How to Build a Product That Will Make People Want to Buy It

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Astranus is a wis company that builds tele communication satellites and launches them into space. The cheapest, tallo communication satellite that is useful costs like at least ten million dollars to build and launch. astronus hack was to start with a test satellite. They built it in less than three months during lyce, and for less than 50 thousand dollars. So basically, they sold it before they made it. And this is a very generalizable technique that a lot of harte companies use in one form or another.

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

First, a lecture from Carolynn Levy. Carolynn is a partner at YC. Her lecture covers modern startup financing.

Then a lecture from Jared Friedman. Jared is also a partner at YC. His lecture focuses on advice for hard-tech and biotech founders.

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Topics

00:00 - Intro

00:33 - Carolynn Levy - Modern Startup Financing

1:33 - The basics: form a corporation, need money to grow?, sell a part of the company

2:58 - Fundraising terms

3:58 - What has changed: structure, access, focus

5:10 - What hasn't changed: preferred stock financing, valuation and dilution, communication

6:42 - Old way of raising early money: Series A preferred stock financing

8:33 - What was broken?

9:33 - The transition: bridge loan financings

10:46 - Realization: convertible promissory notes are a better way to fund early stage startups

12:01 - Modernization of the convertible - SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity)

14:03 - When do priced rounds happen?

15:12 - Is modern early stage financing perfected?

18:01 - Takeaways

19:30 - Jared Friedman - Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders

20:25 - What is a hard-tech company?

21:35 - Why start a hard-tech company?

25:06 - YC is the largest bio and hard-tech seed investor in the world

25:49 - How much of YC's advice applies to hard-tech founders?

26:33 - How do you make progress when you have a "heavy MVP"?

31:49 - How do you prove people will want your product, if you haven't built it yet?

32:57 - Letter of Intent

34:10 - Fundraising for hard-tech and biotech companies

36:15 - Final thought