Hearted Youtube comments on Y Combinator (@ycombinator) channel.

  1. This lecture was like a crux of years of hard work. Incredible!
    808
  2. That idea of not quickly upgrading your life is super powerful.
    788
  3. This is the discussion that all first time founders need to hear
    510
  4. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Introduction 00:11 - A product so good people tell friends 00:53 - Easy to understand 01:13 - Exponential growth in market 02:00 - Real trends vs Fake trends 03:30 - Evangelical founder 04:04 - Ambitious vision 04:22 - Hard startup vs Easy Startup 05:34 - Confident and definite view of future (but flexible!) 06:10 - Huge if it works 06:30 - Team (non-obvious insights) 07:20 - - Optimists! 07:47 - - Idea generators 08:16 - - ‘We’ll figure it out’ 08:50 - - ‘I’ve got it’ 09:08 - - Action bias 09:34 - - The blessing or inexperience 10:16 - Momentum 11:04 - Competitive advantage 11:46 - Sensible business model 12:04 - Distribution strategy 12:20 - Traits of best founders - Frugality, focus, obsession, love 12:46 - Why startups win 13:13 - - One no vs One yes 14:06 - - Fast-changing markets 14:43 - - Platform shifts 15:46 - End
    432
  5. This has got to be the most worthy 30 minutes spent on the internet. Thanks Sam and amazing flow Craig.
    379
  6. experience doesn't matter, the rate of learning matters.
    367
  7. This is so comforting. When I was working for a big Tech company, I used to live frustrated and always enjoyed more my side projects, even if my revenue on this side projects was a quarter of my salary. I always thought something was wrong with me. When I decided to quit my job ($105 hourly salary) to start a start up, even with a wife and a toddler, my worst case scenario was to find another job after burning all my savings 😅. Luckily enough, After 18 months we finally got into break even and now I’m having my first salary 🎉.
    363
  8. I feel like these videos are the first time for me that the Y Combinator YouTube channel has found product market fit. Nice job! Keep it rolling!
    299
  9. I'm critical about almost everyone. But sam altman is one of the few you just listen and learn. Sam is impressive. Such good knowledge comes from him.
    288
  10. Love YC , especially putting these materials online which may help tons of entrepreneurs who may not have the opportunities to be in the YC program.
    276
  11. What impresses me the most is your ability to break down complex knowledge and experience, into such simple explanations. Thank you, I didn't know about vesting and cliff.
    265
  12. I'm a simple man, I see Marques I click.
    232
  13. These videos have saved me years and so much money/potential regrets - I would have fallen for so many of these traps, and I can see how much closer I am to my goals, and it's helped me make so much more money, for free! Thank you guys for putting this material out there. Thank you Michael!
    218
  14. Looks like YC invested in their video production 😂
    217
  15. This guy is a great interviewer. He asks little but what we want to know and he lets her talk. Very quick mind.
    216
  16. I loved the point by Jared about 3 major types of internet companies: 1. products/services that people obviously need: mail, search, maps, messengers, ... - dominated by the largest corps 2. not obvious consumer products - AirBnb, Doordash, Uber, Instacart, ... - born from startups that were more agile and creative 3. B2B SaaS - multiple verticals, not dominated by large corps it kinda creates a picture for me
    211
  17. This is one of the best things I've ever seen on YouTube. So glad to see Professor Susskind in a so good shape.
    211
  18. Topics 00:00 – What does Marques attribute his channel’s success to? 2:15 – The early days 4:45 – How does he go about evaluating a product? 7:05 – Features that Marques thought were great that didn’t catch on 8:15 – Peak smartphone? 10:05 – Folding phones and new trends 11:00 – Tesla and the EV market 15:20 – Getting older and staying relevant 16:40 – New kinds of videos and podcasting 22:00 – Does Marques feel limited by gear? 25:45 – Storytelling techniques 27:50 – Tech vs Marques as the star of the show 29:30 – Marco Castro asks – What advice do you have for new creators on YouTube? 30:30 – When did Marques find his voice as a creator? 33:30 – Overcoming perfectionism 34:30 – Gut instinct vs data 37:00 – YouTube comments 39:05 – Austin Ryder asks – In the early years of his channel, Marques took a several month hiatus from YouTube, but then came back with a new video format and seemingly renewed drive. What happened during those months off that led to the channel becoming what it is today? 40:15 – Winston asks – What’s your daily schedule? 42:40 – Ultimate frisbee injuries 43:00 – Amad Khan asks – Are there any problems that you see or face that you really wish engineers/developers would solve? 44:25 – Christian Giordano asks – Any tips on how to engage/work with influencers when you are a very early stage startup with little or no money? 46:15 – The future of creators supporting themselves financially 49:05 – His biggest challenge as a creator 50:05 – Long-term goals
    207
  19. My most favorite part of mid-week is looking forward to these. I literally block 30 minutes on my calendar to listen to them and take notes. Thanks for being so consistent with these Michael and Dalton.
