Paying Down Emotional Debt - How to Have Hard Conversations

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In a start up, there's a lot of things that's going to matter to all the people working on the company. You'd be surprised at how often people are not on the same page about this. Are we using the right metrics? We've got lectures on those. Is our work load distributed in an optimal manner to day? Have we carved out time for paying down emotional debt? Do we feel like we can have these level three conversations at any time? And then what mectems are in place for providing feedback to one another?

We've cut down the fifth week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.

First a lecture from Kirsty Nathoo. Kirsty is a partner and CFO of YC. Her lecture focuses on the most common mistakes startups make with their finances and how they can avoid making them.

Then a lecture from Kevin Hale. Kevin is also a partner at YC and he’ll talk about the importance of building a successful working relationship with your cofounders and processes you can use to do so.

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

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Topics

00:00 - Intro

00:38 - Kirsty Nathoo - Startup Finance Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

2:08 - #1 - Not knowing what to look at: bank balance, money coming in, and money going out

2:56 - Burn

3:41 - Runway

4:59 - Growth rate

5:48 - Default alive - http://growth.tlb.org and http://paulgraham.com/aord.html

8:09 - #2 - Not looking often enough: every week

9:04 - #3 - Under-Representing Expenses

12:27 - #4 - Out-sourcing responsibility

15:11 - #5 - Scaling too quickly

20:08 - #6 - Letting runway get too low before fundraising - https://blog.ycombinator.com/advice-startups-running-out-of-money/

23:21 - Kevin Hale - How to Work Together

24:49 - Everyone fights

25:43 - Four things to avoid: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling

27:40 - Make a plan before you fight: divide and conquer

31:11 - Know thyself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s9ACDMcpjA

34:12 - Document a process

36:20 - Use nonviolent communication

37:19 - Observation vs evaluation

39:16 - Emotions vs thoughts - https://www.slideshare.net/nonviolent/evaluative-words-list-nonviolent-communication

41:50 - Universal needs

43:38 - Requests vs demands

45:46 - How to Deliver Constructive Feedback in Difficult Situations - https://medium.com/s/please-advise/the-essential-guide-to-difficult-conversations-41f736e63ccf

46:01 - Pay down your emotional debt

47:18 - Practice having level 3 conversations