if <huge AI lab> builds this? reality is, if founders listened to the “what if” pessimists we’d never have any startups or new products. That’s why they’re building and the pundits aren’t My observation: When these huge waves happen, these new markets are so damn big there will be tens of thousands of new viable companies, hundreds of unicorns, and a few iconic companies that become generational. The big cos play a role but can never compete with the glorious open market known as capitalism So for all the “what if” people - sit down, log off X for a bit, and let the founders do their thing. And let’s cheer them on when they do
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@tibo_maker ·
ok the secret is PG is my business coach for the last 10 years every time I'm stuck on a product issue, a team decision, or whatever I go back to him (through his essays 😅 ) & find the answers these are the 10 essays (out of 231) I re-read at least once a year: 1. do things that don't scale the best founders don't wait for systems. they do things by hand, one by one, doing whatever it takes I still do this - every new product, I'm the first customer support rep. you learn more in a week of manual work than a month of dashboards. 2. how to start a startup three things kill most startups: the wrong people, building something nobody wants, and running out of money. fix all 3 & you'll probably survive sounds obvious - but most people don't do it 3. how to get startup ideas the best ideas come from living at the edge of a problem, not from trying to brainstorm your way to a billion-dollar market every product I've built started with something that annoyed me personally - not a market research doc 4. maker's schedule, manager's schedule makers need half-day blocks to do real work. a single interruption doesn't cost 30 mins, it costs the whole morning I took it further. no meetings at all - everything async on Slack 5. startup = growth a startup is defined by only one thing: being designed to grow fast. if you're not growing fast, you're a business, not a startup most people confuse the two. both are fine, but they require completely different decisions 6. how to do great work great work sits at the intersection of what you're naturally good at, what you're genuinely obsessed with & where there's real room to do something ambitious it's not about startups at all. it's about not wasting your life 7. the 18 mistakes that kill startups every way a startup dies traces back to the same root: not building something people actually want I use this as a checklist before launching anything. I've personally made at least half the mistakes on the list. some of them even twice. 8. founder mode the advice "hire good people & give them room" works for professional managers. it's often the wrong playbook for founders, who need to stay close to the details to keep the company alive standard management advice nearly broke two of my products. this essay made me feel less crazy for ignoring it. 9. life is short life being short isn't just a figure of speech. it's a filter. if something isn't worth the finite time you have, you should cut it this one isn't about startups, it's about everything else. I think about it when I'm about to say yes to something that doesn't actually matter 10. how to make wealth wealth isn't money. money is just how wealth moves around. a startup is a way to create real value for people, not extract it this one shifted my whole frame. building isn't about capturing a slice of something. it's about making something that didn't exist before -- it's the most valuable startup education on the internet
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@signulll ·
most ppl underestimate how chaotic early stage startups actually are. from personnel turnover & shifting commitments to the fact that everyone now operates with the same fomo/optionality glut you see in dating markets (dating markets are most visible form of this but this is happening everywhere). when ppl have infinite options commitment gets expensive in their mind & the evaluation period never closes.. every day is a reeval against the shadow portfolio of everything they didn’t pick. so the job of a founder is often managing the continuous rerecruitment of your own team against a moving outside option. that emotional & narrative layer is as much if not more than anything you ship.
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@StartupArchive_ ·
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan’s advice for startups: “When you’re small, act small” A lot of founders try to emulate large companies, and will do things like use the same terminology as Microsoft to describe their products. But Garry argues this is a mistake: “When you’re starting something new, the whole advantage is that you’re a real human being. We are so starved for real, authentic connection that if you can talk to people and say ‘Hey, I’m the CEO. What do you need?’ That’s the most powerful thing.” Being small lets you offer fanatical customer support. Not only will this win customer trust, but it’ll help you find product/market fit. If you listen to customers, they will tell you what they want. “The reason why people don’t do this is they think starting a startup is building this incredibly complex machinery… But I encourage you to think about it in a different way. It’s more like throwing a really, really amazing party… You go there, you see a friend, they say ‘Welcome! Let me take your coat. Let me introduce you to your friends.’” For his first startup, Posterous, Garry and his team aimed to reply to every single customer support email within ten minutes. And if there was a bug, they fixed it on the spot. Human connection with your customers is really important. Garry cites a study on Usenet that found retention increased from 16% to 26% if someone received a reply to their post on the forum. As Garry explains: “A 10% difference in retention is actually the difference between a startup that’s flatlining and one that’s working. The compounding of this is really, really massive… Be small. Be human.” Video source: @ECorner (2023)
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@AdewaleYusuf_ ·
Stop applying to an investor’s website for a fund; it's largely a waste of time. Most startup founders don’t fail to raise because their business is bad. They fail because they’re playing the wrong game. Here’s how smart founders actually raise money in 2026: 1. Don’t chase random investors. Find the biggest startup in your industry and research who backed them at the early stage. Those investors already understand your market. 2. Reverse-engineer the cap table. Use tools like Crunchbase, https://t.co/F0vuyEhURl, or PitchBook to find the partners who made those investments and figure out how to get on their radar. 3. Borrow trust. The fastest way to get a meeting isn’t a cold email. It’s an introduction from a founder they’ve already backed. Find successful founders in their portfolio and build genuine relationships with them. 4. Build in public. Start posting consistently about your startup: wins, lessons, milestones, customer stories. Investors are online every day looking for signals. Many founders get inbound meetings simply because they stay visible. 5. Network before you need money. Go to demo days, startup events, conferences, and founder meetups. Meet partners, associates, and operators inside VC firms. The fundraising process starts months before you send your first deck. And one final thing: Don’t start fundraising when your bank account is almost empty. Start building investor relationships 6 to 12 months before you actually need capital. Because in 2026, the best fundraising strategy isn’t sending more cold emails. It’s making sure you’re no longer a stranger.
