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“A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Video source: @khanacademy (2013) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Video source: @khanacademy (2013) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
In this 2012 interview Thiel explains that one of the best questions an investor can ask is “What is the salary of the CEO?” In his view, the right answer is less than $150k, even post Series A. “If you like the people, you like the business model, you like the technology, you like everything. I’ve found that that single question is incredibly predictive because it ends up setting the culture. Are people doing it for equity or cash? It drives the people who are being hired… And you always want to get to this question of motivation. Do people actually believe in what they’re doing?” He cites Reid Hoffman founding LinkedIn as an example: “Reid was taking a salary of $15,000 a year. It was the minimum wage so you could get health insurance. And maybe he didn’t need more money [after PayPal], but it was setting the right tone for the company.” --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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In this 2012 interview Thiel explains that one of the best questions an investor can ask is “What is the salary of the CEO?” In his view, the right answer is less than $150k, even post Series A. “If you like the people, you like the business model, you like the technology, you like everything. I’ve found that that single question is incredibly predictive because it ends up setting the culture. Are people doing it for equity or cash? It drives the people who are being hired… And you always want to get to this question of motivation. Do people actually believe in what they’re doing?” He cites Reid Hoffman founding LinkedIn as an example: “Reid was taking a salary of $15,000 a year. It was the minimum wage so you could get health insurance. And maybe he didn’t need more money [after PayPal], but it was setting the right tone for the company.” --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
In the clip below, Jeff tells a story from the early days of Amazon when their metrics said customers waited less than 60 seconds after calling customer service. Yet this conflicted with customer complaints, and as Jeff explains: “I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right… If you have a bunch of customers complaining about something, and your metrics look like they shouldn’t be complaining, you should doubt the metrics.” Then one day in a meeting, the head of customer service was defending the metric, and Jeff said, “Ok, let’s call.” Jeff picked up the phone and dialed Amazon’s 1-800 customer service number. Everyone in the meeting proceeded to wait more than 10 minutes before customer service answered. “It dramatically made the point that something was wrong with the data collection, and that set off a whole chain of events where we started measuring it right… That’s an uncomfortable thing to do, but you have to seek truth even when it’s uncomfortable and you have to get people’s attention and they have to buy into it and they have to get energized around really fixing things.” Video source: @lexfridman (2023) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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In the clip below, Jeff tells a story from the early days of Amazon when their metrics said customers waited less than 60 seconds after calling customer service. Yet this conflicted with customer complaints, and as Jeff explains: “I have a saying, which is when the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right… If you have a bunch of customers complaining about something, and your metrics look like they shouldn’t be complaining, you should doubt the metrics.” Then one day in a meeting, the head of customer service was defending the metric, and Jeff said, “Ok, let’s call.” Jeff picked up the phone and dialed Amazon’s 1-800 customer service number. Everyone in the meeting proceeded to wait more than 10 minutes before customer service answered. “It dramatically made the point that something was wrong with the data collection, and that set off a whole chain of events where we started measuring it right… That’s an uncomfortable thing to do, but you have to seek truth even when it’s uncomfortable and you have to get people’s attention and they have to buy into it and they have to get energized around really fixing things.” Video source: @lexfridman (2023) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos had too many ideas. Then Jeff Wilke, a new Amazon executive at the time, told his boss, “Jeff, you have enough ideas to destroy Amazon.” “This was just a shocking idea for me,” Bezos recalls. “As a founder, I had the great luxury of always being able to hire my tutors. I would hire these experienced, senior executives . . . And I would listen to them and they would teach me.” When Bezos asked Wilke what he meant by this, Wilke responded, “You have to release the work at the right rate so that the organization can accept it.” Bezos reflects on this point: “Every time I released an idea, I was creating a backlog of work in process. And because it was just stacking up, it was adding no value. In fact, it was creating distraction . . . This sounds so obvious, but it was not obvious to me at the time. And this was a profound insight for me. So I started prioritizing the ideas better, keeping lists of them, and keeping ideas to myself until the organization was ready for the ideas.” He continues: “I also started figuring out how to build an organization that can be ready for more ideas. That’s about having the right senior team and leadership and giving those people the executive bandwidth so they could do more ideas per unit of time. And that is what we built. We built a company that’s very good at inventing and doing more than one thing at a time. And as the company gets bigger, you do want to be able to do more than one thing at a time. But that idea of ‘releasing