This is a collection of videos. Most are not by Sam Altman. He just gathered them together.
I will probably watch the Adora Cheung video later today. I think that's one I haven't seen and I've really liked everything I've seen by her so far.
YC also has a free library of stuff. You don't need to be in Startup School to start accessing their educational things.
So if you want to learn and don't yet feel ready to commit to starting a business, you can start learning on your terms, at your pace.
Don't discount the value of that for laying the groundwork for a future business. If you can only give it an hour or two a week now, do what you can now. It adds up over time.
Just to add to this comment. If users can't watch/read, you can listen to podcasts while you run or drive a car, it can help you to understand how people try to build a business. There was a podcast (How to Start a Startup | Podcast on Spotify)
. On that note, I enjoyed also listening to those who are building projects, and share their journeys e.g. Nathan's interviews with SaaS founders (https://nathanlatka.com/podcast-thetop/) and The Startup podcast(https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup)
1. People think the point of education is credentials and free online courses don't typically come with credentials.
2. People routinely use price as a proxy for value. This makes it hard to feel confident that a free course is actually worthwhile.
The nice thing about YC's free education is that neither of these applies.
If you want to start a business, you mostly don't need credentials. (There are exceptions.) You mostly just need to know how to make it happen.
They have a really good reputation. They know what they are talking about.
Bonus points: They do this stuff for free because HN and Startup School are both part of their funnel. If you actually do start a business and hope to grow it big, they would like a piece of the action.
So you know they are giving you good information because they want you to succeed so they can get a cut of some of the businesses that succeed that started out just consuming their free stuff. That's exactly how they make their money and there is a lot of money at stake, so it's worth it to them to give some stuff away for free.
I personally like Keith Rabois' and Ben Horowitz' material, in the list provided here. Those two individuals have built stuff, have suffered through painful moments in their entrepreneurial life, and have helped several startups do the same (with money and advice).
I am less of a fan of the rest of the material, but that might be just my preference.
I keep seeing lots of "bashing" when Sam Altman writes or says anything, and I'm not sure why. Agreed that he has his own way of interacting with the world, which sometimes suggests (at least to me) that he's living in a very thick bubble, and/or that he's not really able to be empathic with "normal" people. But besides that, I think he's a decent human being and his intentions are good, which in my book is more than enough to cut some slack and appreciate what he can offer.
I am also sometimes a critic of YC's material and "cool aid" approach, but again, I just try to take what works for me and simply ignore the rest. YC has the great merit of having democratized part of the process.
I think that right now founders have usually a decent deal; VCs are the top of the food chain; and early employees, and then mid-stage employees, got the shorter stick. But it's overall much better than it was twenty years ago. Again, IMHO.
On "how to start a startup", it's almost the year 2021, and I think that while some principles apply, we might need new ones; and that large corporations are making it harder for startups to succeed. E.g. try to build and "enterprise IT" startup, and you'll quickly see some sort of competition from AWS, Azure and GCP (in descending order), way earlier that what it would have been 10 years ago.
Or try to build b2c stuff, and wait for the big guys to show up at your door with a competing product or service very quickly.
I still admire the ones that start a startup these days. There's a huge difference of "opportunity cost" between white guys with a Stanford/MIT/etc background and a wealthy family behind them, versus a "normal" set of founders from a non-US background and very little money as a backup plan. I root for the latter, perhaps unfairly. I want to see more "rags to riches" stories, I want to hope that inequality and unfairness are going down in the world.
And finally, I also hope that instead of simply building "something that people want" (YC's motto), we see more and more people building something that is good for the world.
Sam‘s articles are great！I have translated 《Startup Playbook》 into Chinese【1】，now I’m running a startup and I find that every sentence in that book is useful，even in China.
There’s a striking aspect of this talk, near the end: it explains why you don’t need to start a startup to have a big impact on the world. Google Maps and the Facebook Like button were two examples.
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I will probably watch the Adora Cheung video later today. I think that's one I haven't seen and I've really liked everything I've seen by her so far.
YC also has a free library of stuff. You don't need to be in Startup School to start accessing their educational things.
So if you want to learn and don't yet feel ready to commit to starting a business, you can start learning on your terms, at your pace.
Don't discount the value of that for laying the groundwork for a future business. If you can only give it an hour or two a week now, do what you can now. It adds up over time.
1. People think the point of education is credentials and free online courses don't typically come with credentials.
2. People routinely use price as a proxy for value. This makes it hard to feel confident that a free course is actually worthwhile.
The nice thing about YC's free education is that neither of these applies.
If you want to start a business, you mostly don't need credentials. (There are exceptions.) You mostly just need to know how to make it happen.
They have a really good reputation. They know what they are talking about.
Bonus points: They do this stuff for free because HN and Startup School are both part of their funnel. If you actually do start a business and hope to grow it big, they would like a piece of the action.
So you know they are giving you good information because they want you to succeed so they can get a cut of some of the businesses that succeed that started out just consuming their free stuff. That's exactly how they make their money and there is a lot of money at stake, so it's worth it to them to give some stuff away for free.
I am less of a fan of the rest of the material, but that might be just my preference.
I keep seeing lots of "bashing" when Sam Altman writes or says anything, and I'm not sure why. Agreed that he has his own way of interacting with the world, which sometimes suggests (at least to me) that he's living in a very thick bubble, and/or that he's not really able to be empathic with "normal" people. But besides that, I think he's a decent human being and his intentions are good, which in my book is more than enough to cut some slack and appreciate what he can offer.
I am also sometimes a critic of YC's material and "cool aid" approach, but again, I just try to take what works for me and simply ignore the rest. YC has the great merit of having democratized part of the process.
I think that right now founders have usually a decent deal; VCs are the top of the food chain; and early employees, and then mid-stage employees, got the shorter stick. But it's overall much better than it was twenty years ago. Again, IMHO.
On "how to start a startup", it's almost the year 2021, and I think that while some principles apply, we might need new ones; and that large corporations are making it harder for startups to succeed. E.g. try to build and "enterprise IT" startup, and you'll quickly see some sort of competition from AWS, Azure and GCP (in descending order), way earlier that what it would have been 10 years ago.
Or try to build b2c stuff, and wait for the big guys to show up at your door with a competing product or service very quickly.
I still admire the ones that start a startup these days. There's a huge difference of "opportunity cost" between white guys with a Stanford/MIT/etc background and a wealthy family behind them, versus a "normal" set of founders from a non-US background and very little money as a backup plan. I root for the latter, perhaps unfairly. I want to see more "rags to riches" stories, I want to hope that inequality and unfairness are going down in the world.
And finally, I also hope that instead of simply building "something that people want" (YC's motto), we see more and more people building something that is good for the world.
- https://www.ycombinator.com/library
- https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/
- http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/
- https://www.kalzumeus.com/
- https://pmarchive.com/
Dead Comment
【1】https://playbook-cn.github.io
There’s a striking aspect of this talk, near the end: it explains why you don’t need to start a startup to have a big impact on the world. Google Maps and the Facebook Like button were two examples.
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