Startups How I got into YC twice, with 2 different ideas, in back-to-back years |
- How I got into YC twice, with 2 different ideas, in back-to-back years
- How to determine which features of my app are good or bad?
- Working with startups
- Tips on growing a classified website(new business owner)
- Need feedback on issue tracking
- Thinking of starting a service for transporting the elderly to their appointments/etc.
- Pitching an idea
- Funding my first business at 17.
- Next Steps
- How can I conceal my home address?
- When does one decide to resign from a job to focus on his/her own business?
- There's a good chance a startup I want to join will get acquired by a larger corporation (Siemens/ABB sized). What should I do to make sure I can get an equally good or better position at the new company should mine get acquired?
- How do you switch off on the weekend?
- What courses, playlists or audiobook should I watch next to be the perfect "Business Development Idea Bouncing Guy"?
- My Journey so far,
- I want to learn how to program my own marketplace website.
- Reseller- & Investor-Partners want Right to source code written into contract - good idea?
- Advices for first startup
- I wanna join a startup.
- Please who knows anyone who is successfully running a similar "media" company?
| How I got into YC twice, with 2 different ideas, in back-to-back years Posted: 05 Jul 2020 12:28 PM PDT Hey all. This is my story of how I got into YC twice, with 2 different ideas in back-to-back years. My style of entrepreneurship is different from most because I launch companies in spaces where I start with 0 domain knowledge. Here's my process. Edit 1: Moderators removed my original post because I added some names; I removed the names . Note 1: Thank you moderators for the helpful feedback. IntroFrom 2018 to 2020, I launched 2 companies. Both were accepted into YCombinator. The first company was a computational drug-discovery company for Alzheimer's Disease (accepted YC S18, but now dead). The second company was a CRM for construction trade contractors (accepted YC S19). I launched both companies while I worked at Uber ATG as a software engineer building self-driving cars. In both cases, I started with 0 experience in the healthcare or construction industry. Here's my personal process for discovering ideas and getting ideas off the ground. Talk to peopleA startup succeeds by building a product that solves a problem so most first-time founders will start by asking
Actually that's the wrong question to start with. The right question is
The first question is difficult to answer for founders with 0 insights about an industry. To see this, try to answer the following questions for an unfamiliar industry like pest-control or waste management.
Most people are stuck. The takeaway is that without insight, there cannot be innovation. To get unstuck, talk to people. To find problems, talk to people. To generate insights, talk to people. When we founded our construction tech company, my cofounder and I had 0 construction experience. To start, we sourced 20 conversations with construction experts in our network. We talked to owners, general contractors, project managers, estimators and superintendents and asked them simple questions.
Very quickly, we started hearing things like
Over time, we heard the same stories from multiple people and these stories surfaced themes in construction: cost disputes, late payments, excessive data-entry. These same themes would go on to inspire our initial ideas. It turns out the process for identifying promising startup ideas is not complicated. Talk to lots of people and let those conversations inspire you. This works because conversations are raw-unfiltered looks into how an industry operates. They will contain stories of day-to-day frustrations that industry experts face; these frustrations are clues for possible areas for innovation. Think of each conversation as a puzzle piece and the job of a founder as compiling those pieces into a promising startup idea. My experiences with launching both companies have taught me that a rigorous process for learning matters far more than any single idea. A reliable process for learning enables founders to be deliberate about iterating towards good ideas, rather than leave this process to chance. What makes launching in non-familiar industries so difficult is the chicken-and-egg problem of "how do I get people to talk to me and share their wisdom even if I don't have anything to offer immediately?". I wish I had a playbook for this problem. Unfortunately, I don't because sourcing conversations is more art than science - an art that changes based on industry, a founder's network and circumstances. Just find any reason to launchAt some point, learning stagnates from conversations alone and you have to launch a product to actually build a company. While visionary founders can design products based on empathy for a specific problem and the users that face that problem, non-visionary founders must build products for unfamiliar audiences.¹ As a result, the first product a non-visionary founder launches is often misguided, especially if the product is based solely on intuition from conversations. There are simply product insights that cannot be intuited from conversations alone.
