Becoming a startup

Harj Taggar, a Y Combinator (YC) partner on decision-making processes and preparation for those who want to become a Startup founder. The core is that Resilience is the most important feature, and traditional signs of success (such as academic performance or work at large tech companies) are not good predictors for being a founder.

1.Destroy the Ideal Founder Memories Image: Hidden Power in Resilience

The traditional idea that the founder must be a "Mark Zuckerberg-style code genius" or a "Steve Jobs-style charismatic product genius" is just a memory that limits success. YC found that there are a variety of different types of people who succeed.

Unreliable predictors: Success in common environments such as schools or major companies (FAANG) is not an indicator of success in Startup.

The Ultimate Importance of Resilience: Resilience is the single most important feature, because early startups were full of heavy rejection and personal.

Confidence is an illusion: early self-confidence is something that cannot be used to represent resilience; many of the most sober-looking founders turn out to be the most resilient and able to bring companies into the stock exchange.

Benchling case study: Benchling founder Saji was seen as unfit for enterprise software sales, and the company had no revenue at all for nearly two years after joining YC, but with the necessary flexibility, he transformed the company into a value of over six billion dollars today.

2. Motivation and practical risk assessment

The founder's thinking framework emphasized practice rather than philosophy.

Sustainable motivation trumps starting motivation: Reasons to start a business, such as wanting to get rich or just wanting to try, are acceptable starting points, but to survive difficult times requires lasting motivation: a genuine interest in the problems being solved, and a love of working with the co-founders.

Worst-case scenario analysis: Instead of getting caught up in self-analysis, ask a practical question: "What am I going to lose?" The worst-case scenario is to shut down a company after a year of work without a salary, so can you accept that outcome?

3. Career value from Startup experience

Starting a company, whatever the financial outcome, is a huge accelerator of career progress because of the skills learned and the market's awareness of its former founders.

Accelerated Learning: Being a founder forces you to take responsibility for everything - sales, product development and customer support - that is a diverse experience and helps you discover what you really like to do.

Market Demand: Many employers are looking for someone with Startup experience because it proves "self-made innovator" (Self-starter) and leadership ability.

Rippling's Strategy: The Rippling Company, valued at billions of dollars, has created a recruitment process by acquiring a former founder as general manager to lead the entire product team.

4. Preparation Guide to Becoming a Founder

For those who are not ready to start immediately, there are practical steps to prepare:

Fusing Ideas and Co-Founders: Finding Ideas and Finding Co-Founders Are Not Separate Missions Good ideas start from "instincts" that rely on talking and working together to develop into concrete ones.

Auxiliary projects to create experiences: Get down to creating simple products over the weekend. The purpose is not to create "Unicorn," but to experience "turning ideas into reality" and experience the excitement of launch.

Learning Technical Skills: For those without programming skills, the straightforward recommendation is to "start learning to code," at least enough to create the first version of the product.

The last sign that says it's time: Don't wait until the extra work has a whiz of growth, the most important sign is that you enjoy the process of coming up with ideas and turning them into reality, and meeting an associate with whom you truly enjoy working together.

# startup # Business development # Business extension # Subjects of little people