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@tibo_maker ·
more founders are choosing bootstrapping over VC - liquidity events now take 14 years on average. up from 7. that's your entire 30s waiting for an exit that might never come. - bootstrapped startups are 3x more likely to be profitable within 3 years. VC-backed companies optimize for growth metrics, not money in the bank - preferred shares mean founders often walk away with nothing. even when the company "succeeds," VCs get paid first. sometimes that's all there is - bootstrapped companies spend 1/4 of what VC-backed startups spend on customer acquisition and grow just as fast. capital efficiency wins - VCs can force a sale whenever it suits them. drag-along clauses give them that power. you built it, they decide when to sell it - fundraising takes 4-5 months of full-time work. that's 4-5 months not building your product or talking to customers. most founders who reach traction don't need VCs anymore by then - AI tools let solo founders build what used to require a 10-person team. the capital requirement that made VC necessary is disappearing - 38% of startups now launch without external funding. up from 26% in 2019. the shift is already happening - most VCs are not operators. they can pressure you to grow but can't help you build. the "value add" is often just intros to other portfolio companies - VC money outside of AI has dried up. if you're not building AI, you're fighting for scraps anyway - a $10M business you own 80% of beats a $100M valuation where VCs control the outcome. math is math - the ZIRP era is over. cheap money inflated VC activity for a decade. that's not coming back - founders are getting ousted by their own boards. the company you built becomes a job you can be fired from - VC turns you into a middle manager of your own company. board meetings, investor updates, formal reporting. you didn't quit your job to get another boss - the pressure to hit arbitrary growth targets breaks people. chasing 3x year over year because your investors need it, not because your business needs it - you stop building what customers want and start building what looks good in a pitch deck. that's how products die - VCs funded hundreds of AI startups in the last few years. most are already dead or irrelevant. the foundation model companies just absorbed their use cases - when funding dries up, VC-backed companies panic. bootstrapped companies just keep going. you're already used to operating lean. you started a company for freedom. VC often takes that away if the business feeds your life and you control it, why give that up?
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@romanbuildsaas ·
10 @ycombinator's Lessons all Founder Should Know : (We grew from $0 to $250k MRR in under a year with this approach) 1/ Launch now, not when it's "ready". A mediocre product in front of real users teaches you more in a week than 6 months of polishing in the dark. Ship the moment it delivers one real unit of value 2/ Do things that don't scale. Airbnb's founders photographed their hosts' apartments door to door. Completely unscalable, and exactly how they figured out what the marketplace needed. Get your first 10 customers by hand 3/ Always hunt the 90/10 solution. For almost any feature there's a way to capture 90% of the value with 10% of the effort. Shipped today beats perfect in 6 months (Paul Buchheit's rule) 4/ There are only two real jobs: write code and talk to users. Everything else (conferences, press, VC coffees, corp dev calls) is what Sam Altman calls "fake work". It feels productive precisely because it's more fun than the real thing 5/ You pick your customers as much as they pick you. 10 users who love you beat 1,000 who kind of like you. Twitch only took off after firing the wrong users and going all in on gamers 6/ Growth is an output, not a strategy. Grow before product market fit and all you're buying is churn. And never take 80 cents from a customer just to hand them back a dollar 7/ Do less, really well. Pick one or two metrics and judge every task against them. 8/ Every great startup is badly broken at some point. The billion dollar ones included. The game isn't avoiding fires, it's how fast you put them out. Again. And again 9/ Ignore your competitors. Startups die of suicide, not murder. In year one, the only company that can kill yours is your own 10/ Startups rarely die from running out of money. They die because the founders fall out. Brutal honesty with your cofounder is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy Good luck !
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@arpit_bhayani ·
The biggest lie startups tell during hiring is "We have a lot of problems, and you can pick whatever you want to solve." It sounds great. It plays directly to what we engineers love - autonomy, impact, and ownership. But here's the reality - this almost never happens. When a startup says this, it usually means one of two things: 1. A lack of clarity in leadership 2. They are just trying to lure you in Even in the rare case where you get some freedom, your work still has to align with business goals, product timelines, and team priorities. You will likely be working on whatever the product needs immediately, which is okay, but ... Most of these companies are in constant firefighting mode, so you might never have time to pull off what you wanted to. And honestly, if a company really lets you work on "whatever," that is a red flag. It signals a lack of direction, focus, or urgency. Good leadership does not offer infinite choice; it offers clarity and purpose. There is always a north star that is being chased. Do not fall for startups without looking under the hood. Assess the clarity of their roadmap, the strength of their leadership, and how decisions are made. Ask, 1. What is the team working on right now? 2. What are the top priorities this quarter? 3. How do you decide what gets built? A succinct way to put it is - do not get sold on freedom, get sold on focus. Hope this helps.
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@staysaasy ·
If I can make any single recommendation to y'all running startups that are working, reserve an extra 2% of your cap table and dish it out 3-4 years into the company to the early employees who are the smartest, hungriest, and most versatile. Literally even just 0.1-3% of the company can make a huge difference when it's on top of existing grants and equity plans. These people will stay years longer with those grants in hand. You're basically buying mini-cofounder aggression for much less than the price of a "real" cofounder. Waiting 3 years is important because you want to see real track record across multiple stages of growth, and by this point you'll be more tired and can benefit from a boost of more drive from surprise additional ownership. You want them to have that Big Drive Equity, that BDE. Selecting for versatility is the most important part of the equation. You're essentially buying call options on their future ability to be execs of functions that you haven't even invented yet. This is an exceedingly cheap way to buy those options, and critically these options are in the money TODAY, since the recipients are already in-seat doing good work.
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@BigBrainBizness ·
Sam Altman on why the idea is the least important part of building a company. Most founders spend years obsessing over the right idea. The market timing, the differentiation, the pitch. And then they get started and realize the idea was never really the hard part. Altman puts it plainly: the early stages of a startup move fast. The idea, the initial product, figuring out what works — roughly six months of work total. Everything after that is a different beast entirely. "It is the relentless waking up every day and just sort of banging your head against the wall until things work." That part takes the next nine and a half years. The instinct most founders reach for when things get operationally heavy is delegation. Hire a COO, step back into strategy, stay close to investors and away from the grind. Altman has watched this play out enough times to be unambiguous about where it leads: "Obviously that fails 100% of the time." Building a company is a compounding game — showing up and executing, day after day, across years. The value doesn't live in the original insight. It accumulates in the doing of it, repeatedly, long after the excitement of the idea has worn off. "The value gets created over compounding execution for years and years and years and it never gets easier." Altman frames this as an identity shift that separates the founders who last from those who don't. Early on, the work is about building something great. Eventually, it becomes about building the organisation that does that, and those two things require completely different people. "Most of what being a founder is about is not being in love with creating a product but being in love with creating a company."
