Is There a Single Variable Problem for Startups?

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In many cases, like revenue that you keep is as close as we can get to a single metric. For our product, one, we had no monetization. We probably could have figured out monetization. Two more importantly, we had horrible retention,. Like, if you came and downloaded the app 10 days later, it was basically zero. If you watched a video, the chances that you'd watch it, five more videos that week, very low. It's just like, you're just in a river of crap, and you're not enjoying your life. And so yeah, I talk about pre-product market fit as just being in the suck.

Michael Seibel is a partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the winter 2012 batch.

In this episode Michael comments on five of his essays. The essays are: Why Should I Start a Startup?, One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup, The Real Product Market Fit, Users You Don’t Want, and Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?

Michael’s on Twitter @mwseibel.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

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Topics

0:00 - Intro

0:42 - Why Should I Start a Startup?

2:00 - Three types of people: people highly motivated when working for themselves, people that could succeed starting a startup or within a big company, and people that could succeed within a big company.

6:00 - How do you decide what type of person you are?

7:30 - Identify bias in advice givers

10:30 - Peer advice becomes less valuable during college

14:40 - One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup

15:40 - People aren’t taught how to find ideas

17:20 - Find a particular problem that you’re passionate about

20:55 - Find some friends and brainstorm a solution

23:20 - Build an MVP

25:55 - Two failed orders of operations for starting a startup

29:57 - The Real Product Market Fit

30:57 - Why do many founders think they have product market fit when they don’t?

35:42 - Building a successful company is not a single variable problem

37:27 - Socialcam didn’t hit product market fit

38:37 - Justin.tv had $1M in profit before reaching product market fit

42:27 - Some companies take a long time

42:55 - Users You Don’t Want

44:25 - The spectrum of how users are using your product

45:55 - Users that take a lot of customer support time

48:50 - Don’t let the hijack users control the product roadmap

49:31 - Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money?

50:31 - A team, a product, and an office are all just a means to an end

51:31 - If you don’t really deserve money, what is an alternate path to create leverage?

53:16 - Breaking even at Justin.tv was a moment of infinite clarity

55:31 - Series A program and leverage