Roll your way to a Startup Unicorn: Lessons for Founders
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2024
- What does an obscure Japanese video game have to teach us about building a startup that takes over the world? Actually a lot. This is the story of Katamari Damacy which can teach you how to build the next billion dollar startup.
Spoiler: it's about getting customers, colleagues and capital. Rinse and repeat. All you have to do is get rolling.
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Hi, I'm Garry Tan - I'm a designer, engineer, and investor in early stage startups. Cofounder and managing partner of Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that was earliest in Coinbase and Instacart. We're a team of 8 investing partners with over $500M in assets under management and our startups have created more than $45 billion in market value in the past 8 years. We focus on pre-product-market-fit seed. Selected for Forbes Midas List Top 100 Best Global Venture Capitalists for 2019 and 2020. 🚀
Previously a partner at Y Combinator. Invested in and directly worked with over 700 companies in 5 years from the earliest possible stage, often just an idea.
Before that, I cofounded Posterous and helped build it to a world-class website used by millions. (Acquired by Twitter) I also cofounded the engineering team for Palantir Technology's quant finance analysis platform, and designed the current Palantir logo and wordmark.
I love building things.
Love the metaphor to this game. Genius.
Thanks Rob! Thanks again for VidIQ too!
"All you have to do is get the ball rolling"... Awesome advice Garry!
Thanks Justice!
Man all I do in my spare time is binge watch your videos. Most concepts in this one are particularly unintuitive. Thanks for sharing this one!
Thanks for watching! Hope it is helpful.
This is amazing... I am living this right now, and I truly believe in all of these principles while also pitching them to everyone on my team. I concocted this mindset through starting/attempting to start several businesses, but it is incredibly refreshing to hear this coming from someone who has traveled the distance. Thank you.
But how did you get your initial team? That's where I am stuck at.
Thanks Garry, you are the star in the new world game (startup's)... we learn a lot from you ... took your advise... and its working..start small and build up.Thanks for all the advices and sharing with us all the knowledge... i always say smart people learn from their mistakes and from other's one as well.
I only wished to have someone like with our new startup.. but start small and build up is the key too when there is no other way ...you have to make your own path. 👍
Great job Garry 💞💞💞
Glad to help
@@GarryTan ♥️
That connection to compounding through this game is amazing and I love it. Cheers for these valuable nuggets of wisdom!
I love this video!
I personally never played the game but always wanted to try. I think the way you tied the two together was spot on.
My favorite part was when you suggest we look at your schedule and categorize our activity into one of the 3 buckets. I definitely saw that I was spending all my time in 1 category(customers). This video has a ton of value! Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Really incredible advice. I always love coming to your channel, I never leave empty handed.
Thank you Gary, super helpful content. One day I’m going to look back at this video having founded a start up 🤞🏻🙏🏻☀️
I said the joke right before the punchline @ about 4 minutes. Great editing. Great channel man.
Love your simple framework.
I'd love to see a video about solo founders.
I've never been able to do it, so I'm not sure if I'm the right person to do a video about that! But maybe I can find an interviewee who can talk about it.
@@GarryTan I second @Sherad Louis-Charles suggestion. Right off the bat it would seem as though you should then focus on customer and capital and not the coworkers (since you're solo), but it's probably more nuanced.
@@GarryTan Great alternative!
@@mislavjuric9775 capital is hard to get as a solo founder...you gotta focus on customers, revenue and growth
The biggest "hack" or advice I could give on being a solo founder is to really, REALLY care about solving a problem. Kind of crap advice though: find a way to care more, but if you really do, it seems to stoke the fire that sustains such a prolonged effort.
Successful solo founders are like "a force of nature" - this is from an admissions manager at YC. That's a good way to look at it too, I think. But caring about the problem is, I believe, what powers the storm.
Love the framework. Love the analogy. Motivating. Pushes me to think instantly. Thanks!
02:22 ~ Love this Garry, just put it up on my Kanban board to do daily.
Thanks for sharing Gary! It revitalized myself as a founder. Sometimes I catch myself feeling stagnate not knowing what project I should be working on but I loved the question you asked - "ask yourself, for every hour you spend is it in the search for customers, colleagues or capital". We are just waiting for the tipping point for the snowball effect to kick in!
Yes, and the snowball effect doesn't happen on its own, you've got to push!