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@opeawo ·
This is the kind of advice that has the Nigerian startup ecosystem twisted, and I am glad YC partners are also calling it out. Founders started optimizing for what they thought investors wanted to fund, fintech. Now there are solid fintech companies struggling to raise, while new founders are quietly killing good ideas because they assume “it won’t get funded.” Some of the most ignored opportunities right now: - brick and mortar heavy businesses with real distribution power e.g leasing, @EquipmentShare , one of YC's biggest startups ever though no one talks about it. - services-led models with strong ops layers e.g. property management at scale, job centres at scale - franchise based scaling models e.g @onemedical , Rivia Health - vertical fintech that solves one deep industry problem tech that is not app or web first, but workflow, field, or embedded systems e.g. @BPSAfrica , Alliance Chemicals We trained a whole generation to chase what looks fundable, not what actually works. https://t.co/libuMSZYjh
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@denk_tweets ·
advice I give founders. maybe it helps you: 1/ if you don't have many customers yet, focusing on scalability is overrated. our first "security system" was just a google form, and I personally messaged every single new user (20k+ of them) 2/ building in public is a real force multiplier for a startup & you don't need "credibility" to start making content 3/ no one cares who your investors are. most founders chase clout and tier 1 VCs. I chased strategic angels who would actually use the product 4/ every founder should send a monthly investor update, even if you don't have any investors yet. it's how we raised our $12.5M Series A in less than a week (I never even made a pitch deck) 5/ you need to deeply understand the risks of raising capital at very high valuations 6/ extremely underrated habit: spend the first hour of every day doing customer support. the more painful the feedback, the more urgency you feel to fix it 7/ hiring for passion over experience has been a huge secret weapon for us. some of our best employees came from our existing user base. I'd bet on passion and drive over experience 10 times out of 10 8/ one of my biggest regrets as a founder is not investing in my health sooner. taking care of myself has been the best investment I've ever made in the company 9/ one of the biggest unlocks for me was working weekends. I'm never going to get four uninterrupted hours in the middle of the week, so that's where I do my deep work 10/ it doesn't get any easier. in the early days I fantasised about a future where I wouldn't wake up to an inbox full of angry customers. today I have different problems, but just as many hope this helps
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@richardchen39 ·
When most VCs talk about a good founder, they really mean someone who has a good resume and looks experienced on paper. But big corporate execs tend to flounder in startups because they: - Need a structured environment and big team around them - Are too by the book and don't find creative ways to hustle - Follow routines as how they've always been done without questioning old habits The best founders are often outsiders who become insiders. They: - Don't look impressive on resume but clearly studied the history of the industry and why past attempts failed - Can quickly network their way into inner circles of the industry which is crucial to building trust for B2B sales - Are able to spot broken workflows with a fresh first principles perspective as an outsider
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@HarryStebbings ·
I am going to piss off so many friends by saying this but if I could invest in one emerging manager sub $50M fund, it would be @Joshuabrowder. A few things you need to know about Josh: - He makes the founders he invests in live in his spare room at the Four Seasons until they raise their seed - He turned his $100K Thiel Fellowship grant into a $10M angel portfolio - He was one of the first cheques into Micro1, Yuzu and many more - When he found out his father had been taken by the Russians, he was playing poker… (legend!) I have never had founder references like the ones I got on Josh. I spoke to 12 founders. He averaged 9.2/10 across all 12. This is one of the best episodes we have done in a long time and my notes below: 1. Why I Believe Young Founders Make the Best Founders Young founders have no safety net and no option but to win. Corporate engineers often default to hiring big teams, while young founders stay focused on building the product. Their grit is much higher. Without that level of dedication, most people quit at the first real obstacle. 2. How I Test Founder Commitment Before Investing To filter out tourist founders, schedule a pitch meeting at 11:00 PM. Elite founders accept immediately. Mediocre ones push it out by weeks. During the interview, ask rapid-fire questions. If they claim a specific revenue number, have them pull up their live Stripe account on the spot. Look for tactical customer acquisition goals, not vague partnership promises. 3. Why I Make Founders Live With Me After Investing The best early investments come from deep day-one relationships. Living together creates a focused, one-person accelerator where founders get a three-week crash course and avoid years of mistakes. The rule is simple: co-founders share one room near the Four Seasons and cannot check out until they raise an institutional seed round. 4. Why Pre-Seed Companies Fail Startups usually fail for three reasons: they run out of money, they run out of hope, or the co-founders break up. Money problems usually come from weak pitching, which is why founders should drop the deck and show the product live. To maintain hope, ignore Silicon Valley vanity signals and focus on customer progress. To avoid team blowups, handle mechanics like vesting early. 5. What Founders Need to Know About Signing With a VC VCs will say almost anything to get you to sign on the spot. They reverse-engineer your desires and claim they know every customer you want to meet. Impressionable founders fall for it, but the promised intros often never happen. Never sign in the room. Take the night to think clearly. 6. My Biggest Lesson on Reserve Investing Holding back reserves for later rounds has a huge opportunity cost. The biggest value creation happens at pre-seed, so saving capital for a Series A follow-on can limit your upside. Deploying upfront into 20 to 30 pre-seed companies can produce far better long-term returns. Go all-in early. (links below)
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@DanielSmidstrup ·
A reality check when you see startups jump: $0 to $100K revenue in 48 hours. The viral moment might happen in 48 hours. But the person executing it often has: • Years of experience • An audience • A network • Several previous attempts Here is my reality: Month 1: $0 Month 2: $280 Month 3: $1.9K Month 4: $3.6K Month 5: $2K so far +Before this solo journey, I already had around 2 years of startup experience. That included: • 2 startups with teams • 2 “real” solo attempts I now work 70+ hours a week with no days off. X has been the main driver. I have built the community faster than the products, and roughly 50% of my income has come from X monetization. These are only my numbers, not a universal truth. But I am not doing this because I expect to get rich quickly. I am doing it because I love building. The startup journey is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Even when the viral stories make it look like one.
