Richard Feynman said that the imagination of nature was greater than the imagination of man, he meant that if you just keep following the truth you’ll discover cooler things than you could ever have made up. For startups, growth is a constraint much like truth.
- Redwoods
- Startups are different by nature, in the same way, a redwood seedling has a different destiny from a bean sprout.
- (a) make something lots of people want, and (b) reach and serve all those people.
- Ideas
- Usually successful startups happen because the founders are sufficiently different from other people that ideas few others can see seem obvious to them.
- Combination both to be good at technology and to face problems that can be solved by it, because technology changes so rapidly that formerly bad ideas often become good without anyone noticing
- That’s one connection between startup ideas and technology. Rapid change in one area uncovers big, soluble problems in other areas.
- The other connection between startups and technology is that startups create new ways of doing things.
- Rate
- S-curve
- The phase whose growth defines the startup is the ascent one. Its length and slope determine how big the company will be.
- A good growth rate during YC is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you’re doing exceptionally well.
- Compass
- Focusing on hitting a growth rate reduces the otherwise bewilderingly multifarious problem of starting a startup to a single problem.
- The fascinating thing about optimizing for growth is that it can actually discover startup ideas. You can use the need for growth as a form of evolutionary pressure.
- Value
- The reason why startups are so valuable
- Deals
- From three different viewpoints: Investors, Founders, Acquirers
- Investors
- they get paid by getting their capital back, ideally after the startup IPOs, or failing that when it’s acquired.
- investments are so easy to oversee
- Founders
- For growth
- Raising money lets you choose your growth rate
- Acquirers
- A rapidly growing company is valuable
- They are aware of the fear of that company.
- Understand
- If you want to understand startups, understand growth. Growth drives everything in this world. Growth is why startups usually work on technology.
- Starting a startup is thus very much like deciding to be a research scientist: you’re not committing to solve any specific problem; you don’t know for sure which problems are soluble; but you’re committing to try to discover something no one knew before.
Live In the Future 