Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

Go Home

.Naval on Finding Technical Co-founders Join the conversation: "It's getting harder and harder because these days those people just go and start their own company. So what do you bring to the table that a good technical co-founder would not have? That's number one. And that would either mean...

getairchat's profile picture

Airchat

28,611 subscribers

14,860 views • 2 years ago •via X (Twitter)

Science & TechnologyEducation
LIVE

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

4 Comments

Cragin Godley's profile picture
Cragin Godley2 years ago

@naval building is more brutal than selling, I’ve done both never ending on-call, security threats, 80-100hrs/wk at desk alone, constant interruptions of deep work engineers can learn sales, etc. but not the other way around so you must bring cash, network, expertise to balance this

Asadbek Noyibjonov's profile picture
Asadbek Noyibjonov1 year ago

@naval Hey Airchat team, can you help me with login issue? I sent detailed msg about issue in dm

•‿• Hantoshi's profile picture
•‿• Hantoshi1 year ago

@naval hey team🥰 i lost my access to airchat after it force me to update the app. now sms confirmation does not seem to be working. can you assistance please 🙏

Olúwátìmíléhìn's profile picture
Olúwátìmíléhìn1 year ago

@naval Can’t sign in

Related Videos

Warren Buffett's advice for young investors: (1) "You've got to understand accounting. That's got to be like a language to you. You have to know what you're reading [in financial reports]." (2) "You have to have the attitude that you're buying part of a business — and not that you're buying something that wiggles around on a chart or has resistance zones or 200-day moving averages or that you buy puts and calls on. You're buying part of a business." "The proper attitude toward investing is much more important than any technical skills."
1:26

Warren Buffett's advice for young investors: (1) "You've got to understand accounting. That's got to be like a language to you. You have to know what you're reading [in financial reports]." (2) "You have to have the attitude that you're buying part of a business — and not that you're buying something that wiggles around on a chart or has resistance zones or 200-day moving averages or that you buy puts and calls on. You're buying part of a business." "The proper attitude toward investing is much more important than any technical skills."

Kevin Carpenter

38,182 views • 8 days ago

For all founders that have been told by VCs: Your market is not big enough. You are not technical. You aren’t from Silicon Valley. You can’t have your partner as a co-founder. This is for you. The tale of the $40BN Canva with Cliff Obi 👇
1:26

For all founders that have been told by VCs: Your market is not big enough. You are not technical. You aren’t from Silicon Valley. You can’t have your partner as a co-founder. This is for you. The tale of the $40BN Canva with Cliff Obi 👇

Harry Stebbings

150,583 views • 3 years ago

Marc Andreessen explains the 3 Necessities for Start-up Success: "The general criteria for a successful high-tech startup, in my view, you see different sort of rules of thumb from different people. But the three big things you always come back to are, is there a big market? And by the way, that comes in two parts. Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and sort of displace incumbents or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big? So big market. Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that causes you to basically justify having a new company? And that's really important. And the way I always think about that is, is there a 10X change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10X faster or 10X cheaper or 10X better? And if it's not 10X, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs, we really have to ask ourselves like, is it really worth doing? Because it's really hard. I mean, it's really hard to start new companies. new companies generally shouldn't exist. Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. And so for a new company to exist, it not only has to like come in and go into business and bring a product to market, but it has to bring a product to market that's so much better than what already exists that it punches through the sort of status quo. And most customers in most markets are pretty happy buying from the current suppliers and so there has to be a real kind of edge on the thing and we look for that in either a technology change, usually a technology change or an economic change. which are often the same thing. And then the third is team. Is the team outstanding? And if you think about this as an entrepreneur, it becomes a question of the founding team. Some companies are solo founders and they can work, but generally most of us, like myself, we're human beings, we're mortal. You want to have a founding team of complementary skill sets. And so you want to have at least one super strong technologist, quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist and then it often helps to have somebody who's like a product or who's a market or sales person or has a sort of really good understanding of business on the team, certainly helps a lot. And so we sort of look at market, product, and team. And the reality is you need all three. I would say, interestingly, if you're going to compromise as an investor, if we're going to compromise on one of those, it would actually be the product. And the reason I say that is because a great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution than a poor market. Because the problem with a poor market, a small market, is even if you do a great job on the product, there just aren't that many customers. It's hard to ever get big."
2:15