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@ashleymayer ·
One of the most underutilized startup comms playbooks: teaming up with your philosophical peers to tell a much bigger story about the future than you can (credibly) tell on your own. Journalists used to play a big role here, promoting umbrella narratives like “the sharing economy” to explain what was happening at disparate companies like Airbnb, Uber and TaskRabbit. In the earlier days of cloud SaaS, at Box we’d team up with other “best of breed” startups to make the case for an unbundled approach to enterprise software. American Dynamism is a more recent case study, although often applied too broadly to be useful as a narrative, despite its power as a slogan/ideology. Today, influence is fragmented, and innovation outpaces analysis, at least from traditional sources. Most startups, meanwhile, are focused on promoting their own products and momentum—understandable, but ironically, these self serving stories often fail to explain why a company's success matters beyond its existing customers and cap tables (put another way: what broader movement is it a microcosm of?), and ultimately have a much smaller total addressable audience. Some founders are able to tell more expansive stories, but even then, it’s hard to make a lot of people pay attention to any one startup in a noisy, fast-paced media environment dominated by a few massive players. I was reminded of the opportunity to team up when USV’s @mignano tweeted about the “rebel alliance” and his partner @nickgrossman followed with an essay, both making the case for why an ecosystem of startups tackling all layers of the agentic AI stack has a structural advantage over today’s seemingly unstoppable giants: the vertically integrated AI platforms. There are lots of impressive logos in their diagram of the “emerging agent stack,” but few (if any) can challenge the prevailing narrative round today’s Goliaths on their own. Together, however… If you’re a startup in the so-called rebel alliance (or any other broad movement that world has yet to grasp!!), here’s what to look for when picking your peers: - Philosophical alignment: do you share certain high level beliefs about the future? Ideally those beliefs are (currently) somewhat contrarian. - Common customer: you don’t have to have the exact same ICP, but ideally you care about a similar audience. - Collaborator versus competitor: This is probably obvious, but you don’t have to invite your competitors. From the “emerging agentic stack,” for instance, you’d ideally select the strongest company from each layer. - A players: only team up with companies and founders you believe to be excellent - they reflect the quality of the broader group and the worthiness of the narrative. There are so many fun ways to bring this to life: collectively host a conference (Reindustrialize is a great template), pair up for podcast interviews, co-author an op-ed, collaborate on a content series, propose legislation, launch guerrilla marketing aimed at common enemies. If nothing else, joining forces will force you to tell your story at a 30,000 foot view and articulate a vision that contextualizes why a lot more people should care about your company’s success than do today.
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@bhalligan ·
New episode of Long Strange Trip with @bhorowitz of @a16z is now live. The first time I pitched Ben for @HubSpot, he passed on us. It stung. So naturally, it’s the first thing I brought up with him in this convo. He’s seen more founders up close over the last 20 years than most, so I wanted to ask him what separates good founders from great ones, what CEOs get wrong the most, and how they can fix it. He even names the best CEO he currently works with… Even at our Series D, when Ben passed, deep down I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Turns out, that’s pretty common. The dangerous response is to start over-deferring to others to compensate, which is exactly when things go sideways. Here’s what else I got from this conversation: • On ‘Founder Mode’ going too far: The original insight from @bchesky is right: don't over-hire senior people and then over-defer to them. That creates fiefdoms and a political vacuum. But Ben thinks people have twisted it into "don't hire experienced people at all," which is dangerous. Founder mode means staying accountable to outcomes and having the confidence to manage people with more experience than you. • Decision debt: Ben calls decision debt "the worst debt" a company can carry because it paralyzes the entire organization. Founders who hesitate at 52/48 decisions, waiting for certainty that never comes, create a vacuum that breeds politics and dysfunction. The pile of decisions you're avoiding? A bad hire you are still trying to make work? A board member dynamic that's off and has been for awhile? A pricing model you know isn't scaling? I had this at HubSpot. Every 4-5 months I'd look up and realize everything had slowed down, and the only fix was to make a bunch of decisions I'd been dodging. The moment I made them, things started flowing again. • “Constructive confrontation”: Running away from the truth to spare feelings is dangerous. One of my bugs as CEO of HubSpot was that I’m pretty conflict averse. I think a lot of first-time founder CEOs are. But bad news has to travel fast inside fast growing companies, it’s a good thing if it reaches the CEO efficiently. And that only happens if people are willing to say the hard thing, and you’re willing to hear it. I probably should have leaned into that earlier. • Why founder-engineers suck at hiring salespeople: This is where most technical founders get wrecked. Engineers and salespeople are wired opposite: Ask an engineer a question, they try to find the correct answer. Ask a good salesperson the same question, their first instinct is: Why are you asking me that? If you're an engineer interviewing a sales candidate, their answers are going to feel evasive and it's going to annoy you: that's exactly why you'll reject the best ones and hire the worst ones. • His fix? Blind references. Call people who owe you a favor, not people who owe the candidate one. And ask who they can bring with them. Great sales leaders have a crew of followers. • What the best CEOs actually have in common: The greats can be introverts or extroverts, ivy-leaguers or dropouts. None of that stuff matters. The through-line he sees across Zuckerberg, Musk, Jensen Huang, Ali Ghodsi: they think for themselves (you can feel when someone's working from original thought vs. reading the room), they stay deeply curious, and they are blunt. This was a fun one. Enjoy.
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@staysaasy ·
One of the worst things a founder can lose is willingness to be rejected, get embarrassed, or look vulnerable. Many startups have an origin story that looks like absolutely fearlessness in the face of rejection. A thousand pitches. A thousand candidates. Rejection everywhere. They persisted. But as you find success, your willingness to get rejected goes down. And worse, you can get surrounded by people who convince you it’s the worst thing ever to look weak. So you stop asking for the partnership with the big company for fear of rejection. You don’t promote the high performer because you don’t want to be embarrassed if they quit. You don’t take the risky move because it could make you look dumb. And like a poker player afraid to make a big bet, you slowly lose. The only things that differentiate companies are talent, culture, and risk. Way too many people forget about risk.
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@suraj_sharma14 ·
Steal these GTM secrets from 25 YC companies 👇 Most of these cost $0. 1/ Airbnb → Built a "post to Craigslist" feature to take supply from a bigger platform 2/ Dropbox → A 3-min demo video on Hacker News built a huge waitlist before launch → Gave free storage for referrals, for both sides 3/ Stripe → "Collison install": they set up Stripe on your laptop on the spot 4/ Reddit → Founders posted from many accounts so the site never looked empty 5/ DoorDash → Started as a basic website with a phone number, and the founders delivered the food themselves 6/ Instacart → Founders did the grocery runs themselves to learn the whole process 7/ Zapier → Answered questions in other apps' forums and built integration pages that rank on Google 8/ Segment → Open-sourced one small tool (analytics.js), and the paying customers followed 9/ PostHog → Open source plus very honest, funny marketing that developers actually share 10/ Supabase → "Open-source Firebase alternative": one line that explains everything 11/ GitLab → Built in public, with an open handbook and a public roadmap 12/ Twitch → Started as one guy streaming his life 24/7 (https://t.co/6NM6sObHxi) 13/ Gusto → Wanted customers so badly they did payroll by hand at first 14/ Coinbase → Made buying crypto as easy as a bank app when everything else was hard 15/ Brex → Started with one sharp group: funded startups that banks ignored 16/ Deel → Solved one painful problem: paying contractors around the world 17/ Razorpay → Made developer docs and setup easy for Indian startups 18/ Meesho → Grew through WhatsApp sellers instead of ads 19/ Retool → Free for small teams and they grew inside companies from there 20/ Heroku → Deploying with one command was the marketing 21/ Mixpanel → Sold to the developers who would actually use it 22/ Weebly → A free plan that put "Powered by Weebly" on every site 23/ Twitch (again) → Paid gamers to stream before there was an audience 24/ Scale AI → Did unscalable, manual work for the first big AI labs 25/ PagerDuty → Went after one painful moment: the 3 AM outage The pattern: → Do things that don't scale → Own one painful problem → Make the product the marketing Bookmark this + send it to a founder stuck at 0 users.
