Lecture 13: How to Be a Great Founder

I've left out a lot of the X or Y slideware related aspirational statements he made. I think his comments on being a contrarian these days and the need for an investment thesis was interesting.

From the comments, it looks like a lot of people are struggling with this one because Reid Hoffman was (absolutely) lacking in specific, concrete advice.

I think it's missing Reid's point -- everyone here is either (well, likely) thinking about founding something, or well on their way.

When he poses his questions, I think that he's trying to help us reflect on where we are, and how we can tackle the hazy questions (flexible v. persistent, short term v. long term, etc.) that will drive our decisions. This midway course lecture isn't about giving lessons -- it's about helping us to reflect.

"Product distribution is more important than what the product is."

It's not enough to be contrarian. You should also be right.

"It's useful to be able to recognize whether you are on track or not. To have both that belief, but also paranoia, about am I tracking over my investment thesis."

You need to be able to articulate the vision well.

One of the founders needs to be able to build networks of people.

What is my distribution edge? What is the hack that I know that other people don't know?

Just as you spend 20+ hours with a possible CEO, go in depth in conversations with a potential co-founder to identify all the parameters and set expectations. Go over the parameters that might lead to a divorce.

I imagine the rise of this sort of mimicry leads investors who previously would consider investing in an idea and seemingly great founders to more strongly favor traction. I wonder if the YC partners keep track of the change in the percentage of startups accepted with an idea alone or complete a prototype just before an interview.

I'm also curious about the percentage of successful (or surviving) YC startups that were accepted with no traction versus those accepted with a product that had a quickly growing number of users. This value may be misleading, though, because the sample size isn't enormous, and there are so many other variables that affect the survival of a startup.

All I hear is a series of "X or Y?" slides, which sort of imply there's a decisive answer on the way, but when you peer through the verbiage it ends up being some form of "Do both!"

I know I'm in the belly of the beast here but you all need to hear it.