Early-on, non-visionary founders need a sandbox that enables them to launch products (potentially multiple), iterate and learn from users in the industry. This is another chicken-and-egg problem; you need a sandbox to learn, but it is difficult to build a sandbox if you don't have much to offer upfront. To build sandboxes for both companies, I relied on a technique called a minimum launchable reason, which just means find any reason to launch a product/service/collaboration/project in your target industry. I used the following playbook
It does not matter what reason enables you to launch. All that matters is that you launch because launching enables you to learn 10x faster. For the drug-discovery company, I launched by volunteering to do research with a computational biology lab at Carnegie Mellon University. For construction-tech company, I launched by collaborating on a robotics project with a large construction company in Pittsburgh. Building sandboxes is an art so I copied the original emails I used to build these sandboxes (To comply with Reddit rules, I'm excluding those emails in this post) In my case, launching a research project the computational biology lab unlocked rich insights about designing a drug for Alzheimer's because I was able to tour biology labs, discover how data pipelines are created in biology and hear first-hand the challenges lab members had when running Alzheimer's experiments. Collaborating with a real construction company exposed me to real construction sites. I saw actual construction photos and witnessed the common spreadsheet templates that the construction industry used to document progress. If conversations are the ember sparks for startup ideas, then a sandbox ignites a raging inferno for startup ideas. With a sandbox in place, the process around innovation becomes straight-forward.
What is non-obvious is how often early ideas will be wrong. Even more non-obvious is just how inconsequential being wrong really is. What matters is building a process around shipping products quickly because shipping unlocks learning and learning leads to good outcomes (e.g. discovering a product that is impactful). My cofounder and I did 3 product launches across 6 months before arriving at what our construction company is currently building - a CRM for trade contractors. It took us 4 months to launch our first idea (autonomous robots to scan construction sites). It took us 1 month to launch our second idea (a construction analytics platform). It took us 1 weekend to launch our third idea (a CRM for trade contractors). We didn't necessarily get smarter each time.The key skillset we developed was shipping faster and figuring out creative ways to learn faster. Hence, the central question to ask is not
rather,
100% Founder ConvictionThe startup world points to product-market-fit as the single most important milestone for a company. I actually think the most important milestone is a concept called 100% founder conviction and it refers to the moment when the founders develop unshakable conviction that their idea will work. I didn't have 100% founder conviction for drug-discovery company, but I do for our construction company. While I cannot describe this feeling, I remember the exact moment it happened. For months, we struggled to generate traction for our first two construction ideas. Demos were hard to come by, despite 100s of emails. I always felt like the reception to our product was lukewarm during demos. Even when we generated revenue, I felt like construction companies gave us pity deals, where the money came out of a small innovation budget used to experiment with new technologies. Our CRM idea was different. Within a week of launching, we booked a demo through a cold call with an electrical contractor! A week later, we demo'd the product and got our first signed contract. In the first month, we signed 3 customers. This was more deals than we had ever booked for all our previous ideas combined. Each sale was smooth and I felt this "aha" reaction from each of customer, where they nodded and said "this is pretty useful". Unlike our previous ideas, none of these early customers paid attention to how small we were as a company or how ugly our initial solution looked (and trust me it was ugly). All that mattered was that we solved a painful business problem and they wanted that business problem solved immediately. I suspect the 100% founder conviction stems from my personal belief that our current company is solving a real problem and that many, many people in the world have this problem. This doesn't mean that we don't face challenges.
The difference is that all those challenges feel tractable. Like product-market-fit, 100% founder conviction is not quantifiable, but it's this special moment when the mindset shifts from
to
Focus on finding 100% founder conviction because the moment you find it, you'll find a way to will your company into existence regardless of obstacles. Some advice to my younger selfFor the first 7 years of my startup journey, I could never be sure if I were making progress. Lots of sleepless nights. Lots of moments where I felt like a loser, chasing impossible dreams. I'm sure a lot of founders feel this way. I'm sure a lot of successful founders once felt this way. So much of what makes startups difficult in the beginning is the psychological burden of uncertainty.
If I could go back in time, I'd tell my younger self to just focus on 2 things.
