It looked like a ledger, but fell into the trap of the trusting wrong people who didnt have the same passion... Thank you, for inspiring me to start again.
Great talk! Loved the last bit of advice: "You choose every day you decide not to launch. You choose every day you decide to go 10 miles per hour vs. 100 miles per hour. Maybe today you should choose differently."
We did a "pre-launch" with people we were already in contact with, and now are working on different "launches" (some social media, some cold outreach, we even made a free online course to get in touch with people). You need to launch today, something, because nobody is gonna care at first, it's a humbling experience.
The one that plagued us the most was thinking the competition will find out our weakness and execute our solution better... Thank God we learnt our lesson and moved fast on what really matters which was getting ourself out there.
What you guys are talking about is so valuable. Especially right now as I am feeling/experiencing 95% of things that you mention. Tomorrow I'm going to 'launch' my product that is still a working progress but its main functionality works. Time to see if people will want it
What I found is if you feel a pressure to make your launch perfect, then you are really procrastinating and not getting your product/service to market.
This advice worked with my first startup, but with my third startup, I went viral on launch day and now I am scrambling to make the website more scaleable
Love these videos. One weird side effect of the good though about launching early I have run into is where folks want to "launch" products early and it ends up displacing doing effective early user discovery/collaboration during product development. Especially seen it happens when folks have some existing product in market and start to think, or accidently falling into, ideating stuff more in internal isolation. And in cases where they could easily reach current users of other of their products or just reach them directly in enough volume to get useful rapid feedback. And instead of focusing on users and fast iteration the focus becomes doing launches, websites, launch press releases etc. and then when the engagement is not impressive, the tendency is to blame the go to market, not the product core value prop or implementation.
Would love to hear more about the different speeds founders move at and how they can move faster. Maybe also define faster (Number of iterations, sales, testing?)
I launced one of my companies on the 3rd day after idea came to our mind with my cofounder. We did a telegram bot with a basic functionaility and it proved useful to the users. Nowadays I'm looking for the same timeline when thinking about new product. It also makes it so much easier to try the industry in that way. It's surprising actually how much you can do with current tech solutions, the speed to MVP is so much faster than what it was even 3 years ago.
I have been caught up in this mental nightmare for over a year. After watching this, I just downscaled the app in my head SIGNIFICANTLY and will ensure it is live before Saturday morning, which is about 24 hours from now. Let me try the Build Fast and Break Things style
Great content! You don't have to wait for your idea to be perfect before you launch....talking about fears of how people will feel about it?..you can launch and launch till they get your idea.
I get the whole launch fast to learn, but I'm confused as to the difference between launching an experiment e.g. Instacart landing page and Wizard of Oz beer delivery to then building and launching a basic functioning product. In many cases you can't just build product on the tools you used in the experiments (e.g. Instacart needed an app)... so you then get to writing your first line of code... then eventually launching the actual product... which takes much longer than 2 weeks right?
Look at the biggest risks your idea faces, and run experiments to validate each one. Instacart can use a crappy landing page to validate (de-risk) the hypothesis that fast/easy online ordering is something people want. Once they validate that, then they work on the ops side (next biggest risk) to help fulfill orders. Once those two are validated, they may work on restaurant variety to increase demand, then driver incentives to speed up deliveries, and so on. Then, once they’ve validated all that, they can move to a mobile app after enough users have either requested it or because they have the other pieces in place. Similarly, Uber used SMS and employees with a spreadsheet calling black cars in the early days.
Many of the YC tips are very much geared towards SaaS products. If you're launching hardware that cost users more than USD1K, if your early customers do not like your product, and then what? Hardware startups can't simply update their products and push it to the existing customers 2 weeks later, based on the feedback.
Suppose you are one developer working out of your house developing something like Docker before Docker was a thing. You have an existing network of software engineers, but they are mostly just ordinary engineers inside ordinary companies like HP. You call them up and you start talking to them about Linux namespaces, containers, etc., etc. They have absolutely no clue what you are talking about and don't care. You get depressed and stop working on it. The problem here is that a tool like Docker (or some other examples - IntelliJ, git, VS Code, etc.) is just not gonna get adopted on a one-off fashion by trying to sell the concept door-to-door in your personal network of typical non-visionary people. Building and marketing software development tools is just not like other startup ideas. You have to build something and then broadcast it out to a large enough audience that's going to build into some kind of echo chamber. People starting hearing about this thing more and more, and eventually some of them decide to check it out. I suppose somewhere out there is a "Patient Zero" but you have no idea who that person is until years later and have no way to reach them directly at the beginning.