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@iamshaanarora ·
I'm best friends with my co-founders and we sold our business for $ 60M. Here's how to find yours👇🏽 tldr; build the thing with ppl that you like hanging out with Having the right cofounders is the most important part of running a startup. [in my humble opinion] When you want to quit your startup (and you will want to quit), you won't quit if you have cofounders you love. At Alia, we started a company in college together as cofounders. And we found each other through vibes. I met my first cofounder while just meeting people in year 1 of college. We ended up living together for the next 2 years and never really thought about starting a company together. Randomly, I revealed to him that I wanted to be a founder. And he said he wanted to be one too. So we started a company together off just pure vibes. We met our other cofounder by writing on LinkedIn that we were looking for engineers, and he reached out. We had some mutuals and our mutuals said he was chill so we ended up bringing him on as a cofounder. [I'm severely oversimplifying here] But the point being that we just decided to work with each other off pure vibes. And we've trusted and respected each other from the start. I won't quit because I know they won't quit. And they won't quit because they know I won't quit. I work hard because I know they're always working hard. They work hard because they know I'm always working hard. Yes we may fight and disagree but we know we have eachother's best interests and the best interests of the business at the end of the day. -- In the midwit meme below, the inexperienced founder and the 4-time exited founder have the same conclusion. Vibes. And the founder who's overthinking in the middle might never even start a company. -- BTW this is a severe oversimplification of how I met my cofounders and how we made sure we wanted to work together. It's more of a reminder that the best cofounders are people that you like to be around. You're gonna spend A LOT of time together if you want to build something, so you might as well enjoy it together as friends.
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@romanbuildsaas ·
Paul Graham published “Startups in 13 sentences” back in 2009. I reread them after being accepted into YC. The advice is still relevant today. Here’s the summary: 1. Pick good cofounders. You can swap your idea overnight, but you're stuck with your cofounders, so pick them like you're picking a marriage. 2. Launch fast. You haven't actually started until you ship, because launching is what teaches you what you should've been building. 3. Let your idea evolve. Launch, then iterate. Most of the good ideas only show up once you're building. 4. Understand your users. Growth comes from how much you improve people's lives, and you can't do that until you understand them better than they understand themselves. 5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot stay ambivalent. Win a small group completely instead of half-winning everyone. It's easier to add users than to fake real love. 6. Offer surprisingly good customer service. Treat your first users absurdly well, even in ways that don't scale, because that's how you learn what to build. 7. You make what you measure. Track the one number that matters every single day and you'll start doing more of whatever moves it. 8. Spend little. Most startups die by running out of cash, so staying cheap just buys you more shots on goal. 9. Get ramen profitable. Make enough to cover the founders' rent and you flip the power dynamic with investors overnight. 10. Avoid distractions. The deadliest ones are the things that pay you now: day jobs, consulting, even fundraising. You'll always take the call that pays today. 11. Don't get demoralized. Most startups die because smart founders got worn down. Protect your morale on purpose. 12. Don't give up. In startups, sheer persistence usually wins, as long as you keep reshaping the idea while you hang on. 13. Deals fall through. Treat every deal as dead until it closes. Depending on it kills your morale and somehow makes it less likely to happen.
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@Carles_Reina ·
I'm excited! The European startup ecosystem is on a tear. Let me explain. I started working for a startup 12 years ago. That was Uber expanding globally. Back in the day in Europe, working in startups was not the path most families expected for their kids. Raising capital was tough, knowledge of equity packages was nonexistent, and startups signing meaningful contracts with enterprises was rare. Enterprises didn't see startups as a reliable partner. Fast-forward to today: • European startups are competing at the same level as US ones. The level of ambition is off-the-charts. • You can build a decacorn / unicorn in Europe without relocating to the Bay Area. Look at ElevenLabs, Revolut, Fuse, Mistral, Synthesia, Legora, and many many more. • Startup building is a way of life. • Wealth is being created & shared. We have plenty of cases where founders & employees have made money from building successful companies. Secondaries are also a normal thing now. • Enterprises have adopted startup tech like never before. This is what's helping them transform their businesses and compete globally. • We have EU Inc in the works. @ProjectEurope_ is an awesome initiative backing Europe-built businesses. Also, the latest "Built in Europe" campaign led by @balderton is 🔥 • Money is a commodity. More VCs means more opps to build crazy ideas. We still have a long way to go, primarily reforming (a) Equity packages & taxes, (b) political alignment, (c) getting more talent, (d) bridging European cultural differences & market protections, (e) getting more people to speak English fluently, (f) removing exit taxes in some markets (founders & operators need movility to win), (g) incentivising wealth creation. One step at a time but the future is bright
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@jonahlau_ ·
Most funded startups die because the founder refuses to admit what's actually working You raise on the vision: platform play, massive TAM, change the entire industry in 10 years. Then you spend 18 months discovering that one small piece of it has traction, but it's not the exciting part you sold. The survival move isn't pivoting. It's building the thing that works without waiting for permission from your pitch deck. The ones who make it ship the narrow version, let it prove itself, and expand from revenue instead of roadmap. The ones who die keep building toward the vision while the market is telling them exactly what it wants. The gap that kills companies is mostly between what the founder promised and what the founder is willing to ship.
