The Pocket Guide of Essential YC Advice

YC (Y Combinator) is one of the most well-known startup accelerators in the world. It was founded in 2005, and has since funded 5,000+ startups (such as e.g. Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Reddit, Doordash, Instacart, and OpenAI), with a combined valuation of $600B. Not bad.

YC has put together a list of what they consider to be the most important, transformative, and fundamental advice for startups. Any founder will benefit from knowing these.

The YC Pocket Guide

• Launch now

• Build something people want

• Do things that don't scale

• Find the 90 / 10 solution

• Find 10-100 customers who love your product

• All startups are badly broken at some point

• Write code - talk to users

• "It’s not your money"

• Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor

• Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want

• Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success

• Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can

• Avoid big company corporate development queries - they will only waste time

• Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers

• Pre-product market fit - do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble

• Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time

• Founder relationships matter more than you think

• Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you)

• Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder

• Most companies don't die because they run out of money

• Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk

• Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself

For a more detailed explanation of each point, see the full YC article here.

While all are important, here’s a few of my favorites:

Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want
Too often, founders raise money and start spending it immediately — on flashy offices or pilot facilities, on expensive hires, on unnecessary product iterations. They scale it before they nail it. The founders believe these ‘investments’ will lead customers to eventually starting to buy the product/service, but that’s often not the case.

Launch something, speak to potential customers/users to see if they like what you’ve got to offer, and then use that feedback to iterate (quickly) until you get product/market fit.

Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success
This is hopefully fairly self-explanatory.

Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers
Many founders love being on stage, or in an exhibition booth, and talking about their product/service. They’re passionate about what they do. Problem is, there’s an opportunity cost. Every day the founder is at the conference (or traveling to/from it) is a day the founder could’ve been out actually selling the product/service.

Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder
There will always be competition. Don’t get too stressed out. Focus on building the best product/solution, and you’ll win customers.

Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself
Building a company can be incredibly taxing on your physical and mental health. Work can be hard and the hours long. But inbetween those intense sprints, make sure you get enough sleep, eat as healthy as you can, exercise, and meditate/reflect. If you burn out, the company will fail.