I met and talked with one of the founders of AirBnB in the Bay Area at a tech hire gathering in 2007 or 2008 when they had just got started. Since I had a side hobby owning and operating rental properties for a few years, when he explained the idea to me, I thought "he's going to give complete strangers access to people's residences without the normal credit check, eviction check, criminal background check - no tenant screening - my god they're going to die a painful death and get sued by all their users" It's like the cab drivers around the country - "Uber and Lyft will fail miserably, because it's illegal to operate a taxi service without a taxi medallion" Rules mean nothing, often enough. .
Around 24:56 ... How sales should feel if your startup is working on the right problem+solution "If you're trying to find someone to convince that they have the problem, then you are doing it wrong." "If you find yourself doing something that feels like traditional selling, you are doing it wrong." Of course there are other things like unit economics & business model that would matter but the above statements are a brilliant simplification of how you can identify whether you are working on something that will reach product-market fit or not.
It's hard (at first) to understand why, as you stated around time 21:35 in the video, "we analyzed YC-funded companies that had raised $5 million to $10 million dollars, and then failed" Here's my thinking on why people throw money at a startup with no PMF (product-market fit): - "Looks like they're onto something - it's too early to expect they would have achieved PMF by now- they don't have PMF yet, but let's invest early then ride the hockey stick growth" ? - "We have LPs who expect us to invest their money. This startup looks better than the last 100 that made presentations to us. They don't have PMF but hey they look better than the last 100 startups we looked at, and we have investors expecting us to put their money to work in startups" ? Excuse the conservative approach, but just as a startup founder should not spend much time on any one idea as they iterate on several ideas until they find PMF - it's questionable why angels and VCs would throw money at a startup before signs of solid PMF. . .
I met and talked with one of the founders of AirBnB in the Bay Area at a tech hire gathering in 2007 or 2008 when they had just got started. Since I had a side hobby owning and operating rental properties for a few years, when he explained the idea to me, I thought "he's going to give complete strangers access to people's residences without the normal credit check, eviction check, criminal background check - no tenant screening - my god they're going to die a painful death and get sued by all their users"
It's like the cab drivers around the country - "Uber and Lyft will fail miserably, because it's illegal to operate a taxi service without a taxi medallion"
Rules mean nothing, often enough.
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Thank you Michael 🙏
Hi michael thank you for a excellent leaning experience
Around 24:56 ...
How sales should feel if your startup is working on the right problem+solution
"If you're trying to find someone to convince that they have the problem, then you are doing it wrong."
"If you find yourself doing something that feels like traditional selling, you are doing it wrong."
Of course there are other things like unit economics & business model that would matter but the above statements are a brilliant simplification of how you can identify whether you are working on something that will reach product-market fit or not.
😊😊 1:07:14 1:07:16 1:07:17 1:07:17
It's hard (at first) to understand why, as you stated around time 21:35 in the video, "we analyzed YC-funded companies that had raised $5 million to $10 million dollars, and then failed"
Here's my thinking on why people throw money at a startup with no PMF (product-market fit):
- "Looks like they're onto something - it's too early to expect they would have achieved PMF by now- they don't have PMF yet, but let's invest early then ride the hockey stick growth" ?
- "We have LPs who expect us to invest their money. This startup looks better than the last 100 that made presentations to us. They don't have PMF but hey they look better than the last 100 startups we looked at, and we have investors expecting us to put their money to work in startups" ?
Excuse the conservative approach, but just as a startup founder should not spend much time on any one idea as they iterate on several ideas until they find PMF - it's questionable why angels and VCs would throw money at a startup before signs of solid PMF.
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What's a LP?
😃