We at Mashauri greatly admire Y Combinator (the San Francisco based accelerator - and in fact the first ever accelerator). They began a Startup School a few years ago and I would like to share this video from Sam recorded in 2017 where he talks about how you can succeed as a startup. We are adding it in here for our Ashoka students - but is valuable for anyone in this field be it entrepreneur or educator.
The lessons in summary:
- A product so good people tell friends
- Easy to understand
- Exponential growth of the underlying market
- Evangelical founder
- Ambitious vision
- The harder the better
- Confident and definite view of the future
- Huge if it works
- Team
- Optimists
- Idea generators
- We'll figure it out
- I've got it
- Action bias
- The blessing of inexperience
- Momentum
- Competitive advantage
- Sensible business model
- Distribution strategy
- Frugality, focus, obsession and love
- Why startups win
- One no versus one yes
- Fast changing market
- Platform shifts