Curious how this might be applied towards various motion picture or game-based entertainment studios - where visuals and experiences are often the deciding factor for customers. Minecraft is probably a really good example of a game studio that moved fast. Mojang launched Minecraft in its early alpha stage for only about $10. Very basic gameplay and minimal features. Then it went to beta, and finally 1.0. Over a decade later, new features and improvements continue to be added. Mojang exited in a sale to Microsoft.
Is not about some funders that are moving faster than others, mostly is the nature of the market and the type of product that make the interactions faster than others. When you build software, validations, and reiterations with the products are much faster than when you build hardware or when you work in sectors like medical, or sector highly regulated. Is not a nice practice to compare funders without taking into consideration what they are working on.
I want to build this drug to cure cancer and stuff, but my co-founder kept arguing about things like it's hard, safety, clinical trials and stuff. I should show him this video 🐶
You have a great idea, and even though you’re an expert in the domain, you run it past other experts, get encouraged, and your family company decides to build it. Your family puts in all their savings ($156,000). Your friends and extended family purchase stock at what’s either a deep discount (for a company that becomes a success), or is throwing away money (if it’s a failure), this is an additional $195,000. You drop everything else and your whole family works their butts off for 3 years building these hardware prototypes (in our case, they’re boats), just paying themselves enough to cover the bills, food, and gas for the car. The prototypes are a roaring success by all metrics, but they’re not complete; they need a bit of robotics and programming work to make them into an MVP. Being a spreadsheet aficionado and experienced in doing bid-based construction work for the last 40 years, you put all the cost items and time estimates in excruciating detail into a spreadsheet. At last you have a number! Finding yourself short of the measly $450,000 you need for final development and going to manufacturing, you apply to YC and the National Science Foundation Small Business Research Grant opportunity, cross your fingers, hope you wrote killer applications and they like you. But you won’t get an answer from one of them for 2 months, and the other for 6 months. So you poot along with the $2,000 to $3,000/month surplus cash flow that comes from your other family company, and keep working on your prototypes, making very slow incremental progress on your vision. You talk robot boats at the breakfast table, with your wife, your 21-year-old, you 20-year-old, and your 17-year-old; they are all founders too, having given a huge chunk of their last 3 years building and testing these boats for no paycheck. The family goes sailing in the prototypes on the weekend, to help keep the vision alive. You don’t get discouraged, you don’t give up. You listen to all the YC videos one more time, to see if you can turn up any nuances or details you missed before. Any hardware startups out there reading this: did I miss anything? Any wisdom you can help us out with? We’re all ears. With Warm Aloha, Tim
Hi I have applied for YC late application. My App is in playstore. It is standing like a rocket on the launch pad. All it needs investment to grow as a billion dollar company. Im 46 year old and i am worried that do you consider aspirants of my age. But one good thing in my life to justify that i am single and never married. I am a muslim. Do you fund on muslim founders too. I am waiting eagerly to listen the Good news. Thank you
If you have insight into a domain but aren't your user, you can literally build nothing and go to market. Your launch can be going to market, saying "market, what do you need?" and then talking to people until you find an idea that brings enough value to enough people that it's worth making. If the idea is something people really need, they'll be willing to sign a piece of paper that says "X company will pay (founders company) Y dollars a month for service Z" before service Z even exists. Then its only a matter of building the thing to claim the revenue. Once you've got that piece of paper, motivation really kicks in to launch quickly to start getting paid! If you only ever build things you can get people agree to pay a price that makes sense for you to build, life becomes much easier. its not about working 80 hours a week when the competition is working 60. its about finding the people you can bring the most value; those are the people who will be most willing to pay a fair price for what you're offering.
There’s a gross condescension to describing founders’ disagreements to your advice as “throwing it in your face” that I find indicates a culture of conformity that I don’t quite like.
Hello, I am the CEO of Elexion, an information brokerage platform. We are engaging with people in Silicon Valley to learn about emerging issues in communicating this information to Latin American entrepreneurs! If you are a citizen We would like to know the problems that are occurring. Write us....
@@TJMcCarty I hear u loud and clear. Just that I plan on getting paid from day one. It's hardware+software. Hardware is off the shelf, the software has to work with it. Users in my market are not so understanding when you've taken their money. And I want to avoid refunds
@@stinger4712 I recommend to abstract the hardware through generic interfaces and then use test-driven-development on your business logic. This should help keep most bugs at bay. Then as T.J. stated, any remaining (likely trivial) bugs can be weeded out with the help of your users. In the book, “The Clean Coder, ” Robert Martin reflects on how TDD and clean code impacted his startup ventures.