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@rohanpaul_ai ·
In this 2014 video, Sam Altman asks Marc Andreessen what venture capitalists are really looking for when judging startups. “The conventional statistics are that about 200 of the 4,000 venture-fundable companies per year will be funded by a top-tier VC. About 15 of those will someday get to $100MM of revenue, and those 15 will generate something on the order of 97% of all of the returns for the entire category of venture capital in that year. Venture capital is such an extreme feast or famine business. You’re either in one of the 15 or you’re not.” That is the real logic behind VC, and it is harsher than most founders want to admit. Investors are not mainly asking whether your company is solid, credible, or broadly impressive. They are asking whether it has the kind of asymmetry that could put it in the tiny set of companies that matter disproportionately. In a power-law business, “good across the board” is often less interesting than “exceptional in one decisive way.” Venture returns come from companies with an extreme advantage, a product that spreads unnaturally fast, a market opening at exactly the right moment, a founder with unusual force, or some other quality that compounds harder than competitors can match. For founders, the implication is uncomfortable but useful. Do not pitch yourself as merely well-rounded. Show the one thing that is so strong it changes the odds, because in venture, weakness can sometimes be survived, but ordinariness almost never can. --- From @ycombinator YT channel from 2014 (link in comment)
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@alexabelonix ·
If you’re brave enough to build a startup, here’s what you should know. Day 190: Paul Graham’s idea filter is brutal: Can you name the people who will use this even if nobody else does? If yes, keep digging. If no, you may have a nice fantasy. Startups need early believers with real pain. Not imaginary future crowds.
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@Hartdrawss ·
8 signs your startup is actually HEALTHY : ( Full examples and LIST ) 1/ users come back without you sending a reminder > organic return rate is the cleanest signal of real value > you didn't ask. they came back. > no re-engagement campaign, no push notification, no discount > they returned because the product earned it > that's retention you can actually build on 2/ people pay without negotiating the price > when value is obvious, price friction disappears > negotiation means the value isn't clear yet > a user who doesn't ask for a discount already trusts you > price resistance is almost never about money > it's about doubt. no doubt = no negotiation 3/ churn is dropping month over month > you're getting better at keeping users, and that compounds > fixing churn is more valuable than acquiring new users > one retained user costs $0 to keep > one new user costs time, money, and attention > dropping churn is the quietest growth lever most founders ignore 4/ you have more inbound interest than you can handle > demand is ahead of your ability to serve it > that's a good problem. most startups never get there > inbound means word spread without you pushing it > it means someone told someone, and they told someone else > don't panic. this is what product-market fit starts to feel like 5/ users get upset when you remove a feature > friction on removal = real dependency > real dependency = real value created > if nobody notices when you remove something, it wasn't valuable > if they complain, you built something they actually rely on > angry users are more valuable feedback than silent ones 6/ you know exactly where your next 5 customers are coming from > one clear repeatable acquisition channel that doesn't depend on luck > not "maybe twitter" or "hopefully a referral" > you have a name, a channel, a sequence > predictable pipeline is the difference between a business and a bet > most founders skip this and wonder why growth feels random 7/ users are referring other users without being asked > your product is doing the marketing > best signal in the game > a referral means someone staked their reputation on you > they told a friend "use this, it's worth it" > no ad budget does what a trusted recommendation does 8/ you can describe the problem in one sentence and people say "i know someone who needs this" > clarity of problem = clarity of market > if people can place it instantly, distribution gets easier > vague problems attract vague customers > sharp problems attract people who are already looking > "i know someone" is the most underrated phrase in early sales if you have 4 or more of these: you're building something real. keep going.
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@BigBrainBizness ·
Sam Altman on why most young entrepreneurs quit their startups long before they ever had a chance to work: Sam has worked with thousands of founders and noticed the same pattern repeatedly. Most startups fail because founders give up long before their idea has a real chance to work. "The mistake that most people make is they try something, it does not immediately work. You see this particularly in young entrepreneurs." Altman describes how quickly founders tend to walk away: "After 7 weeks, they say, you know what, I tried this thing, it's just not meant to be, and I have too many other projects. So, they immediately give up." He points to how absurd this pattern can get: "The satirical version of this is people that are 23 and have started 14 startups because they give up on everyone before I could ever possibly be successful." The reality of building something meaningful is that it takes time, and the journey is rarely encouraging: "These things are really hard. They take a very long time. There are a lot of critics. There are a lot of people who say, 'This thing sucks. It's going to fail. It's really stupid.'" But @sama points out that criticism isn't even the hardest part. There's a worse stage, one that Y Combinator has a name for: "And then also, there's what at YC we call the trough of sorrow where no one even bothers to say it sucks because no one cares at all and that is at least is demotivating." The pattern he's observed in the founders who eventually break through is simple but rare: "Most of the founders that I have spent a lot of time with that have gone on to be super successful spent a very long time on their idea when a lot of other people would have given up and either people said it sucks or people said nothing at all."
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@ayushjaiswal ·
I love startups - that's all I've done my entire life but today, I'm deeply concerned about something & I want to share my heart out. It's about the endless acqui-hire deals. The problem: with time, this definition has blurred out a lot & these deals are getting out of hands. These deals are great when people got great job offers after slogging for years when things DON'T work out. It lowers the risk a little & encourages more people to join a startup & take more risks in their life. But are these deals evolving into something dangerous? A recruitment tool for large companies to pay billions sometimes & do a quick acquisition that's not an acquisition? That's because all the acquihire deals are honestly, very opaque. Some deals end up screwing up all their employees & others take care of them. Some screw their investors too, others take care of them. And some are just sad shut down stories. So how do we differentiate? Today, when someone is looking at joining a startup - this is deeply concerning. What if the company gets acqui-hired before you hit your cliff? Is the company going to take care of you or just say your shares were not vested? What about the integrity of the founder & the board? I've heard great things about some companies doing it extremely well like CharacterAI & Cognition. While many other stories where people were either screwed or paid enough to keep their mouth shut. But what does this mean for the ecosystem? So many incredible people are not joining some startups because of this fear. Particularly people who've been burnt by it before. How do you make sure we appreciate companies who're doing things with high integrity & call out those who don't? Or are there better ways to structure this? I'm thinking about starting a company & I want to put this in writing to communicate with all my future employees that they won't be screwed - what can I do? Or I'm looking at joining a startup & don't want to get screwed, what to do? Where do I start? Are there legal instruments which people use to demonstrate trust to their future employees / investors? I think this should be a very important topic & the ecosystem needs to come together to do the right thing. I can understand large companies trying to do acquihire deals because they want to move faster. And some founders who make the call of taking these deals but doing it the right way is important. But unfortunately the lines have blurred out, a lot. I really hope this gets better.
