Like, long introductions are no good.

Sam knows.

Alright, ready, everybody?

I'm not gonna ask if the mic is working like in

every talk so far.

I'll just assume it's working.

>> No!

>> No, fuck!

>> All right, well make it work somebody.

>> It works, it works

>> All right, this is like some kinda class tradition.

All right, all right.

I wrote out my talk and

afterwards in a couple days I will like turn it

from a talk into an essay and put it online.

So, you don't have to take notes, just, just listen.

All right.

So, one of the advantages of having kids is

that when you have to give advice to people,

you can ask yourself, what would I tell my own kids?

And actually, you find this really focuses you.

So, even though my kids are little.

My two year old today,

when I asked what he was gonna be after two?

He said a bat.

The correct answer was three.

But a bat is so much more interesting.

So even though my kids are little,

I already know what I would tell them about startups if

they were in college.

And so that is what I am gonna tell you.

So, you're literally getting what I

would give my own kids,

since most of you are young enough to be my own kids.

All right. So,

startups are very counterintuitive.

And I'm not sure exactly why,

it could be simply because knowledge about them has not

permeated our culture yet.

But, whatever the reason, this is an area where you

cannot trust you're intuitions all the time.

It's like skiing in that way.

Any of you guys learn to ski as adults?

You know, when you're skiing,

when you first try skiing and you want to slow down,

your first impulse is to lean back,

just like in everything else,

but lean back on skis and

you fly down the hill out of control, so, as I learned.

So, part of learning to ski is learning to

suppress that impulse.

Eventually, you get new habits.

But in the beginning there's this list of things you're

trying to remember as you start down the hill.

You know, like alternate feet, make s-turns,

do not drag the inside foot, all this stuff.

Well, startups are as unnatural as

skiing and there is a similar list of stuff you

have to remember for startups.

And what I’m gonna give you today is the beginning of

the list.

The list of the counterintuitive stuff you

have to remember to like prevent your

existing instincts from leading you astray.

The first thing on it, is the fact that I just

mentioned that startups are so weird that if you

follow your instincts they will lead you astray.

If you remember nothing more than that.

When you're about to make a mistake,

you may at least pause before making it.

When I was running Y Combinator,

we used to joke that our function was to tell

founders things they would ignore.

And it's really true.

Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about

mistakes they are about to make.

And the founders ignore them.

And they come back a year later and

say, I wish we'd listened.

But, that dude is in their cap table and

there's nothing they can do.

Why do founders persistently ignore the partner's advice?

Well, that's the thing about counterintuitive ideas, they

contradict your intuitions, so they seem wrong.

So, of course you're first impulse is to ignore them.

And in fact that is not just the curse of Y Combinator,

but to some extent our You don't need people to

give you advice that doesn't surprise you, right?

If founder's existing intuitions gave them

the right answers they wouldn't need us.

That's why there are a lot of ski instructors and

not a lot of running instructors.

You don't see those two words together,

running instructor, as much as you see ski instructor.

It's because skiing is counterintuitive.

So sorta, what YC is,

is like business ski instructors, except for

going up the slopes instead of down them.

Well, ideally,

you can however trust your instincts about people.

You, your life so far hasn't been much like

starting a startup, but all the interactions you've had

with people are just like the interactions you've had

with people in the business world.

So, in fact one of

the big mistakes that founders make is to not

trust their intuitions about people enough.

They meet someone who seems impressive, but

about whom they feel some misgivings.

And then later, when things blow up,

they tell themselves, they say, you know,

I knew there was something wrong about that guy, but

I ignored it because he seemed so impressive.

And there's a specific sub-case in business,

especially if you come from an engineering background as

I believe you all do.

You think business is supposed to be

this sorta slightly distasteful thing.

And so when you meet people who seem smart, but

somehow distasteful you think well,

okay this must be normal for business.

But it's not.

Just like pick people the way you would pick people if

you were picking friends.

This is one of those rare cases where it

works to be self indulgent.