Marc Andreessen explains the 3 Necessities for Start-up Success: "The general criteria for a successful high-tech startup, in my view, you see different sort of rules of thumb from different people. But the three big things you always come back to are, is there a big market? And by the way, that comes in two parts. Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and sort of displace incumbents or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big? So big market. Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that causes you to basically justify having a new company? And that's really important. And the way I always think about that is, is there a 10X change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10X faster or 10X cheaper or 10X better? And if it's not 10X, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs, we really have to ask ourselves like, is it really worth doing? Because it's really hard. I mean, it's really hard to start new companies. new companies generally shouldn't exist. Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. And so for a new company to exist, it not only has to like come in and go into business and bring a product to market, but it has to bring a product to market that's so much better than what already exists that it punches through the sort of status quo. And most customers in most markets are pretty happy buying from the current suppliers and so there has to be a real kind of edge on the thing and we look for that in either a technology change, usually a technology change or an economic change. which are often the same thing. And then the third is team. Is the team outstanding? And if you think about this as an entrepreneur, it becomes a question of the founding team. Some companies are solo founders and they can work, but generally most of us, like myself, we're human beings, we're mortal. You want to have a founding team of complementary skill sets. And so you want to have at least one super strong technologist, quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist and then it often helps to have somebody who's like a product or who's a market or sales person or has a sort of really good understanding of business on the team, certainly helps a lot. And so we sort of look at market, product, and team. And the reality is you need all three. I would say, interestingly, if you're going to compromise as an investor, if we're going to compromise on one of those, it would actually be the product. And the reason I say that is because a great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution than a poor market. Because the problem with a poor market, a small market, is even if you do a great job on the product, there just aren't that many customers. It's hard to ever get big."

Founder Mode

39,005 views • 7 months ago

Sam Altman on how to identify founders who can build $10 billion companies “It’s difficult to hear an idea at the very early stage and say: ‘Yeah, this idea has what it takes to be a $10 billion company.’ However, I think you can, with practice, identify founders that have a chance at creating one of those companies.’” The first four traits Sam looks for comes from gmail creator Paul Buchhiet: obsession, focus, frugality, and love. Next, Sam looks for intelligence: “You can give a founder an idea, but the problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week… We tried an experiment at Y Combinator where we funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but otherwise were really good, and they all failed. What we learned is that good founders have ideas all the time.” #6 is communication skills: “So much of your job as a founder is about communication—every time you hire someone, go to raise money, try to sell the product, and set a direction for the company. A huge amount of a founder’s job is being an evangelist for the company. If you don’t have strong communication skills or you don’t develop them quickly, you’re at a big disadvantage.” #7 is execution speed. How quickly can you generate a hypothesis, test it, and implement it? Sam observes that most slow-moving founders who went through Y Combinator didn’t go on to be successful: “A relentless cadence of execution is incredibly correlated with success.” #8 is the rate of improvement of the founder: “If you look at a founder who comes to meet you for a seed round and compare that founder to Brian Chesky, you will be disappointed 100% of the time. That’s the wrong comparison… You should look at the at the growth rate of the founder… Humans always underestimate exponential growth.” #9 is the right motivations: “There a lot of people who start a startup because they think it’s a way to get rich quickly, and unfortunately it’s just not. So startups have become the new default career trajectory for ambitious people… This does not work given the amount of pain you have to suffer for a startup… In our portfolio at YC, every time we thought a company was going to go really well and didn’t, the founder did not have a deep sense of mission.” Video source: Y Combinator (2018)
5:32