What did your company look like when it first launched?
Facecook posts through different groups.
What does a Hard Tech Launch look like?
It looked like a ledger, but fell into the trap of the trusting wrong people who didnt have the same passion...
Thank you, for inspiring me to start again.
It was basically a google page, with a contact phone number.
Please do a post on “going 100 miles an hour” and “startup fast vs company fast”!
this is my "what I watch while I'm eating food" type of content
Same !! Such motivating advice
Literally was just doing this lol.
You'd love /r/MealtimeWatch
I’m eating too lol
@@maneeshapte6883 ojhh
Great talk! Loved the last bit of advice: "You choose every day you decide not to launch. You choose every day you decide to go 10 miles per hour vs. 100 miles per hour. Maybe today you should choose differently."
We did a "pre-launch" with people we were already in contact with, and now are working on different "launches" (some social media, some cold outreach, we even made a free online course to get in touch with people). You need to launch today, something, because nobody is gonna care at first, it's a humbling experience.
The one that plagued us the most was thinking the competition will find out our weakness and execute our solution better...
Thank God we learnt our lesson and moved fast on what really matters which was getting ourself out there.
We may have some thoughts on this topic next week :)
These general startup shorts are waaaay more valuable than how to get into YC shorts.
Not everyone is working on a YC type idea.
What you guys are talking about is so valuable. Especially right now as I am feeling/experiencing 95% of things that you mention. Tomorrow I'm going to 'launch' my product that is still a working progress but its main functionality works. Time to see if people will want it
Have you launched?
What I found is if you feel a pressure to make your launch perfect, then you are really procrastinating and not getting your product/service to market.
Love these short, informal conversations. Super insightful and useful!
Get Harj on more! Great to have a UK perspective
expect to launch & show your products numerous times before the public gets it. doing so enables you & your product to grow and improve.
This advice worked with my first startup, but with my third startup, I went viral on launch day and now I am scrambling to make the website more scaleable
what's your website?
Applying for Y combinator tomorrow, been pumping the videos - thank you so much, all of you :) great content (inc. Justin’s youtube lol)
Love these videos. One weird side effect of the good though about launching early I have run into is where folks want to "launch" products early and it ends up displacing doing effective early user discovery/collaboration during product development. Especially seen it happens when folks have some existing product in market and start to think, or accidently falling into, ideating stuff more in internal isolation. And in cases where they could easily reach current users of other of their products or just reach them directly in enough volume to get useful rapid feedback. And instead of focusing on users and fast iteration the focus becomes doing launches, websites, launch press releases etc. and then when the engagement is not impressive, the tendency is to blame the go to market, not the product core value prop or implementation.
Would love to hear more about the different speeds founders move at and how they can move faster. Maybe also define faster (Number of iterations, sales, testing?)
I launced one of my companies on the 3rd day after idea came to our mind with my cofounder. We did a telegram bot with a basic functionaility and it proved useful to the users. Nowadays I'm looking for the same timeline when thinking about new product. It also makes it so much easier to try the industry in that way. It's surprising actually how much you can do with current tech solutions, the speed to MVP is so much faster than what it was even 3 years ago.
This is the best video I've watched in a while.
This is an amazing conversation, and so needed to hear. Love the vibe too
love the camaraderie
I have been caught up in this mental nightmare for over a year. After watching this, I just downscaled the app in my head SIGNIFICANTLY and will ensure it is live before Saturday morning, which is about 24 hours from now. Let me try the Build Fast and Break Things style
Is it live? :-)
@@may4081 Yup, took way longer than I assumed though 😅. Still committing on the live build but this video helped me downsize a tremendous amount
Rooting for you. I hope to launch in one week
@@makingJesusproud Definitely will. Thank you so much!
I'm about to launch, and this is exactly what happened to me 😂
Greetings to all speakers
Love these talks and this new format! Keep them coming
I like that, you have to know what fast is, I have no idea what fast is. Maybe cause I am over thinking it.
This conversation hurts me in so many ways!
Great episode. Maybe today I will do launch
Great content!
You don't have to wait for your idea to be perfect before you launch....talking about fears of how people will feel about it?..you can launch and launch till they get your idea.
MY LAUNCH IS COMING. Y COMBINATOR IS GONNA KNOW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!