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@arampell ·
"The Comma MBA Problem" and Local Maxima The best entrepreneurs constantly “read the room” (or the market) and adjust their presentation style, their mannerisms, their product description, their team, their focus, their advisors — everything. They have the smallest number of axioms (things they accept without questioning). Everything else is subject to questioning, upgrading, and re-synthesis. Particularly since almost invariably they started off at a “local maximum” in terms of talent and advice. I call this the “comma MBA” problem. One time we had a nice fellow from Canada come pitch us, and on his business card he had his name, followed by “MBA” in the same way a doctor would put “MD.” His slide deck referenced his MBA, his pitch mentioned how everyone is “good at business” because they have business degrees, etc. There’s nothing wrong with an MBA (well, maybe 😂). But what he thought was a positive was not resonating, and he just…didn’t get that hint. And to show I’m not trying to cast shade at MBAs, one time we had a CEO talk about how amazing his tech team was because of their “.NET” prowess — the technical version of the “comma MBA” problem above. But let’s take a step back. Imagine that in our MBA friend’s small town, he went to the local business celebrity who seemed very wise, saying “make sure to emphasize the fact that you have an MBA! Otherwise the VCs will not take you seriously!” Both the good entrepreneur and the bad entrepreneur would seek advice from the same village elder. But the good entrepreneur would quickly learn and adjust from experience — “wow, that guy is wrong — I didn’t get the reaction/feedback I thought I would.” The bad entrepreneur sticks to the village elder’s advice. The good entrepreneur upgrades his/her advisor when it’s clear that it’s a constraint. We consequently give people the benefit of the doubt when they show up with a metaphorical “comma MBA” mistake; the important thing is ensuring they are always trying to learn and upgrade from their metaphorical village elder and resulting priors. And sometimes the village elder is exceptional, too — but it’s statistically rare. It’s part of why the founding team is so important. I like to say that there are only two jobs at a startup: selling the thing, and making the thing. That’s it. A very good technical person who knows nothing about sales can be bamboozled by a bad sales guy, and a very good sales guy can be bamboozled by a bad tech person. Your co-founder ideally serves an “axiomatic” role. If you can’t implicitly trust your co-founder, you’re in trouble. That’s not to say that the co-founder must be the most talented person in the domain! Rather, because the co-founder isn’t angling for a promotion and has no political aspirations, she just wants what’s best for the company and understands how to make the right decisions. (One useful cultural value at a scaling company: “You should always be willing to hire your own boss.”) You will constantly get bad advice. Your job is to know when to discard the advice, but also when the discard the *people* who are clearly meting out bad advice and not doing what’s best for the company. And ideally you surround yourself with talent where you don’t have to second-guess everything and can instead rely on your team — it’s the best way to scale yourself.
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@AskMichaelTaiwo ·
Ninety percent of startups fail. Now think about what that does to advice. Almost every piece of business wisdom you will ever hear comes from the tiny slice who survived, telling you what they think worked. The far larger group who did the same things and failed are silent, broke, and not writing threads about it. That is survivorship bias, and it poisons nearly every lesson we absorb. The successful founder swears his secret was a hundred-hour week. Maybe. But a thousand founders worked the same hundred hours and drowned, and we never hear from them. So we mistake the survivor's habits for the cause of survival. Take everybody's success story, including mine, with one question. What is he unable to see? Learn from winners. But study the graveyard too. It keeps no highlight reel, which is exactly why nobody bothers to read it.
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@ItsWillHenry ·
things I've learned in SF that you all should know: - the people who talk about their startup the most are usually the ones building the least - your network is built in the in between moments, not the meetings - the founder with the best pitch and the founder with the best company are almost never the same person - raising money is a skill. building a company is a different skill. confusing the two has ended more careers than any market downturn - the city rewards persistence over intelligence and most people quit right before it would have worked - the best advice you'll ever get will come from someone who has nothing to gain from giving it to you every shortcut you take now is debt you pay back later with interest. Keep building better
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@1752vc ·
The most dangerous thing you can hand a pre-seed founder is $50 million. There have been 27 seed rounds of $100M+ since the start of 2025. Most of them pre-product, priced on the founders' résumés. I don't blame the founders for taking it. I don't blame the VCs for offering it. The problem is what happens after the money lands. Constraint is what makes startups innovate. With 18 months of runway, a problem forces you to think. With 8 years of runway, you just spend: churn is up, so hire more reps; the product isn't landing, so buy more ads. None of those were money problems. Capital doesn't speed up learning. It makes bad ideas more expensive. And it costs you the one edge you actually had. Google can outspend you infinitely. Google cannot out-desperate you. Nobody tells the story of the round that saved them. They tell the story of the week they almost died, because that's the week they became a real company. Full piece on VC Unfiltered👇️
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@willsclips_ ·
I've filmed inside 40+ startups in the past year. The companies actually winning are ignoring most of the advice they're getting. Not because the advice is wrong. Because it's context-free. I've watched two founders make opposite decisions on the same problem, both were right. One raised aggressively early. Another bootstrapped for 3 years. Both built profitable, fast-growing companies. One hired a VP Sales at 10 customers. Another waited until 100. Both scaled past $10M. One moved fast and broke things. Another spent 6 months on architecture first. Both captured their markets. The difference wasn't the decision. It was the context. The 'founder advice industrial complex' doesn't account for context "Raise capital early" "Don't raise until PMF" "Hire fast" "Hire slow" "Ship and iterate" "Get foundations right first" All true. None always true. Here's the problem: Advice scales. Observation doesn't. You can package a framework, sell a course, build a brand around "the way" to do something. You can't do that with "it depends." What I'm seeing instead: Founders who let me film aren't following playbooks. They're making trade-offs based on their specific market, team, and timeline. Not asking "what did Airbnb do?" Asking "what does my reality require right now?" Documentary shows reality. Advice sells certainty. Founders need the first. The industrial complex profits from the second.
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@GJarrosson ·
You’re crushing it online – 750,000 visitors in 120 days. You’re ready to raise a round, right? Wrong. Lots of Eyeballs... No Revenue Even if a startup gets a lot of attention online, it’s not enough to raise capital today. Take the example of a founder on Reddit… He’s built a site to sell car parts. The site is extremely popular, with nearly a million visitors in just four months. But he hasn’t been able to monetize. Attention Isn’t All You Need For most startups, lots of eyeballs and no revenue isn’t enough to raise capital today. With companies hitting a million in revenue in mere weeks, a pre-revenue company isn’t compelling. If the founder can’t find a way to monetize all those eyeballs... usually a red flag (Exceptions - Consumer social startups, Deep tech startups are often pre-revenue at seed) But if you're a first-time founder building a normal SaaS product or marketplace, raising pre-revenue is brutal. Angels pass. VCs tell you to come back with traction So bootstrap to your first customers. Charge them to prove someone will pay. Then raise. Or don't, if you can keep growing without it. If you're truly pre-revenue and need capital to start, apply to an accelerator. YC bet on day-zero companies. That's their model. But walking into a seed round with just a deck and no revenue... its not 2015.