Sam Altman on how to identify founders who can build $10 billion companies “It’s difficult to hear an idea at the very early stage and say: ‘Yeah, this idea has what it takes to be a $10 billion company.’ However, I think you can, with practice, identify founders that have a chance at creating one of those companies.’” The first four traits Sam looks for comes from gmail creator Paul Buchhiet: obsession, focus, frugality, and love. Next, Sam looks for intelligence: “You can give a founder an idea, but the problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week… We tried an experiment at Y Combinator where we funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but otherwise were really good, and they all failed. What we learned is that good founders have ideas all the time.” #6 is communication skills: “So much of your job as a founder is about communication—every time you hire someone, go to raise money, try to sell the product, and set a direction for the company. A huge amount of a founder’s job is being an evangelist for the company. If you don’t have strong communication skills or you don’t develop them quickly, you’re at a big disadvantage.” #7 is execution speed. How quickly can you generate a hypothesis, test it, and implement it? Sam observes that most slow-moving founders who went through Y Combinator didn’t go on to be successful: “A relentless cadence of execution is incredibly correlated with success.” #8 is the rate of improvement of the founder: “If you look at a founder who comes to meet you for a seed round and compare that founder to Brian Chesky, you will be disappointed 100% of the time. That’s the wrong comparison… You should look at the at the growth rate of the founder… Humans always underestimate exponential growth.” #9 is the right motivations: “There a lot of people who start a startup because they think it’s a way to get rich quickly, and unfortunately it’s just not. So startups have become the new default career trajectory for ambitious people… This does not work given the amount of pain you have to suffer for a startup… In our portfolio at YC, every time we thought a company was going to go really well and didn’t, the founder did not have a deep sense of mission.” Video source: Y Combinator (2018)

Startup Archive

167,484 views • 11 months ago

The 9 traits Sam Altman looks for to identify founders who can build a $10 billion company “It’s difficult to hear an idea at the very early stage and say: ‘Yeah, this idea has what it takes to be a $10 billion company.’ However, I think you can, with practice, identify founders that have a chance at creating one of those companies.’” The first four traits Sam looks for comes from gmail creator Paul Buchhiet: obsession, focus, frugality, and love. Next, Sam looks for intelligence: “You can give a founder an idea, but the problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week… We tried an experiment at Y Combinator where we funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but otherwise were really good, and they all failed. What we learned is that good founders have ideas all the time.” #6 is communication skills: “So much of your job as a founder is about communication—every time you hire someone, go to raise money, try to sell the product, and set a direction for the company. A huge amount of a founder’s job is being an evangelist for the company. If you don’t have strong communication skills or you don’t develop them quickly, you’re at a big disadvantage.” #7 is execution speed. How quickly can you generate a hypothesis, test it, and implement it? Sam observes that most slow-moving founders who went through Y Combinator didn’t go on to be successful: “A relentless cadence of execution is incredibly correlated with success.” #8 is the rate of improvement of the founder: “If you look at a founder who comes to meet you for a seed round and compare that founder to Brian Chesky, you will be disappointed 100% of the time. That’s the wrong comparison… You should look at the at the growth rate of the founder… Humans always underestimate exponential growth.” #9 is the right motivations: “There a lot of people who start a startup because they think it’s a way to get rich quickly, and unfortunately it’s just not. So startups have become the new default career trajectory for ambitious people… This does not work given the amount of pain you have to suffer for a startup… In our portfolio at YC, every time we thought a company was going to go really well and didn’t, the founder did not have a deep sense of mission.” Video Source: Y Combinator
5:32

The 9 traits Sam Altman looks for to identify founders who can build a $10 billion company “It’s difficult to hear an idea at the very early stage and say: ‘Yeah, this idea has what it takes to be a $10 billion company.’ However, I think you can, with practice, identify founders that have a chance at creating one of those companies.’” The first four traits Sam looks for comes from gmail creator Paul Buchhiet: obsession, focus, frugality, and love. Next, Sam looks for intelligence: “You can give a founder an idea, but the problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week… We tried an experiment at Y Combinator where we funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but otherwise were really good, and they all failed. What we learned is that good founders have ideas all the time.” #6 is communication skills: “So much of your job as a founder is about communication—every time you hire someone, go to raise money, try to sell the product, and set a direction for the company. A huge amount of a founder’s job is being an evangelist for the company. If you don’t have strong communication skills or you don’t develop them quickly, you’re at a big disadvantage.” #7 is execution speed. How quickly can you generate a hypothesis, test it, and implement it? Sam observes that most slow-moving founders who went through Y Combinator didn’t go on to be successful: “A relentless cadence of execution is incredibly correlated with success.” #8 is the rate of improvement of the founder: “If you look at a founder who comes to meet you for a seed round and compare that founder to Brian Chesky, you will be disappointed 100% of the time. That’s the wrong comparison… You should look at the at the growth rate of the founder… Humans always underestimate exponential growth.” #9 is the right motivations: “There a lot of people who start a startup because they think it’s a way to get rich quickly, and unfortunately it’s just not. So startups have become the new default career trajectory for ambitious people… This does not work given the amount of pain you have to suffer for a startup… In our portfolio at YC, every time we thought a company was going to go really well and didn’t, the founder did not have a deep sense of mission.” Video Source: Y Combinator

