[Fireside Chat] Lessons Learned from Y Combinator & 500 Startups

Title	Fireside Chat- Lessons Learned from Y Combinator & 500 Startups
Place	D Camp
Time	October 16, 2013 7PM~9PM
Speaker	Niket Desai (@niket), Josh Wilson (@makaniaki), Yaron Binur (@ybinur)
Organizer	AppCenter (http://onoffmix.com/event/19682)
Focus	What to do in startups

I.       Key Takeaway: 

1.       Move fast, stay hungry and focused

2.     Stay with customers from day zero      

II.      Lesson from Y Combinator

1.       What you’re building should be meaningful to users

2.     Your product or service needs to make users would be willing to pay for it, download it, or come back periodically

3.     Talk to your customers and speed up (bringing your prototype and getting feedback are so much faster than coding)

4.     No need to waste time and money on managerial stuff e.g. payroll, tax, etc. (use accelerator program such as Y Combinator)

5.     Know why you need an accelerator before asking one  

III.     Other lessons

1.       Get more feedbacks early

2.     Utilize usability, user testing, surveys from day zero

3.     Always sell yourself (i.e. elevator speech to other people)  

IV.    Ways to be acquired

1.       Visibility: Get yourself known (e.g. Top 50 Tech Crunch)

2.     Be focused (e.g. home related thing for Redbeacon)

3.     Make hard decision in valuing and selling your business

V.      How do you see failure?

1.       Fail fast and early and often (c.f. Paul Graham)

1)     Fail consistently every time (B/c with failure you learn something)    

VI.    Go to Silicon Valley to build or stay in Korea?

1.       go global and support multiple languages (e.g. Skype started as global service from day one)

2.       know what you’re doing (e.g. non-consumer facing products such as security, technology, infra doesn’t need to be physically in the States)

VII.   Where to locate HW and SW offices?

1.       be where your customers are

2.     learn from Waze- R&D center in Israel but operation offices in the US