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Q: How do I know if my startup is working on a worthwhile problem? Former Google CEO Larry Page uses a simple framework called "The Toothbrush Test" to decide whether he likes a business. He asks himself if the product is, like a toothbrush, "something you will use once...

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Michael McGuiness

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162,983 views • 3 years ago •via X (Twitter)

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Mike McGuiness3 years ago

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Atticus3 years ago

Good one It aligns with the idea that you need to be in the business of solving "must haves" which directly address deeply painful problems rather than "nice to haves" Investors fade the latter group pretty quickly

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Mike McGuiness3 years ago

@ACQuinn_ Exactly -- the "painkillers" vs "vitamins" metaphor is another good proxy for the frequency x intensity framework

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Alex Banks3 years ago

Frequency and intensity, so important and wonderfully highlighted.

Mike McGuiness's profile picture
Mike McGuiness3 years ago

Yes exactly. Think you can think of each of them as x-axis and y-axis and then you want to maximize the area under the curve. So basically frequency x intensity

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Brian O'Connor | Fractional CMO3 years ago

High frequency + high intensity

Brian Bourque's profile picture
Brian Bourque3 years ago

Great points to consider. The greater the pain / intensity / frequency the more potential value by solving that problem.

Mike McGuiness's profile picture
Mike McGuiness3 years ago

Yup, Uber such a great example of a good problem to solve

Mike McGuiness's profile picture
Mike McGuiness3 years ago

CORRECTION: Michael Seibel is a former CEO of Y Combinator. Garry Tan is the present CEO. Sorry about that! Full lecture here:

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kaledora2 years ago

decentralized hamster racing is a product I intend to use at least 3 times a day

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Startup Archive

51,157 views • 4 months ago

Peter Thiel on how to build the next billion-dollar startup: "Every moment in the history of business happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't be starting a social networking site. The next Bill Gates won't start an operating system. The next Elon Musk won't start a Tesla electric car company." Peter's entire thesis rejects the idea of formulas in business. As he puts it: "Science starts with things that are experimentally repeatable, but great businesses are zero to one; they're always one-of-a-kind. There is always this anti-formulaic quality." So what's the one theme he keeps coming back to? "This need for differentiation. What are you doing that nobody else is doing? What ideas do you have that nobody else has? What great business are you working on that no one else is working on?" He continues: "If you're a founder or an entrepreneur, you should always aim to build a monopoly where you're the only person in the world doing what you're doing. There really are only two kinds of businesses in this world: businesses that are in crazy competition and one-of-a-kind businesses that are monopolies." On why you shouldn't just iterate your way to success: "The core thing is to have a great product, and then you can always improve and iterate on that. If you're just trying to optimize and you don't have a great product, that rarely works." His advice? Think 5 to 10 years ahead: "Why will this be a really valuable business in 5 to 10 years? How's the competitive landscape going to develop? These are hard questions to answer, but the great entrepreneurs I know always have some perspective on it. When I was playing chess, one of the early lessons I learned was, a bad plan is still always better than no plan at all." On what makes work meaningful: "It's great to be working on problems where if you weren't working on them, nobody else would do them. If we weren't doing this, this problem would absolutely not be tackled. That's what's meaningful. Whereas when you're competing, you're already, by definition, number two at least in a category." Build something only you can build.
16:33

Peter Thiel on how to build the next billion-dollar startup: "Every moment in the history of business happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't be starting a social networking site. The next Bill Gates won't start an operating system. The next Elon Musk won't start a Tesla electric car company." Peter's entire thesis rejects the idea of formulas in business. As he puts it: "Science starts with things that are experimentally repeatable, but great businesses are zero to one; they're always one-of-a-kind. There is always this anti-formulaic quality." So what's the one theme he keeps coming back to? "This need for differentiation. What are you doing that nobody else is doing? What ideas do you have that nobody else has? What great business are you working on that no one else is working on?" He continues: "If you're a founder or an entrepreneur, you should always aim to build a monopoly where you're the only person in the world doing what you're doing. There really are only two kinds of businesses in this world: businesses that are in crazy competition and one-of-a-kind businesses that are monopolies." On why you shouldn't just iterate your way to success: "The core thing is to have a great product, and then you can always improve and iterate on that. If you're just trying to optimize and you don't have a great product, that rarely works." His advice? Think 5 to 10 years ahead: "Why will this be a really valuable business in 5 to 10 years? How's the competitive landscape going to develop? These are hard questions to answer, but the great entrepreneurs I know always have some perspective on it. When I was playing chess, one of the early lessons I learned was, a bad plan is still always better than no plan at all." On what makes work meaningful: "It's great to be working on problems where if you weren't working on them, nobody else would do them. If we weren't doing this, this problem would absolutely not be tackled. That's what's meaningful. Whereas when you're competing, you're already, by definition, number two at least in a category." Build something only you can build.