@@GarryTan It's the work done behind the scenes that no one sees that creates a successful company!
Best startup video ever!
That was entertaining and educative, thanks for the amazing content Garry!
Thank you!
Brilliant & inspiring ! Thank you!
Hello Mr Garry, you are a real inspiration.... Could it be that I am on my way to making something worthy of taking a look at somday?.. maybe I am not wasting my time after all.... Cheers as you keep up the good work.
Get the ball rolling! 😀 will do 🤩
Woha! I've always thought about this metaphor but with the Agar.io game. Small balls move pretty fast, but they got easily eaten (changing the business model is easy in the start-up environment, etc). Bigger balls easily eat small balls, but moving around is hard, changing direction is complex (think about Apple trying to sell cars, instead of phones and computers)... And sure, you get big bit by bit...
May God BLESS YOU more than your dreams for this episode.
Nice! Get focused and niche. If you control your niche it makes it so much easier to grow. Don't try to be all things to all people. I'm finding the same thing is true about TH-cam, and other channels. Narrow to start is often better.
Very true!
Love your content, as always!
Glad you enjoy it!
I need to find this outro song...
Great lesson by the way.
I don't comment every time but I enjoy every single one of your videos
Thank you so much for watching!
Your videos are always great!
I appreciate that!
Love it!
Garry I love your channel! Cheers from a fellow bay area youtuber 🙌🏼 I found you through your product market fit video and was impressed by your production quality! Do you have any advice for someone trying to find product market fit as a youtuber / digital course creator? Keep up the great work!!
Collaborate with people who have the audience you want. Start small and work your way up.
Garry Tan thanks man! :) My question was actually more along the lines of: Do you have advice/frameworks for how to find content market fit? And how might it be different than finding product market fit?
That was great, thanks! I have a question though, when you have a big vision (like probably most startups do), how do you define where to start your snowball?
Find a problem you know and care a lot about, or a customer you know and care a lot about.
@@GarryTan thanks!
Start small end up big⚡🧠
Great video GT!
Glad you enjoyed it
Can’t wait
Thanks Ken!
Top tier metaphor
Very clutch metaphor
Glad you think so!
Hey Garry. I am having trouble getting the initial team because I can not pay them. What do you recommend?
Great content presented simply! I have some humble feedback on the video. The music was fun but the vocals distracted from your voice at times, specifically around 2:40. Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks Supreet!
awesome video keep up the amazing work
Thanks Weston!
Such an awesome analogy in so many ways - fantastic content! But I have to admit... I didn’t get the “rhymes with tragic beep”. What is it?
Haha Magic Leap 😂
Garry Tan HOLY COW!!! I have no idea if after 10 years they are on to something, but I’m certain they have mastered fundraising...
I missed the reference "rhymes with tragic beep," in reference to a company who raised too much capital and it can't stick to anything. Can anyone help me out? 3:34
Magic Leap
How to get seed funding for a startup based in a developing country? Do silicon valley investors invest in startups that are not based in silicon valley?
and lastly How to get their attention?
if you answer thanks for your valuable time...
if not thanks for your excellent content.
There are developing world VCs who are ideal. There are a lot of specific things about your country and market that SV investors will not understand.
@@GarryTan Thanks a lot for your valuable time.
if you can answer, At which point in time non-silicon valley startups should think about moving into silicon valley? like is there a certain amount of capital we need? or something else?
What's the song at the end?
I think it's from the soundtrack of the game
Nice video
Thanks for watching!
This was very inspiring! #BigThingsStartSmall
Thank you Chris!
Will neurotech and brain-computer interfaces be the next big thing in Silicon Valley like AI has been in your opinion? There's been more hype around neurotech companies lately I feel, but I'm just trying to get a scope for if it's a trend or something that will have a long-lasting impact.
I think it is inevitable just expensive and few people have the relevant experience to work on it.
“Rhymes with tragic beep” 😂 I got it
didn't get that, what is it?
@@abhishek1846 Magic Leap
Great analogy! Even a 5 year old can understand :)
Thank you!
We're rolling...
That's what it's all about!
Loved it! Thank you
Glad you enjoyed it!
This game is like osmos.
Oh yes, it's just like that!
what rhymes with tragic beep i'm new here.
First 350.
Too many cooks spoil the soup