the work’ was very profound for me. It made us operationally more effective while still being inventive.” Video source: @reuters (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos had too many ideas. Then Jeff Wilke, a new Amazon executive at the time, told his boss, “Jeff, you have enough ideas to destroy Amazon.” “This was just a shocking idea for me,” Bezos recalls. “As a founder, I had the great luxury of always being able to hire my tutors. I would hire these experienced, senior executives . . . And I would listen to them and they would teach me.” When Bezos asked Wilke what he meant by this, Wilke responded, “You have to release the work at the right rate so that the organization can accept it.” Bezos reflects on this point: “Every time I released an idea, I was creating a backlog of work in process. And because it was just stacking up, it was adding no value. In fact, it was creating distraction . . . This sounds so obvious, but it was not obvious to me at the time. And this was a profound insight for me. So I started prioritizing the ideas better, keeping lists of them, and keeping ideas to myself until the organization was ready for the ideas.” He continues: “I also started figuring out how to build an organization that can be ready for more ideas. That’s about having the right senior team and leadership and giving those people the executive bandwidth so they could do more ideas per unit of time. And that is what we built. We built a company that’s very good at inventing and doing more than one thing at a time. And as the company gets bigger, you do want to be able to do more than one thing at a time. But that idea of ‘releasing the work’ was very profound for me. It made us operationally more effective while still being inventive.” Video source: @reuters (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“Wandering is so important because wandering is a kind of humility,” Jeff Bezos begins. “Wandering sounds so inefficient, but the only way to go straight to your destination is if you know where you’re going.” Jeff continues: “Sometimes you know where you’re going. But sometimes you don’t. And wandering is the acknowledgement that — in life, business, invention, and building a company — a lot of the time you can see the mountain top, but you can’t see the trail. So you have to explore and wander. It may feel very inefficient. But it’s actually very valuable.” Ultimately, Jeff explains, you need to balance execution and exploration: “When you know where you’re going, yes, you should be very efficient . . . You just need to do both [exploration and determined execution]. And they actually do feed each other. It’s the things that come out of the execution that give you new data and ideas about what the next steps should be in your exploration. The two things don’t work against each other. They work together.” Video source: @reuters (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“Wandering is so important because wandering is a kind of humility,” Jeff Bezos begins. “Wandering sounds so inefficient, but the only way to go straight to your destination is if you know where you’re going.” Jeff continues: “Sometimes you know where you’re going. But sometimes you don’t. And wandering is the acknowledgement that — in life, business, invention, and building a company — a lot of the time you can see the mountain top, but you can’t see the trail. So you have to explore and wander. It may feel very inefficient. But it’s actually very valuable.” Ultimately, Jeff explains, you need to balance execution and exploration: “When you know where you’re going, yes, you should be very efficient . . . You just need to do both [exploration and determined execution]. And they actually do feed each other. It’s the things that come out of the execution that give you new data and ideas about what the next steps should be in your exploration. The two things don’t work against each other. They work together.” Video source: @reuters (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
Elon is asked for his advice for entrepreneurs, to which he responds: “I’m a big fan of anyone who wants to build. Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. That’s the main thing you should aim for: to make more than you take and be a net contributor to society.” He compares it to the pursuit of happiness: “If you want to create something valuable financially, you don’t pursue that. It’s best to pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, money will come as a natural consequence of that rather than pursuing money directly. You can’t pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness — fulfilling work, study, friends, loved ones.” Elon continues: “It sounds very obvious, but generally if somebody is trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard and accept that there’s a meaningful chance of failure. Then just focus on having the output be worth more than the input. Are you a value creator? That’s what really matters: making more than you take.” Video source: @nikhilkamathcio (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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Elon is asked for his advice for entrepreneurs, to which he responds: “I’m a big fan of anyone who wants to build. Anyone who wants to make more than they take has my respect. That’s the main thing you should aim for: to make more than you take and be a net contributor to society.” He compares it to the pursuit of happiness: “If you want to create something valuable financially, you don’t pursue that. It’s best to pursue providing useful products and services. If you do that, money will come as a natural consequence of that rather than pursuing money directly. You can’t pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness — fulfilling work, study, friends, loved ones.” Elon continues: “It sounds very obvious, but generally if somebody is trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard and accept that there’s a meaningful chance of failure. Then just focus on having the output be worth more than the input. Are you a value creator? That’s what really matters: making more than you take.” Video source: @nikhilkamathcio (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