Startup Archive

85,847 views • 2 years ago

"I think in a way, people are somewhat overestimating the founders of companies, and massively underestimating what you can do when the founder is still present and in charge." Tobi talked about how it's not that founders themselves are some kind of super heroes, but that the *role* of a founder is incredibly important because of what the natural moral authority allows them to do.
1:17

"I think in a way, people are somewhat overestimating the founders of companies, and massively underestimating what you can do when the founder is still present and in charge." Tobi talked about how it's not that founders themselves are some kind of super heroes, but that the *role* of a founder is incredibly important because of what the natural moral authority allows them to do.

Jack Altman

43,403 views • 3 months ago

David Sacks: Debt makes your company more fragile Friedberg: “I hate this business. I think venture debt's the worst vulture-like business in Silicon Valley. “ Sacks: “Right. I've always hated when founders take on venture debt. Part of it is that founders forget that they have to pay it back. They treat it like venture capital and they forget about that, and then they get surprised. But the other thing I've never liked about it is it makes you more fragile. It basically subjects you to a bunch of business covenants, and it makes it harder for you to do an abrupt shift in your business, because now you've got a bank looking over your shoulder and they want to make sure they get paid, and they have to review your financials and all the rest of it. And to your point, J Cal, the companies that have free cash flow right now are the ones that again, have the most maneuverability. I hate taking away maneuverability from founders, and that is what debt does because it subjects you to a fixed schedule of payments. And so this is always a thing to remember, whether you're a business or you are an individual, when you put on that debt, it makes you more vulnerable to big disruptions in the market.”
0:57

David Sacks: Debt makes your company more fragile Friedberg: “I hate this business. I think venture debt's the worst vulture-like business in Silicon Valley. “ Sacks: “Right. I've always hated when founders take on venture debt. Part of it is that founders forget that they have to pay it back. They treat it like venture capital and they forget about that, and then they get surprised. But the other thing I've never liked about it is it makes you more fragile. It basically subjects you to a bunch of business covenants, and it makes it harder for you to do an abrupt shift in your business, because now you've got a bank looking over your shoulder and they want to make sure they get paid, and they have to review your financials and all the rest of it. And to your point, J Cal, the companies that have free cash flow right now are the ones that again, have the most maneuverability. I hate taking away maneuverability from founders, and that is what debt does because it subjects you to a fixed schedule of payments. And so this is always a thing to remember, whether you're a business or you are an individual, when you put on that debt, it makes you more vulnerable to big disruptions in the market.”

The All-In Podcast

79,095 views • 4 months ago

Sequoia's Carl Eschenbach on the founder traits that matter most when scaling a company: "One of the things I absolutely look for is self-awareness in founders, and are they honest about what they’re good at? Because a lot of these founders are just incredibly intelligent human beings, and sometimes they think they can do everything. Do they have the self-awareness to say, 'I need to go get other people as part of the company to help me scale so I can focus on what I’m really good at?'" "There are attributes and characteristics of people that I look for that are way beyond the intelligence side of the equation. You can’t teach grit. You can’t teach drive. You can’t teach a great attitude. You can’t teach determination." "All of those are things that are innate and part of people, and you want to see that in these founders. When you find someone who has that passion, drive, desire, and relentless ability to fight through challenges, issues, and opportunities — and then they have the intellectual horsepower on the other side — when that comes together, that’s a beautiful thing."
1:43

Sequoia's Carl Eschenbach on the founder traits that matter most when scaling a company: "One of the things I absolutely look for is self-awareness in founders, and are they honest about what they’re good at? Because a lot of these founders are just incredibly intelligent human beings, and sometimes they think they can do everything. Do they have the self-awareness to say, 'I need to go get other people as part of the company to help me scale so I can focus on what I’m really good at?'" "There are attributes and characteristics of people that I look for that are way beyond the intelligence side of the equation. You can’t teach grit. You can’t teach drive. You can’t teach a great attitude. You can’t teach determination." "All of those are things that are innate and part of people, and you want to see that in these founders. When you find someone who has that passion, drive, desire, and relentless ability to fight through challenges, issues, and opportunities — and then they have the intellectual horsepower on the other side — when that comes together, that’s a beautiful thing."