Looking back, I wish I spent less time reading TechCrunch articles featuring big fundraises or VCs discussing post-PMF concepts (network effects, sales efficiencies, LTV/CAC) because none none of that matters in the early days. If anything, that content is detrimental for early-stage founders. I wrote this because I always wished more founders wrote about how they discovered ideas and how they generated early-traction. I wish more founders wrote about their origin stories. These stories move people and I sometimes think a dearth of these stories prevents a lot of talented people from building startups, people who could otherwise have outsized impacts on the world. [link] [comments]  |
| How to determine which features of my app are good or bad? Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:48 PM PDT Hello, I've been reading a lot about the MoSCoW method and more which needs to prioritize what features are going to be out of the app and which ones are staying. I am a team of 1, I am developing the app by myself, but it's hard for me to know what i need to program first, my idea has a lot of features but what should i Keep? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Jul 2020 01:10 AM PDT Greetings, What I'm looking for: Advice - I'm looking to work with startups. How should I proceed with my search? Is my skillset relevant to most startups? As startup owners, what do you look for in potential employees? Anything that I need to know or watch out for? ( I can only work in a remote capacity ) Why: I prefer working in a startup because of the learning opportunities, closer company culture, room for growth, and especially the practical experience. My background: I'm a business analyst and I've worked with various clients catering to their different business needs. With my skill set, I can prepare competitor analysis, market research, progress reports, performance reports, business reports, and I can also co-ordinate inter-departmental functions, logistics, product sourcing, etc. I am also capable of carrying out administrative functions, assistant functions, and maintaining client relationships. Organizing and analyzing user data, performance figures, company expenditures, etc is also well within my scope. I know that at a startup having more than one skill is paramount. Therefore, I am also ready to learn new skills and adapt to suit the requirements of any role. I'm highly motivated and curious as a person and possess sound knowledge about economics and business. Also, I try to keep myself well-informed on a wide range of domains. Any suggestions/advice would be much appreciated, as I'm not sure how to proceed. Thank you for your time Message to mods: If you feel that my post is irrelevant or spam, let me know. [link] [comments]  |
| Tips on growing a classified website(new business owner) Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:27 PM PDT My website has been active for a week now and currently we have 12 new users but no payments(gotta start somewhere)I tried Instagram ads and after spending around $20 it only seemed to get me 2 website visits and 30 post likes. My website is focused in the automotive category and has more features and cheaper promotion options then my competitors. Anyone have tips on how to grow my website(maybe things that have worked for them). This would mean a lot. I'm putting about 20 hours a day into networking and trying to grow the business. I'm enjoying my journey but need some help thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Need feedback on issue tracking Posted: 05 Jul 2020 09:12 PM PDT Hey friends. Recently been considering adding a issue tracker thats user friendly for everyone in the company to use. The engineers are always bombarded with messages and find it hard to get context in back and forth. Team is ~25 engineers but about 10 others across design/marketing etc that could also use this tool file bugs Has anyone tried these issue trackers? Have they significantly improved how long it takes to file an issue (time and accuracy)? If not, how long do u guys usually take to file an official issue/ticket from time it was raised? [link] [comments]  |
| Thinking of starting a service for transporting the elderly to their appointments/etc. Posted: 05 Jul 2020 03:47 PM PDT Hey, I'm investigating/validating starting a service in the elder care market. I'm not necessarily going to go through with it, just poking around first to get a better feel for the situation (and validate the idea first as well). I'm curious as to any regulations/licenses to look out for, or any "gotchas" in this space. The service would be transportation to/from appointments, socializing with them, and possibly helping out with chores. It would not be geared towards those who need serious medical attention/aid. Any advice or tips in this area would be greatly appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 06:33 PM PDT To describe my situation I have to use some hypotheticals. I'd like to get my company (Mycompany) to work with a company that creates custom coffee mugs (Mugcompany). Mugcompany allows its customers to create custom mugs with their uploaded images and/or text, a fairly basic, straightforward business. I am very interested in working with Mugcompany because their mugs are slightly different, I couldn't go to another mug producer because Mugcompany is unique. They have no minimum order