😆
I needed to hear this today
Insightful as always
Love you guys! ♥️
What a brilliant video!
Commentting at 49 comment, Thanks for this reminder.
Great advise. Just launched Utopiops yesterday thanks to many things learned from YC without being part of it.
Again, great talk.
Great discussion
I get the whole launch fast to learn, but I'm confused as to the difference between launching an experiment e.g. Instacart landing page and Wizard of Oz beer delivery to then building and launching a basic functioning product. In many cases you can't just build product on the tools you used in the experiments (e.g. Instacart needed an app)... so you then get to writing your first line of code... then eventually launching the actual product... which takes much longer than 2 weeks right?
@@davidw8668 this
Look at the biggest risks your idea faces, and run experiments to validate each one. Instacart can use a crappy landing page to validate (de-risk) the hypothesis that fast/easy online ordering is something people want. Once they validate that, then they work on the ops side (next biggest risk) to help fulfill orders. Once those two are validated, they may work on restaurant variety to increase demand, then driver incentives to speed up deliveries, and so on. Then, once they’ve validated all that, they can move to a mobile app after enough users have either requested it or because they have the other pieces in place.
Similarly, Uber used SMS and employees with a spreadsheet calling black cars in the early days.
@@lastemperor12 this is so helpful. Thanks, David. It sounds like Wizard of Oz'ing every component as best you can before building is the lesson here.
Many of the YC tips are very much geared towards SaaS products. If you're launching hardware that cost users more than USD1K, if your early customers do not like your product, and then what? Hardware startups can't simply update their products and push it to the existing customers 2 weeks later, based on the feedback.
I wish it was so simple in the healthcare industry
last few comments about going 10mph vs 100mph have been echoing in my head
Yes
Thanks for saying this!!😂😂
Just rephrase Launch with Start Serving.
Just like serving (food) to 1 or more people. Afterwards readjust content as per people taste...
I like the analogy! Takes some pressure of you.
I have launched but I have 0 traction.
"You launch over and over again and over again and it's not a precious thing." The truth hurts
🎬Great Information Guys thank you....💼
I Am The Exception
Suppose you are one developer working out of your house developing something like Docker before Docker was a thing. You have an existing network of software engineers, but they are mostly just ordinary engineers inside ordinary companies like HP. You call them up and you start talking to them about Linux namespaces, containers, etc., etc. They have absolutely no clue what you are talking about and don't care. You get depressed and stop working on it. The problem here is that a tool like Docker (or some other examples - IntelliJ, git, VS Code, etc.) is just not gonna get adopted on a one-off fashion by trying to sell the concept door-to-door in your personal network of typical non-visionary people. Building and marketing software development tools is just not like other startup ideas. You have to build something and then broadcast it out to a large enough audience that's going to build into some kind of echo chamber. People starting hearing about this thing more and more, and eventually some of them decide to check it out. I suppose somewhere out there is a "Patient Zero" but you have no idea who that person is until years later and have no way to reach them directly at the beginning.
Curious how this might be applied towards various motion picture or game-based entertainment studios - where visuals and experiences are often the deciding factor for customers.
Minecraft is probably a really good example of a game studio that moved fast. Mojang launched Minecraft in its early alpha stage for only about $10. Very basic gameplay and minimal features. Then it went to beta, and finally 1.0. Over a decade later, new features and improvements continue to be added. Mojang exited in a sale to Microsoft.
Is not about some funders that are moving faster than others, mostly is the nature of the market and the type of product that make the interactions faster than others. When you build software, validations, and reiterations with the products are much faster than when you build hardware or when you work in sectors like medical, or sector highly regulated.
Is not a nice practice to compare funders without taking into consideration what they are working on.
I want to build this drug to cure cancer and stuff, but my co-founder kept arguing about things like it's hard, safety, clinical trials and stuff. I should show him this video
🐶
8:57 *benefits
#startup great discussion
Get product feedback from mvp let user use it
Founder speaking: What does a Hard Tech company Launch look like?
This would be great to hear!
You have a great idea, and even though you’re an expert in the domain, you run it past other experts, get encouraged, and your family company decides to build it.
Your family puts in all their savings ($156,000). Your friends and extended family purchase stock at what’s either a deep discount (for a company that becomes a success), or is throwing away money (if it’s a failure), this is an additional $195,000.
You drop everything else and your whole family works their butts off for 3 years building these hardware prototypes (in our case, they’re boats), just paying themselves enough to cover the bills, food, and gas for the car. The prototypes are a roaring success by all metrics, but they’re not complete; they need a bit of robotics and programming work to make them into an MVP.