TBPN

15,950 views • 5 months ago

It's not important that your partner is an identical copy of you. It's important that they're not, that they bring something else to the table that you don't have. Now, in the context of entrepreneurship, because that's what I'm associated with, you need to find somebody that's willing to put up with the fact that you're just never there. I mean, that's very difficult because if you're running a business and you can't have a balanced life when you're an entrepreneur. It's really about finding that person that understands what you're about, that you're going down that journey and that you're not gonna stop doing it.
2:20

It's not important that your partner is an identical copy of you. It's important that they're not, that they bring something else to the table that you don't have. Now, in the context of entrepreneurship, because that's what I'm associated with, you need to find somebody that's willing to put up with the fact that you're just never there. I mean, that's very difficult because if you're running a business and you can't have a balanced life when you're an entrepreneur. It's really about finding that person that understands what you're about, that you're going down that journey and that you're not gonna stop doing it.

Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful

17,254 views • 9 months ago

"Lexie got a technical in our first game... that really says a lot about you now that you have a technical and I don't." Caitlin Clark on not being the first Fever player to get a technical 😂
0:55

"Lexie got a technical in our first game... that really says a lot about you now that you have a technical and I don't." Caitlin Clark on not being the first Fever player to get a technical 😂

Clark Report

19,235 views • 3 months ago

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."
1:15

Scott on why conviction in an idea is dangerous as an investor but required as a founder: "From the investor seat, I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. That's a risky thing because you'll find a way to express that by investing and make some compromises on the team because you know this idea is just so good, its time has come. But if the team isn't there, 90% of the time it doesn't work. Then there's a whole thing can you swap out the team? But the whole Founders Fund thesis was always no, you need the founder to run the company. But on the company side, you have to be in love with the idea. It's not that rational to start a company. There's a lot easier, more comfortable ways to make money if that's the goal. So it's got to be about what the company is doing specifically. If you want to actually start a company, it better be something that you're really passionate about, or you think that the problem is really important."

Patrick OShaughnessy

33,016 views • 4 months ago

Marc Andreessen’s 2 reasons for why founder-run companies are harder to disrupt “If you just look historically at many of the important technology companies of the last 50-100 years, many of them are run by their founders for decades… And a lot of it has to do with disruption.” Marc continues: “There’s this cliché of founders that a lot of people believe which is that founders are too stubborn and founders get too locked into their original idea and they can’t adapt as times change. We’ve actually found the opposite to be true. We’ve found that when a company is going to get disrupted, the person in many cases with the best odds of countering the disruption is the founder, and I think there’s a couple of different reasons for that.” The two reasons Marc shares are: 1. The founder remembers when the business was nothing, and are constantly haunted by the fact that the business could be a zero again: “The founder remembers what it was like when there was nobody else in the office with you and when you carried out your own trash can. The founder remembers this thing used to be zero.” 2. The founder carries enormous moral weight inside the company and can more easily make drastic changes: “When Steve Jobs goes into Apple and says times are changing we need to do X - and X is heresy… A Steve jobs - a founder - is going to be able to convince the company that they have to do that. Whereas if a professional CEO shows up and says that, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’” Source: Startup Grind (Feb 2016)
1:30