requirements and also offer bulk orders for teams and brands. I am working on a licensing deal with an organization we can call the Las Vegas Raiders for this example which would allow me create and sell merchandise with the Raiders logo and other trademarks. Lets say the licensing deal is finalized and I am allowed to use the logo. I'd like to contact the Mugcompany and establish a relationship with them so I can use their service to produce Raiders coffee mugs and then sell those mugs via Mycomapny website. Mugcompany already offers a wholesale option so there should be no problem completing a bulk order with them. My concern is that they can simply say "this is a good idea, we'll work on a licensing deal with the Raiders and produce/sell the mugs ourselves." In other words, I am worried that they can simply take my idea and run with it since they are the ones producing the mugs or they can agree to work with Mycompany, see the success of the Raiders Mugs, and then branch out to other NFL Teams themselves. My goal is to start with one team and expand to other depending on the success. Extra Info: Mycompany is very young and still in the planning phase. (Working on licensing deals with various organizations) Hypotheticals: In my example I used the Raiders however in my real situation the licensing deal application/process is cheap. $500 applications + 10% gross sales. The Mugcompany can very easily get licensing agreements with the organizations I am planning to work with. How should I contact the Mugcompany with my ideas? Is there a way to protect my idea? I understand that my idea is nothing extraordinary or out of this world, I am sure they probably have even thought about it already. What would/could prevent them from creating the mugs and selling them directly on their website since they already have an online store? I'd like a long-term relationship with them and to bring value to the Mugcompany and Mycompany equally. Your advice is greatly appreciated! [link] [comments]  |
| Funding my first business at 17. Posted: 05 Jul 2020 05:50 PM PDT Hi, I'm Callum, 17 and from the UK. I'm looking to start my first business selling hangover supplements. I've setup a bank account dedicated to this startup and put £1400 in there. I'm experienced in UI/UX design and quite 'tech savvy' so I'm able to create the website, logos etc myself. I've spoke to a few manufacturers and I'm looking at around £1500 to get the first batch of capsules made. I'm sure I could find some family members who are willing to fund me some money so I can pay for this. Say I'm able to sell all of the inventory, where do I go from there and how could I get funding & investors to expand this business? Kind regards, [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 05:41 PM PDT Hi Everyone, I had an inquiry and was hoping to pick someone's brain on what I should do next. I have been creating a social media startup since last October. I've reached out to a few extremely talented software friends for helping me create this. I'm nowhere near the level they are in the field and I've come to realize that the size of this company will be incredibly difficult to create with just the limited manpower we have. That made me think to outsource this work. I will definitely need some financial assistance and I was wondering if anyone knew what would be the best way to go about this? Suggestions lik applying for grants, through fellowships, or any honestly other thing that may assist me would be greatly appreciated. Thank You! [link] [comments]  |
| How can I conceal my home address? Posted: 05 Jul 2020 05:09 PM PDT I want to sell some merchandise online and would like to hide my home address from customers for privacy reasons. How can I do this when shipping items and accepting returns? Also, it'd be great if I didn't have to go to the post office to send and receive the items. What do other merchants normally do? [link] [comments]  |
| When does one decide to resign from a job to focus on his/her own business? Posted: 05 Jul 2020 04:10 AM PDT Greetings and salutations r/startups I was wondering what is the best time in a startup progress does one finally resign from the day job? As I work a full-time job + setting up my startup business. I'm 32 years old, single with 0 dependents, have manageable debt that I took to support my business. I also have a partner who's sharing the expenses. Thank you everyone. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:56 AM PDT I'm planning to major in MechE before applying to the company. Should the company still be around after I graduate, I'll try to join and work my way up into management. However, they have a very interest concept and I'd imagine it will get acquired by a larger competitor company. Beyond converting a fair chunk of my salary to equity, what should I do to make sure I'll be able to transition to the new company and keep my position or get a better one? [link] [comments]  |