Work with people you genuinely like and respect

and that you have known long enough to be sure.

Because there's a lot of people who

are really good at seeming likeable for a while.

Just wait till your interests are opposed and

then you'll see.

All right.

The second counterintuitive point is that, and this

will, might come as a little bit of a disappointment.

But what you need to succeed in a startup is

not expertise in startups.

That makes this class different from most other

classes you take.

You take a French class at the end of it you will

learn how to speak French if you do the work.

You may not sound exactly like a French person,

but pretty close, right?

This class can teach you about startups but

that is not what you need to know.

What you need to notice exceed in a startup is not

expertise in startups,

what you need is expertise in your own users.

Mark Zuckerberg did not succeed in

Facebook because he was an expert in startups.

He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups.

I mean, Facebook was

first incorporated as a Florida LLC.

Even you guys know better than that.

He succeeded despite being a complete noob at startups

because he understood his users very well.

Most of you don't know the mechanics of

raising an Angel round.

Right, and if you feel bad about that, don't, because I

can tell you Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn't know

the mechanics of raising an Angel round either.

If he was even paying attention when Ron Conway

wrote him the big check,

he has probably forgotten about it by now.

In fact, I worry, it's not merely unnecessary for

people to learn in detail about the mechanics of

starting a startup, but possibly somewhat dangerous.

Because another of the characteristic mistakes of

young founders starting startups is to go through

the motions of starting a startup.

They come up with some plausible sounding idea.

They raise funding at a nice valuation.

They rent a nice office in Soma,

hire a bunch of their friends.

And then the next step, after rent a nice

office in Soma and hire a bunch of their friends,

is gradually realize how completely fucked they are.

Because while imitating all the outward forms of

starting a startup,

they have neglected the one thing that's actually

essential which is to make something people want.

By the way, that's the only use of that swear word

except for the initial one that was involuntary.

And I did check with Sam whether it would be okay.

He said he had done it several times.

I mean, used the word.

>> We saw this happen so often, No, I mean people

going through the motions of starting a startup.

>> That we made up a name for it.

Playing house.

Eventually, I realized why it was happening.

The reason young founders go through the motions of

starting a startup is

because that is what they have been trained to do for

their whole lives up to this point.

Think about what it takes to get into college.

Extracurricular activities, check.

Right?

Even in college classes, most of the work you do is

as artificial as running laps.

And I am not attacking the educational system for

being this way.

Inevitably, the work that you do to learn something is

gonna have some amount of fakeness to it.

And if you measure people's performance,

they will inevitably exploit the difference.

To the degree that what you're measuring is

largely an artifact of the fakeness.

And I confess that I did this myself in college.

In fact, here is a useful tip on getting good grades.

I found that in a lot of classes there might only be

20 or 30 ideas that actually,

had the right shape to make good exam questions.

And so the way I studied for exams in these classes was

not to master the material in the class.

But to try and

figure out what the exam questions would be and

work out the answers in advance.

Unlike, for me the test was not like what my

answers would be on the exam.

For me the test was.

Which of my exam questions would turn up

on the exam, right?

So I would get my grade instantly.

I would walk into the exam and

look at the questions and

see how many I got right essentially.

>> It works in a lot of classes,

especially CS classes.

I remember Automata Theory, there's only a few

things that make sense to ask about Automata Theory.

So, it's not surprising that after being effectively

trained for their whole lives to play such games,

young founders first impulse upon starting a startup is

to figure out what the tricks are.

For this new game,

what are the extracurricular activities of startups,

what are the things that I have to do.

They always wanna know since,

since apparently the measure of success for

a startup is fundraisingn another noob mistake.

They always wanna know, what are the tricks for

convincing investors.

And we have to tell them,

the best way to convince investors,

is to start a startup that's actually doing well, meaning

growing fast, and then simply tell investors so.

So then they ask, okay, what are the tricks for

growing fast?

Alright? And

this is exacerbated by the existence of this term,