    205
  20. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming Up 00:15 - Intro: How to spend your 20s 00:34 - Hedonic Treadmill 02:48 - Don't Speed Run 03:41 - Go Hardcore Early 05:44 - Seek Risks 08:23 - Parents 09:43 - Peers 12:31 - Relationships 14:16 - Commonality 15:32 - Limitations 16:53 - Good Schools 18:46 - Get In The Game 20:38 - TL;DR 21:07 - Outro
    202
  21. I appreciate this breakdown from Paul Rudd's more technical brother.
    195
  22. 18:18 “surrounding yourself with people that will make you more ambitious”
    178
  23. As a founder working on an LLM SaaS right now, this video just answered soo many questions.
    175
  24. For a customer, the product is the product. For an investor, the company is the product.
    171
  25. whoever the interviewer is, you're doing a great job keep it up
    158
  26. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Intro 00:32 - Childhood 01:25 - Dropping out of PhD program 01:54 - Business school 02:16 - Genisis of Bump 02:51 - Bump: Word of mouth 04:44 - Turning Bump into a verb 05:43 - Demo day 06:06 - Problem with Bump 07:35 - Talking to users 08:26 - Building Flock 10:21 - Building Photoroll and selling to Google 13:45 - Google Photos launched in 2015 14:30 - Google Photos Growth 15:04 - Fighting cancer 18:42 - Joining YC
    157
  27. Very informative, could you please do a video on startups that failed and why they failed.
    154
  28. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming up: Startup misconceptions 00:21 - Intro 01:08 - Solugen's humble beginnings 02:54 - What convinced you? Doer mentality 04:13 - CaptivateIQ's early days 06:03 - Don't be afraid to pivot 06:26 - Traits of successful founders 08:08 - Amplitude's journey from voice-to-text to analytics 09:55 - Segment's pivot from education to developer tools 11:29 - Jeeves: Clear and concise pitching 14:21 - Everything is in your control 14:55 - PG essay: How to convince investors 15:57 - Misconceptions about startup trajectories 17:21 - Nourish's multiple pivots before success 18:21 - Outro
    150
  29. I've met Micheal during the Startup School Beijing in May 2018. I was impressed by his modesty and humanity. Thanks to his tips, I'm finally managing to achieve product-market fit!
    150
  30. I doubt there is another video on YouTube that is so actionable and helpful for startups in 2018. Thank you!
    146
  31. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming up 00:43 - Intro: Is this the best time to start a tech company? 06:27 - How Sam got into YC 10:53 - The early days of YC Research 12:49 - Getting the first OpenAI team together 17:13 - Why scaling was considered heretical 21:42 - Conviction can be powerful 26:15 - Commercializing GPT-4 28:53 - What drew Sam to create Loopt 30:24 - Learning from platform shifts 33:15 - Tech incumbents are unaware of what is happening with AI 34:08 - Sam's recommended startup path 36:56 - Reflecting on the OpenAI drama 39:58 - What startups are building with current models 44:16 - Advice for early founders + final thoughts 46:12 - What's to come in 2025? 46:41 - Outro
    144
  32. Great haircut! Thanks for the video. Found a few gems from it. Some notes from the video: 1. Take time to reflect on your purpose, life and what you are really accomplishing. Ask yourself if you are doing something important or something that matters. It's easy to get caught up in things e.g. office politics, status or power games that don't matter. 2. Take time and explore different things. Learn about different areas. Meet, help and learn from people who are working on different things. Understand that most things won’t work out. 3. On what to work on: Figuring out what’s working and not after exploring different things. This involves following your intuition, brutal honesty, and focusing on the project that's really working for a sufficient amount of time. Young founders make the mistake of bouncing from projects to projects without giving a project enough time for it to have measurable results. Knowing what to focus on and when to give up are especially hard things to do. 4. (Not for everyone) Angel investing and poker are great ways to learn about business, psychology and life in general. 5. Sleep, exercise and nutrition are important for physical productivity. Find out what are your most productive hours of the day and focus on your work don't let others interrupt you during these hours. 6. Shift your perspectives. Look into things from different angles. Surround yourself with people who make you more ambitious. 7. Read biographies of people who did amazing things like the Apollo program to motivate yourself and provide you with new perspectives on purpose and risks. 8. An interesting way to increase your productivity is to have a group of friends who are founders who check in on each other frequently. 9. Doing anything worthwhile takes a long time and emotional trauma (getting rejected over and over again) and if you aren’t willing to do that you probably won’t succeed. Some notes on the deferred life plan: 10. One of the problems with the deferred life plan is that these people are usually not that committed to the plan in the first place. E.g. if you want to go build a rocket, just go build a rocket. You can’t say you are going to do something like ‘I am going to build a $100 million crypto fund before I start my rocket company.’ Usually, this person doesn’t build either of these ventures. 11. Another problem with the deferred life plan is that people like investors and employees can sense that you aren’t authentic or committed to the vision of the company, so you probably won’t win their support.
