One of the questions I get often during the batch at YC is
what separates out a top 10% founder versus
everyone else. When I started at YC, I didn't really have
enough context to know as a founder of my own company.
Of course I had my own friends, but that was a relatively small sample size.
Over the last 13 batches, I've gotten to interact with about
over 2500 founders, and so I've been
able to get slightly stronger opinion about what
makes great founders stand out. The first
thing that I'll say is great founders execute.
And I'll be really specific about what that means.
When I do office hours with a great founder and they say
they're going to do something, two weeks later they've done it
and they've learned something,
and they do that consistently.
They have the consistent ability to say what they want to do,
do it, and then learn from that. That doesn't mean that what they want
it to do is correct, it doesn't mean they want to continue down that direction.
But they never get stuck in the execution step.
They never say, oh, I want to do this, and then come back two weeks
later and say, oh, we couldn't do it. They always figure
out a way to get some version of it done and then learn from it.
The second thing, and really derives from the first,
is formidability. They're formidable.
One of the things that happens when somebody says they're going to do something
and then does it over and over and over again, is that you
learn that that person gets shit done.
And it's pretty intimidating to work with someone who's
constantly getting things done. Not intimidating in a bad way, but intimidating in
a way where I they demand respect because
they get shit done. And so when you talk to them,
you treat them with more respect. You treat their goals with more respect
because you think they're more likely to accomplish them. And you treat their tasks
with more respect because you know they're going to do them. So the ability
to execute creates formidability. Formidability is extremely
important. The last one, and one that I didn't understand until doing
many, many YC interviews is communication. I used to
think that you could just execute well and not have to be able to communicate.
But the problem is that startups really require
good communication. Communication with your users,
communication with potential investors, with your co founders,
with potential employees. In effect, a founder always has to
be talking about their business and getting people excited about it. The number
one mistake I see founders making is they can't actually explain what their
business does the best founders can, in one
or two sentences, explain exactly what their business does.
And they can explain it to a customer, they can explain it to an investor,
they can explain it to their mother, they could explain it to anyone of
any level of knowledge about their industry, and they can do
it without stumbling. And I think that's ridiculously
important, because in order for you to get advice,
investment, to convince someone to join your company, they first have to understand
what you do. You would be surprised how many founders can't
clearly explain what they do well enough so that they can start selling you
on how you can help them or join them. So once again,
the three most important things I see that separate
out top 10% founders from everyone else is, first, ability to
execute. Second, their resulting formidability,
you kind of respect them more, and third, their ability to clearly
communicate what they're working on. Now, if I were to add
a fourth bonus one,
it would be, and this is
a little bit strange, but internal motivation,
another way of saying it is that they don't get too
discouraged when things go wrong. They stay motivated.
Startup is a game where you're going to fail all the time, you're going to
make bad decisions all the time, you're gonna have strong
hypothesis that turns out to be wrong. And there's a type
of person who doesn't get discouraged. Even if they make
the wrong move five times or five times in a row,
they stay passionate about the problem, they stay passionate about trying to find a
solution, and they keep on executing and moving forward.
Being motivated in the
face of defeat or failure is
an extremely important thing for a startup founder to be
able to do. So I said three, but I cheated. It's for
execution, formidability, communication, and motivation.
Those are the things that look. That make top 10% startups,
startup founders stand out. One thing I didn't
say was idea. It is usually
very hard to tell whether at
a very early stage company has a good idea.
It's very hard. And so I never use idea
to separate out great founders from anyone else because
I'm not the arbiter of what a good idea is, and I don't have perfect
experience in every problem. So whenever I kind of
overthink, oh, is this a good idea or not, I can
get stuck in my own head, and I can also pretend that I know
more than I do. So try not to focus on idea.
Cheers.