Marc Andreessen’s 2 reasons for why founder-run companies are harder to disrupt “If you just look historically at many of the important technology companies of the last 50-100 years, many of them are run by their founders for decades… And a lot of it has to do with disruption.” Marc continues: “There’s this cliché of founders that a lot of people believe which is that founders are too stubborn and founders get too locked into their original idea and they can’t adapt as times change. We’ve actually found the opposite to be true. We’ve found that when a company is going to get disrupted, the person in many cases with the best odds of countering the disruption is the founder, and I think there’s a couple of different reasons for that.” The two reasons Marc shares are: 1. The founder remembers when the business was nothing, and are constantly haunted by the fact that the business could be a zero again: “The founder remembers what it was like when there was nobody else in the office with you and when you carried out your own trash can. The founder remembers this thing used to be zero.” 2. The founder carries enormous moral weight inside the company and can more easily make drastic changes: “When Steve Jobs goes into Apple and says times are changing we need to do X - and X is heresy… A Steve jobs - a founder - is going to be able to convince the company that they have to do that. Whereas if a professional CEO shows up and says that, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’” Source: Startup Grind (Feb 2016)

Startup Archive

19,427 views • 27 days ago

Elon Musk: If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people "If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people, so either be with or join a group that's amazing that you really respect, or if you have building a company you have to gather great people I mean all the company is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service and so depending upon how talented and hardworking that group is, and the degree to which they're focused, cohesively, and in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company Do everything you can to gather great people, if you are creating a company"
0:30

Elon Musk: If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people "If you are creating a company or joining a company the most important thing is to attract great people, so either be with or join a group that's amazing that you really respect, or if you have building a company you have to gather great people I mean all the company is a group of people that have gathered together to create a product or service and so depending upon how talented and hardworking that group is, and the degree to which they're focused, cohesively, and in a good direction, that will determine the success of the company Do everything you can to gather great people, if you are creating a company"

SMX 🇺🇸

12,251 views • 5 months ago

Do you fit into one of the trendiest founder archetypes? Fundraising has always been competitive, but today's market is especially tough for first-time founders. In the latest episode of our Build Mode podcast, Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures breaks down the most popular founder archetypes right now: repeat founders with proven track records and exceptionally young technical founders. That leaves experienced, first-time founders facing a higher bar, even when they have a compelling business idea. But there’s still hope! Listen and subscribe here:
0:44

Do you fit into one of the trendiest founder archetypes? Fundraising has always been competitive, but today's market is especially tough for first-time founders. In the latest episode of our Build Mode podcast, Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures breaks down the most popular founder archetypes right now: repeat founders with proven track records and exceptionally young technical founders. That leaves experienced, first-time founders facing a higher bar, even when they have a compelling business idea. But there’s still hope! Listen and subscribe here:

TechCrunch

19,983 views • 1 month ago

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”
2:43

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”

Startup Archive

17,333 views • 7 months ago

Warren Buffett: "You just have to have some conviction that a given company — or a group of companies — [is] likely to earn more money 5 or 10 or 20 years from now than [it's] earning now. And that is not a difficult decision to come to."
1:22

Warren Buffett: "You just have to have some conviction that a given company — or a group of companies — [is] likely to earn more money 5 or 10 or 20 years from now than [it's] earning now. And that is not a difficult decision to come to."

Kevin Carpenter

37,022 views • 1 year ago

Ben Horowitz says Silicon Valley is hard to recreate because it requires talent, policy, and culture: "The first is you do need the talent... is there a great technical university that graduates people who know how to build things?" "Many countries have that, that don't have a Silicon Valley. And what are they missing? They're missing the other two components." "The second is, do you have a set of laws and policies that facilitate entrepreneurship, are essentially good for business?" "The third one... is the culture such that young people, the most capable young people willing to make the biggest contribution, do they get status, social status reward?" "That's the thing that's so hard to replicate, and it's so hard to build, and it's so easy to destroy." benahorowitz.eth
4:00

Ben Horowitz says Silicon Valley is hard to recreate because it requires talent, policy, and culture: "The first is you do need the talent... is there a great technical university that graduates people who know how to build things?" "Many countries have that, that don't have a Silicon Valley. And what are they missing? They're missing the other two components." "The second is, do you have a set of laws and policies that facilitate entrepreneurship, are essentially good for business?" "The third one... is the culture such that young people, the most capable young people willing to make the biggest contribution, do they get status, social status reward?" "That's the thing that's so hard to replicate, and it's so hard to build, and it's so easy to destroy." benahorowitz.eth

a16z

69,934 views • 2 months ago