Most executive recruiters, Sam argues, will reverse this order: “If you say I need to hire a CFO, they will bring you people with 20 years of experience as a CFO at vaguely similar companies. But unfortunately, it’s usually like 20 years of the exact same year of experience over and over again.” But if you’re trying to scale fast, values are most important: “You really need someone who is aligned with the values of the company so that when things change or when they have to make a decision, they’ll make the one you would make if you can’t be there or they will be a good team player and go do that thing.” Sam continues: “You need someone who has high aptitude because the role is going to constantly shift. And the rate of learning - the rate of improvement - dominates skills.” And then skills obviously matter, but for Sam it’s third on the list: “The very best companies take this exceptionally far in how much they’re willing to hire a non-traditionally qualified executive.” Video source: @ycombinator (2017) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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Most executive recruiters, Sam argues, will reverse this order: “If you say I need to hire a CFO, they will bring you people with 20 years of experience as a CFO at vaguely similar companies. But unfortunately, it’s usually like 20 years of the exact same year of experience over and over again.” But if you’re trying to scale fast, values are most important: “You really need someone who is aligned with the values of the company so that when things change or when they have to make a decision, they’ll make the one you would make if you can’t be there or they will be a good team player and go do that thing.” Sam continues: “You need someone who has high aptitude because the role is going to constantly shift. And the rate of learning - the rate of improvement - dominates skills.” And then skills obviously matter, but for Sam it’s third on the list: “The very best companies take this exceptionally far in how much they’re willing to hire a non-traditionally qualified executive.” Video source: @ycombinator (2017) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp and their 450 million MAUs for $19 billion. “A lot of us [in Silicon Valley] were shocked — until we thought about it and understood the value of having access to that many consumers,” Oracle founder Larry Ellison says in this interview that took place a few months after the acquisition closed. Ellison points out that you have to take into consideration how much traditional businesses (e.g. cable TV companies) pay to acquire customers: “This is not the place to debate how much you can get through WhatsApp — $1 per year per customer is not going to do it — but I believe there will be opportunity to sell these same customers other things as they join your ecosystem.” He continues: “There was quite a battle between Facebook and Google over that property. It wasn’t that one guy did something really silly with a lot of money. Mark Zuckerberg won an auction over Google and paid a high price but got a very valuable asset in the 21st century.” As of 2025, WhatsApp has approximately 3.1 billion MAUs globally. --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg bought WhatsApp and their 450 million MAUs for $19 billion. “A lot of us [in Silicon Valley] were shocked — until we thought about it and understood the value of having access to that many consumers,” Oracle founder Larry Ellison says in this interview that took place a few months after the acquisition closed. Ellison points out that you have to take into consideration how much traditional businesses (e.g. cable TV companies) pay to acquire customers: “This is not the place to debate how much you can get through WhatsApp — $1 per year per customer is not going to do it — but I believe there will be opportunity to sell these same customers other things as they join your ecosystem.” He continues: “There was quite a battle between Facebook and Google over that property. It wasn’t that one guy did something really silly with a lot of money. Mark Zuckerberg won an auction over Google and paid a high price but got a very valuable asset in the 21st century.” As of 2025, WhatsApp has approximately 3.1 billion MAUs globally. --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“I think the single-biggest thing entrepreneurs are missing — both on fundraising and how they run their companies — is the relationship between risk and cash. I’ve always been a fan of something Andy Rachleff taught me years ago. He calls it the ‘Onion Theory of Risk.’” You can think of a day 1 startup as having every conceivable kind of risk: founding team risk, product risk, technical risk, market acceptance risk, revenue risk, cost of sales risk, viral growth risk, etc. A startup is basically just a long list of risks, and as Marc explains: "The way I think about running a startup is the way I think about raising money. It's a process of peeling away layers of risk as you go." You raise seed money to peel away the first two or three risks (e.g. founding team risk, product risk, initial launch risk). You raise the Series A round to peel away the next layer of risks (e.g. recruiting risk, customer risk, revenue risk, cost of sales risk) And so on. Basically, you're peeling away risk as you're achieving milestones. And as you achieve milestones, you're both: making progress on your business and justifying raising more capital. So in terms of fundraising, you should be calibrating the amount money you're raising to the risks you need to pull out of your business for you to raise your next round. For example, if you're raising your Series A round, the best way to do that is to say to investors: "I raised a seed round then achieved ____ milestones and eliminated ____ risks. Now I'm going to raise $ X for the Series A to achieve ____ milestones and eliminate ____ risks. This will get the company to ____ state for the Series B round. " This seems fairly obvious, but as Marc points out, it's a much more systematic way of going about things versus just raising as much money as possible, renting fancy offices, and hiring as many people as you can to grow as fast as you can. The more money you raise, the more you dilute your ownership stake in your business so it pays to be thoughtful. Read the full newsletter at startuparchive.org Video source: @ycombinator (2014)