| How do you switch off on the weekend? Posted: 05 Jul 2020 03:58 AM PDT I started working full time on my startup at the beginning of the year. At the beginning, I was able to separate my work from my life at home pretty well, but over time it's been harder to take nights and weekends off without thinking about work. It's become even more challenging as I've started a company Twitter account, as Twitter was something I used to go on for leisure. I've also subscribed to a lot of company-related subreddits. I can't escape it! Anyone have any tips for switching off? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 12:43 PM PDT I work on a social media management capacity even though it is VA work, I love working with people who can teach me about running businesses. I am trying to pickup skills about communication and actually learn their business and operations technique first hand. But the problem is that small startups can't keep paying me for whatever I do as they are cash strapped, and I am at the constant fear of losing my job. So, I want to add more value about operations and ideas. I want to be that guy in the startups where co-founders can get an outside honest opinion. I want to add value beyond just the work I do. I want to be the guy whom the founders can bounces ideas off. I have finished the course on "How to start a startup" then I finished Moz Academy's "1 Hour Guide to SEO". [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:54 AM PDT After 3 years of freelancing and part-time jobs , I managed to own get my start-up incubated at India's top incubation platform with just an Idea. The idea which am working on is a SASS product. Titled "Productivity suite for startups". Problem which am trying to solve is :-
Mean while am trying to learn a JavaScript framework and back-end. Before I pitched my idea to incubator , I spoke with 10+ employees, businesses and entrepreneurs to really understand the market. Constantly bootstrapped my idea and iterate and simplify my idea as much as possible. Am not sure I am in the right path , so far the journey is been great. I haven't spent a dime on anything so far. Incubation got me some free credits on server , analytics tools. Now I am spending on legal thing's like trademark and LLP registration. If u guys have any suggestions or advice pls do let me know. Thanks. . . [link] [comments]  |
| I want to learn how to program my own marketplace website. Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:32 AM PDT I am interested in building a marketplace for a very unique product. I would like to at least create a prototype of the marketplace portal before I go employing a few professionals. How can I learn how to do this? About 8 years ago I learned basic PHP, SQL and a bit of java. But most is forgotten. Any tips? [link] [comments]  |
| Reseller- & Investor-Partners want Right to source code written into contract - good idea? Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:02 AM PDT Me and my partner own a company and together with 2 other companies we want to create a product. Our company writes the software for that product. We are 3 partners in total: Partner A gives the money, Partner B does sales, Partner C (us) develop the software. Now they want to write into the contract that the source code should be open for view for all three partners. I'm not sure about this, since this makes us much easier to replace. Is this common practice? PS: My business partner said that this is common and that we are legally obliged to lay open our source code, even though we're developing a commercial product. (He often states things in a very confident way, that in the end turn out to be false.) I have never heard that one would be legally obliged to do this. Am I totally nuts / paranoid here? Thanks for your help! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 03:49 AM PDT Hello, I am a student from Azerbaijan but currently living in Italy due to my studies. And I have and idea for startup. It will be an app-based project/platform for people in Azerbaijan. I am trying to collect team, but as I am not funded right now, my team does not consist of very proffessionals. However I was able to collect them and we are going to start these days. But as an entrepreneur I do not know many things. What should I do (I mean general rules and exact steps which every entrepreneur should know), what do you suggest me as it is my first business try. Thank you all in advance [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Jul 2020 05:41 AM PDT hi, I am aman from india. I wanna join a startup to gain some knowledge and experience. I am doing BCOM and have interest in science and technology also. I don't have any experience with startups and you can say that I know nothing but few years ago me and my friends created a website (it was a tech related site like beebom, the verge) but after some time we had to shutdown the web because everybody (me and my two friends) were going to join college and universities. and now I am here doing graduation and finding start-ups to join. [link] [comments]  |
| Please who knows anyone who is successfully running a similar "media" company? Posted: 05 Jul 2020 04:17 AM PDT Hello I'm looking for details on how to allow someone else do live streams on my Facebook, Instagram, and Anchor.fm platforms - sort of like a weekly show - on a WIN-WIN basis. The basic idea is: I provide the growth strategy while the person executes the actual presenting of the show. The execution guy gets the benefits of doing what comes to him naturally, expands his personal Rolodex and gets a wider audience for his own products/services. Please who knows anyone who has done something like this before? How would you suggest I go about it? ALL recommendations are welcome. Thank you [link] [comments]  |
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