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@nrmehta ·
"The One Where a Famous VC Made Me Cry - And I'm Grateful": The year was 2002 (OK, Boomer!) My first startup (Chipshot) that we founded in our dorm rooms went from hot to not and shut down in 2000. The next startup (XDegrees) that I joined shut down 18 months later. I was 25 with a big ego and no money. One of our startup's VCs was a legendary investor. I pinged him to get career advice and he kindly accepted. I went to his office - incredibly a tiny little room with space for 2 uncomfortable chairs. I awkwardly sat and handed him my printed resume (remember kids - this was a LONG time ago...) [VC with no eye contact]: "Nick - I look at your resume and see... Chipshot: FAILURE... XDegrees: FAILURE... you'd better watch out or people are going to see you as a serial FAILURE. Go somewhere where you won't FAIL.” I politely thanked him and went back home. And bawled. There were some serious young man tears landing on my IKEA patio swing that night, people. Yet the next morning, I decided to listen to his advice. I cold emailed some already successful companies and ended up getting a PM job at one. I started on probably the most boring software product in the world, but at least it didn’t go out of business! Eventually I became a VP and GM and subsequently got to restart my dream of startups and founding companies. What do I take away from this? Well, none of us know the counterfactual. Maybe if I had ignored the investor’s 2002 advice, I would have gone on to start some epic trillion dollar company. Maybe. But 24 years later, I’m grateful that the investor had the guts to step beyond the bounds of politeness to share what he thought I needed to hear. And I work to be that candid (perhaps with a bit more bedside manner!) with others. Easier said than done.
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@kevinleeme ·
One of our investors asked us to give advice to their struggling early stage portfolio company founded by 2 MBAs from a top 3 business school. These MBA'ers know all the business frameworks in the book but they can't figure out how to acquire customers to save their life. My biggest piece of advice to them was to stop over intellectualizing the startup journey and to just start doing shit. These MBA'ers complained they had no budget to hire someone to create video ads for Meta. I asked if they'd ever tried scripting concepts themselves and recording product videos from their iPhone. They stared at me like I was speaking some foreign language and then tried to change the topic to how they needed to first learn how to optimize ads manager. For gods sake why lol. The bottleneck is obvious. Go do it yourself, learn, and solve it. There's no need to philosophize, theorize, or come up with other fake priorities. So much of startups is having an IQ just low enough that you lean towards taking action instead of sitting around whiteboarding and feeling smart.
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@ThinksDylan ·
Lessons from raising $7.5M in seed round: let investors find you. It can save you months of pointless networking. If you’re a first-time founder, my biggest fundraising advice is this: stop begging strangers at networking events for warm intros to investors they barely know. The best fundraising strategy is to make investors reach out to you. At the early stage, your main job is figuring out what actually resonates with the market aka what to build. One of the best ways to do that is by consistently posting on social media. Share demo videos, feature breakdowns, product explanations, and updates, talk to people who comment on it and make changes of your product - over and over again, every single day. Post as much as possible and observe what people respond to. Twitter is especially powerful for this because its algorithm can amplify posts that resonate, even if you have a new account or very few followers. This creates two huge advantages for founders: Investors start paying attention to you. If you think about the business model of investors, their job is to deploy capital into promising startups at their earliest stage. What makes you stand out at the early stage is proof that people care about what you’re building. Views, engagement, shares, and discussions are all signals of market interest. Even before revenue, attention itself can become a strong attraction signal during fundraising. You validate what is actually worth building. At the early stage, there are very few reliable ways to validate ideas. Posting product demos online gives you immediate feedback from the market. If people consistently resonate with a feature, it usually means there is real demand behind it. From there, your job is to listen carefully, iterate fast, and turn that demand into a product that can eventually be commercialized well. Focus less on chasing investors. Here is a good lesson that I've learned from a very successful founder friend. She said, "The time when you want to raise is the time that nobody wants to invest." Focus more on building something people genuinely care about - and making that visible. By doing this, you will outperform many peers.
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@JayKapoor ·
The first 10 people you hire are the essence of your company. The product, the culture, the speed, all of it. Most founders blow this by hiring people who look and move just like them. The version I’ve seen succeed is the opposite. You hire your foil. The person whose job is to question what you assume is obvious. The COO who challenges your thinking. The board member who calls the bluff in your own narrative. The CTO who can point our why your plan won't scale before you want to hear it. @emelton of @thresholdvc framed this on CLIMB in the perfect way: "Whatever is your superpower is also almost always your biggest flaw." The implication is that the trait that makes a founder special is the trait that, unchecked, kills the company. The storyteller starts believing their own hype. The visionary loses contact with the ground-level work. The 10x technical founder refuses to take customer pushback seriously. The recruiter that hires a team of yes-people because it feels good. Emily has watched this play out across five funds, 10+ board seats, and over the better part of three decades. She co-founded All Raise and chaired the NVCA. She has seen what survives and what doesn't. Her advice, my paraphrase: stop hiring people who agree with you. Start hiring people who can argue with you. That’s the only way through the messy middle
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@rohitdotmittal ·
Venture built more ways to fund companies than ways to exit them. Having gone through an acquisition and then talked to a lot of founders who have, I see this often. The company is usually not dead. I hate to call it a zombie company. It has customers. It has revenue. Sometimes it is even close to profitable. But it is not growing fast enough for venture. It is too small for private equity. And it is not strategic enough for an easy acquisition. So the founder gets trapped in the middle. What people miss is that this is not rare. We funded a lot more startups over the last decade. We did not build a lot more exit paths for the companies that end up being good businesses, but not venture-scale businesses. That is why so many founders keep going longer than they should. Not because they are irrational. Because the alternatives are bad. Raise more money? Usually not available. Sell? Harder than people think. Shut down? Feels like failure. Return capital? Often not enough to matter to investors and destroys the founder's next chapter. So they keep grinding. From the outside, it looks like resilience. A lot of the time, it is just lack of options. One thing I keep seeing in founder M&A conversations is that the emotional burden gets mislabeled. People say the founder lost conviction. Sometimes that is true. But often the founder just finally sees the business reality. The business may still work, but it's just stuck in the wrong cap table. Founders need a realistic path out of being stuck.
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