Building a Coherent Culture

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If you're not proud of what you're doing, it's really hard to maintain the level of energy and enthusiasm you need to sustain the company. Building a company's heart is a long process, and there will be some really difficult times. If you make mistakes, if you get the wrong types of people inside of the company early on, they're going to be involved in hiring and training. So that's why it's important to be thinking about now.

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

First a lecture from Tim Brady. Tim’s a partner at YC. His lecture covers the importance of building a good culture early and shares six things that you can do now to help create a solid foundation for your startup.

Then a lecture from Dalton Caldwell. Dalton is a partner at YC and he’s also the head of admissions. His lecture covers pivoting and his advice on how founders should think about it.

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 - Tim Brady on Building Culture

1:13 - Culture is behavior and the right behaviors support a good business

4:38 - Six things new startups can do now

5:00 - 1. Be proud of the problem you are solving

7:31 - 2. Create a long term vision that others will follow

9:36 - 3. List your values then model the behavior

12:34 - 4. Align your culture with your customer

14:49 - 5. Discuss the importance of diversity to your company

16:43 - 6. Put a hiring process into practice. Plan to evolve it.

18:24 - Dalton Caldwell on Pivoting

18:53 - The term "pivot"

20:20 - Why pivot?

21:33 - Good reasons to pivot

22:35 - Good reasons not to pivot

23:13 - Why people take too long to pivot

26:01 - Anecdotes

27:22 - Product market fit

28:34 - How to find a better idea

30:40 - It's ok to not work on an idea that requires venture capital

31:34 - Venture vs. non-venture scale ideas

32:52 - When is the best time to pivot

33:48 - More pivoting thoughts

35:07 - Idea quality scores

37:11 - Brex

39:51 - Retool

41:37 - Magic

43:22 - Segment

45:16 - Dalton's summary