    141
  33. Just when you think this series cant get better it does! Great episode.
    140
  34. So love Michael's simple, clear and yet the MOST important points EVERYTIME! 🙌🙏
    140
  35. Wow. This one video is better than 50 books. (And a lot easier to digest.)
    134
  36. One of the best videos so far...very informative. Educational videos about "Sales at startups" are under-represented out there. Thanks, YC
    133
  37. You guys are great together. You’re like a tech comedy duo. It’s like you’re having too much fun while dropping some real jewels of wisdom. Thanks so much for these—it’s a weekly highlight
    132
  38. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming up 00:47 - Intro 01:15 - Making an app with Replit 06:19 - Feel the AGI, personal software era 08:07 - Having AI code the way humans do 09:51 - You should still learn to code! 11:42 - The underlying tech 17:19 - The path to AGI 19:41 - What users made with Replit 25:56 - Challenges in resetting the org 33:29 - Future plans 36:12 - Outro
    131
  39. I’m so happy that science and deep thinking is becoming a popular “thing”.
    127
  40. I'm a simple guy. I see Dalton and Michael in the same thumbnail, I click.
    118
  41. Real nice of you guys to make all these talks available. They are clear and focused. Much appreciated!
    118
  42. solo founders approve this message :)
    108
  43. Great interview. Susskind always makes me feel smarter for having listened to him. A rare quality these days.
    103
  44. This seemed like one of the most useful videos in the series. Katie gave a lot of good general feedback. I could do more to map out my user journey.
    99
  45. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Introduction 00:22 - If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would think about working on? 💡 01:01 - - AI 🤖 01:50 - - Genetics 🧬 02:16 - - High bandwidth interface to the brain 🧠 02:55 - Common questions - I want to be the next Elon Musk, how do I do that? 03:08 - What did you do when you were younger that set you up to have a big impact? 05:00 - Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs? 🎓 05:10 - How should someone figure out how they can be most useful? 05:49 - SpaceX decision 🚀 - Estimating the probability of success of this very crazy idea at the time 08:16 - Making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea? Where do you get the internal strength? 💪 08:57 - - Just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway 09:43 - What are the odds of the Mars colony are at this point? When can we go to Mars? ♂⚓ 11:13 - What does the positive future for AI looks like and how can we get there? 🤖🔮 13:23 - - Humans are so slow 😂 15:02 - How do you think OpenAI is going as a six-month-old company? ⚛ 16:03 - How do you spend your days now? What do you allocate most of your time to? 🕒 16:30 - What do you do when you are at SpaceX or Tesla? 🤔 16:56 - Elon spends most of his time with engineering team 😲 18:18 - About Tesla Gigafactory and speed of the production line 🏭
    95
  46. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Introduction 00:50 - Outline 00:57 - Capturing value 01:57 - Big piece of a small pie 03:37 - Perfect competition 04:31 - Monopoly 05:33 - Lies people tell 05:36 - Differences underestimated 06:59 - Narratives 07:54 - British food in Palo Alto 08:40 - Do the intersections make money? 08:45 - Blockbuster movie 09:29 - Is the intersection valuable? 09:35 - Startup version 10:11 - The search market 11:00 - The advertising market 11:29 - The technology market 12:36 - Evidence of narrow markets 13:28 - How to build a monopoly 13:39 - The right size 14:36 - Start small and expand 17:05 - Start big and shrink 18:40 - Last mover advantage 18:45 - Characteristics of monopoly 27:10 - Value of the future 27:55 - History of innovation 28:28 - Technological innovation 30:16 - Capturing value 31:59 - Success cases 37:03 - Psychology of competition 38:14 - Mimetic preferences 38:33 - Competition as validation 42:22 - Q&A 42:26 - Q1 43:01 - Q2 43:38 - Q3 44:34 - Q4 46:40 - Q5 47:55 - Q6
    95
  47. I'd love to hear more about the lesser known successes and some more recent ones too.
    91
  48. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Introduction and Katie's role at Stripe 00:06 - Coming Up 01:50 - The importance of design in company success 02:18 - Design boosts confidence in new products. 03:55 - The role of trust in design for tech companies 05:21 - Founder involvement in design culture 07:00 - Balancing quality with shipping early 08:54 - Focus on solving user problems, not speed. 10:24 - Checklist for product quality 12:34 - Developing design skills as a founder 14:50 - Apply technical problem-solving to design flaws. 15:37 - Constant user feedback is key. 18:39 - Design process and organization at Stripe 21:15 - Stripe reviews user journeys regularly. 24:30 - Stripe scores and tracks user experiences. 25:03 - Examples of design improvements at Stripe 26:26 - Small details improve user experience. 27:51 - Better emails increased conversions by 20%. 27:59 - Demonstration of Stripe's Workbench tool 31:30 - The importance of user feedback and community 32:06 - Takeaways 33:25 - Outro
    90
  49. Insightful, exciting, focused, fun and inspiring. PG is just great.
    89
  50. Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming Up 01:01 - Jared is fired up about vertical AI agents 07:25 - The parallels between early SaaS and LLM’s 09:09 - Why didn’t the big companies go into B2B SaaS? 12:25 - How employee counts might change 16:25 - The argument for more vertical AI unicorns 21:31 - Current examples of companies/uses 35:22 - AI voice calling companies 40:04 - What is the right vertical for you as a founder? 41:36 - Outro
    88