Jaynit

77,758 views • 6 months ago

The founders of Stripe and Pinterest on how to convince people to join your startup Stripe CEO Patrick Collison argues that part of the reason startups resonate so much is because the outcome is not guaranteed: "If it were guaranteed, it would be boring... Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really want to benchmark yourself and see how much of a contribution and impact you can make--which is a really compelling prospect for a lot of the best people--a startup is a much better place to test that." Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann emphasized this as well: "No smart person that you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future and that joining is a guaranteed thing. In fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, you shouldn't hire them because they didn't pass a basic intelligence test. I think it's important to tell them what's exciting and where you think the company can go. But also tell them where it will be hard and chart your best plan. And then tell them why their role can be instrumental--because it will be... What I would discourage doing is whitewashing all of that. If people are joining your company because they want all of the certainty and safety of working at Google but also the perks of working at a small startup with lots of responsibility and transparency, that's a really negative sign." Apparently in the early days of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin would tell people after they interviewed all the reasons that the company would fail: "Visa and MasterCard want to kill us. We also might be doing something that's illegal. But if we succeed, we'll redefine payments." Don't whitewash the risks. Instead tell them how your startup will change the world if you succeed and how their role will be instrumental in affecting that change. Video source: Y Combinator (2014)
3:25

The founders of Stripe and Pinterest on how to convince people to join your startup Stripe CEO Patrick Collison argues that part of the reason startups resonate so much is because the outcome is not guaranteed: "If it were guaranteed, it would be boring... Whether or not you're the best person in the world at what you do, you're probably not going to alter Google's trajectory. But if you really want to benchmark yourself and see how much of a contribution and impact you can make--which is a really compelling prospect for a lot of the best people--a startup is a much better place to test that." Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann emphasized this as well: "No smart person that you're hiring is under the illusion that you have a crystal ball into the future and that joining is a guaranteed thing. In fact, if you're telling them that and they select in, you shouldn't hire them because they didn't pass a basic intelligence test. I think it's important to tell them what's exciting and where you think the company can go. But also tell them where it will be hard and chart your best plan. And then tell them why their role can be instrumental--because it will be... What I would discourage doing is whitewashing all of that. If people are joining your company because they want all of the certainty and safety of working at Google but also the perks of working at a small startup with lots of responsibility and transparency, that's a really negative sign." Apparently in the early days of PayPal, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin would tell people after they interviewed all the reasons that the company would fail: "Visa and MasterCard want to kill us. We also might be doing something that's illegal. But if we succeed, we'll redefine payments." Don't whitewash the risks. Instead tell them how your startup will change the world if you succeed and how their role will be instrumental in affecting that change. Video source: Y Combinator (2014)

Startup Archive

11,811 views • 7 months ago

Climate zealot explains why cows are "a big problem". 🤡 "They produce an awful lot of methane, and that is a problem because it is a big contributor to human-caused global warming." "Livestock account for about a third of all the methane emissions, almost as much as leaks from the fossil fuel industry... So it's a big problem." "If you cut off the amount of methane going up into the air, you very quickly make a big difference to the amount of global warming."
1:28

Climate zealot explains why cows are "a big problem". 🤡 "They produce an awful lot of methane, and that is a problem because it is a big contributor to human-caused global warming." "Livestock account for about a third of all the methane emissions, almost as much as leaks from the fossil fuel industry... So it's a big problem." "If you cut off the amount of methane going up into the air, you very quickly make a big difference to the amount of global warming."

Wide Awake Media

52,730 views • 8 months ago