Being a spreadsheet aficionado and experienced in doing bid-based construction work for the last 40 years, you put all the cost items and time estimates in excruciating detail into a spreadsheet. At last you have a number!
Finding yourself short of the measly $450,000 you need for final development and going to manufacturing, you apply to YC and the National Science Foundation Small Business Research Grant opportunity, cross your fingers, hope you wrote killer applications and they like you. But you won’t get an answer from one of them for 2 months, and the other for 6 months.
So you poot along with the $2,000 to $3,000/month surplus cash flow that comes from your other family company, and keep working on your prototypes, making very slow incremental progress on your vision.
You talk robot boats at the breakfast table, with your wife, your 21-year-old, you 20-year-old, and your 17-year-old; they are all founders too, having given a huge chunk of their last 3 years building and testing these boats for no paycheck. The family goes sailing in the prototypes on the weekend, to help keep the vision alive.
You don’t get discouraged, you don’t give up. You listen to all the YC videos one more time, to see if you can turn up any nuances or details you missed before.
Any hardware startups out there reading this: did I miss anything?
Any wisdom you can help us out with? We’re all ears.
With Warm Aloha, Tim
Today, I’ll choose differently.
Is it ok to translate your video audio (dubbing) ? I want to give it for free ?
Its not the launvh but launch over n over agaim umtil tehy get it
Yeah don't attach any feelings to launch, its just a day to start finding out your first bugs. No one might even sign up.
No compley algirthm in instacart ealry launcj
Hi
I have applied for YC late application. My App is in playstore. It is standing like a rocket on the launch pad.
All it needs investment to grow as a billion dollar company.
Im 46 year old and i am worried that do you consider aspirants of my age. But one good thing in my life to justify that i am single and never married.
I am a muslim. Do you fund on muslim founders too.
I am waiting eagerly to listen the Good news. Thank you
How do you launch without an MVP..
I had some laughs watching this vid...Great content
❤️
“You launch over, over and over again…” - don’t be fooled by ‘The launch’…
And learningblive
did he just call the company brexit? haha
If you have insight into a domain but aren't your user, you can literally build nothing and go to market.
Your launch can be going to market, saying "market, what do you need?" and then talking to people until you find an idea that brings enough value to enough people that it's worth making.
If the idea is something people really need, they'll be willing to sign a piece of paper that says "X company will pay (founders company) Y dollars a month for service Z" before service Z even exists. Then its only a matter of building the thing to claim the revenue.
Once you've got that piece of paper, motivation really kicks in to launch quickly to start getting paid!
If you only ever build things you can get people agree to pay a price that makes sense for you to build, life becomes much easier. its not about working 80 hours a week when the competition is working 60. its about finding the people you can bring the most value; those are the people who will be most willing to pay a fair price for what you're offering.
ANY INVESTOR HERE?
#startup
FOF(R) > FOMO
There’s a gross condescension to describing founders’ disagreements to your advice as “throwing it in your face” that I find indicates a culture of conformity that I don’t quite like.
Lqunch earky move 1uickly
Hello, I am the CEO of Elexion, an information brokerage platform. We are engaging with people in Silicon Valley to learn about emerging issues in communicating this information to Latin American entrepreneurs!
If you are a citizen We would like to know the problems that are occurring.
Write us....
Ui is good ij eaely instacart but still ugly
These clowns are talking about you need to LOOK GOOD before starting a business, and none of them even look good. Fail
:)
I don't want to launch collecting people's money and then there are issues with the software
@@TJMcCarty I hear u loud and clear. Just that I plan on getting paid from day one. It's hardware+software. Hardware is off the shelf, the software has to work with it. Users in my market are not so understanding when you've taken their money. And I want to avoid refunds
@@stinger4712 I recommend to abstract the hardware through generic interfaces and then use test-driven-development on your business logic. This should help keep most bugs at bay. Then as T.J. stated, any remaining (likely trivial) bugs can be weeded out with the help of your users.
In the book, “The Clean Coder, ” Robert Martin reflects on how TDD and clean code impacted his startup ventures.
@@sonictailsandsally I'll let y'all know how it goes
It's true. Users will find insane ways to crash software. It NEVER ends. Never.
*I WON’T ASK FOR FUNDS” Corpseman 💀🌳 | OFP | NEAR Protocol | RVCJ
Laumch fqs ,move fast just do it learn fast