Zen of Y Combinator
This is an unofficial list of repeated sayings I have found in my studying of startups. This comes from reading, listening, watching, and working in a YC company.
- Make something people want. [1, 2, 3]
- Talk to users. [4, 5]
- Do things that don’t scale. [6, 7]
- A small number of users that love your product is better than a lot of people that like your product. [4, 8, 9]
- Be careful with cofounders. [17, 18, 19, 20]
- Growth solves all problems. [4, 10]
- Solve your own problems. [2, 11]
- Release early and iterate. [8, 14, 15]
- You make what you measure. [8, 15]
- Be relentlessly resourceful. [13, 16]
References
- Be Good by Paul Graham
- Jessica Livingston’s Pretty Complete List on How Not To Fail by Jessica Livingston
- Y-Combinator Motto
- Playbook by Sam Altman
- How To Start a Startup — Lecture 4: Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing by Adora Cheung
- Do Things that Don’t Scale by Paul Graham
- How To Start a Startup — Lecture 8: Do Things That Don’t Scale by Walker Williams, Justin Kan and Stanley Tang
- Startups in 13 sentences by Paul Graham
- Five Founders by Paul Graham
- Startup = Growth by Paul Graham
- Startup Ideas by Paul Graham
- Relentlessly resourceful by Paul Graham
- Startup Lessons by Paul Graham
- “ If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman
- Value is created by doing by Sam Altman
- How To Start a Startup — Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II by Sam Altman
- What Startups Are Really Like by Paul Graham
- The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups by Paul Graham
- Early Stage Startups: The Biggest Killers by Jessica Livingston
- What We Look For In Founders by Paul Graham
Other Resources