Is Your Product Tennex Better Than the Competition?

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If paid acquisition is the only way that you are able to grow your company, then i moing to discount that channel of growth greatly. And my favorite companies, the ones that become really great are the ones that can grow by word of mouth. A blue apron is a realy god example of this. Almost all their acquisitions en paid. Then once they ate through that, there's almost nowhere else for them tho sort of go You want to find acquisition paths that cost no money. For me, success will be determined by how well you can tell the story and work through a sales process.

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

First, a lecture from Kevin Hale. Kevin is a YC partner and a cofounder of Wufoo. His lecture is about How to Evaluate Startup Ideas.

Then, a lecture from Eric Migicovsky. Eric is a YC partner and the founder of Pebble. His lecture is about How to Talk to Users.

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

00:43 - Kevin Hale on How to Evaluate Startup Ideas

2:04 - How can I predict if an investor will like my idea?

2:50 - A startup idea is a hypothesis

5:44 - Problem

6:59 - Solution

8:16 - Insight

8:57 - Unfair advantages

13:45 - Two beliefs about startups

15:19 - Eric Migicovsky on How to Talk to Users

17:36 - Three common errors people make when talking to users

20:20 - Five questions to ask in a user interview

20:28 - What's the hardest part about doing the thing you're trying to solve?

21:02 - Tell me about the last time that you encountered this problem

21:22 - Why was this hard?

23:08 - What, if anything, have you done to try to solve this problem?

24:10 - What don't you love about the solutions you've already tried?

25:21 - Three stages in which talking to users is extremely beneficial

26:07 - Idea stage

30:40 - Prototype stage

33:41 - Iterating towards product market fit