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“I think the single-biggest thing entrepreneurs are missing — both on fundraising and how they run their companies — is the relationship between risk and cash. I’ve always been a fan of something Andy Rachleff taught me years ago. He calls it the ‘Onion Theory of Risk.’” You can think of a day 1 startup as having every conceivable kind of risk: founding team risk, product risk, technical risk, market acceptance risk, revenue risk, cost of sales risk, viral growth risk, etc. A startup is basically just a long list of risks, and as Marc explains: "The way I think about running a startup is the way I think about raising money. It's a process of peeling away layers of risk as you go." You raise seed money to peel away the first two or three risks (e.g. founding team risk, product risk, initial launch risk). You raise the Series A round to peel away the next layer of risks (e.g. recruiting risk, customer risk, revenue risk, cost of sales risk) And so on. Basically, you're peeling away risk as you're achieving milestones. And as you achieve milestones, you're both: making progress on your business and justifying raising more capital. So in terms of fundraising, you should be calibrating the amount money you're raising to the risks you need to pull out of your business for you to raise your next round. For example, if you're raising your Series A round, the best way to do that is to say to investors: "I raised a seed round then achieved ____ milestones and eliminated ____ risks. Now I'm going to raise $ X for the Series A to achieve ____ milestones and eliminate ____ risks. This will get the company to ____ state for the Series B round. " This seems fairly obvious, but as Marc points out, it's a much more systematic way of going about things versus just raising as much money as possible, renting fancy offices, and hiring as many people as you can to grow as fast as you can. The more money you raise, the more you dilute your ownership stake in your business so it pays to be thoughtful. Read the full newsletter at startuparchive.org Video source: @ycombinator (2014)
“I didn’t expect PayPal’s growth rate to be what it was, and that actually created major problems,” Elon explains. “We started PayPal on University Avenue [in Palo Alto], and after the first month or so of the website being active, we had 100,000 customers.” As Elon explains, the key to PayPal’s viral growth was it referral program: “We started off first by offering people $20 if they opened account and $20 if they referred anyone. Then we dropped it to $10, and then we dropped it to $5. As the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer.” He continues: “And then we just did a bunch of things to decrease the friction. It’s like bacteria in a petri dish. What you want to do is try to have one customer generate two customers, or three customers ideally. And then you want that to happen really fast.” Elon estimates that PayPal spent $60-70 million to fuel this growth, before the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. Video source: @khanacademy (2013) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“I didn’t expect PayPal’s growth rate to be what it was, and that actually created major problems,” Elon explains. “We started PayPal on University Avenue [in Palo Alto], and after the first month or so of the website being active, we had 100,000 customers.” As Elon explains, the key to PayPal’s viral growth was it referral program: “We started off first by offering people $20 if they opened account and $20 if they referred anyone. Then we dropped it to $10, and then we dropped it to $5. As the network got bigger and bigger, the value of the network itself exceeded any sort of carrot that we could offer.” He continues: “And then we just did a bunch of things to decrease the friction. It’s like bacteria in a petri dish. What you want to do is try to have one customer generate two customers, or three customers ideally. And then you want that to happen really fast.” Elon estimates that PayPal spent $60-70 million to fuel this growth, before the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion. Video source: @khanacademy (2013) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“My experience is the great founders almost always feel like they’re too late, and you’re almost always too early.” The reason is because the idea seems obvious to the founder: “You’ve got some idea in your head, and as far as you’re concerned, the world should already work this way, which is why you’re pursuing it. And so it’s a little inexplicable as to why it hasn’t happened to it… It must be just about to happen and I must be too late.” This is how Marc felt at Netscape when he co-authored the first widely used web browser. But in reality, Marc explains, founders are almost always too early: “We almost never see a qualified founder fail because they were too late to market. It’s almost always because they’re too early to market. And I don’t say that critically. When we screw up investments, I think that’s often the reason as well.” It usually turns out that the world just wasn’t ready yet. Marc points out that when Apple launched the Newton in 1989, it was basically the same thing as the iPad. The world just wasn’t ready yet, and the required technologies weren’t in place (e.g. mobile broadband, high-resolution screens, battery technology, etc.). “It convinced people for 20 years that tablet computing would never work. And then they did it again with the iPad, and it worked. I think that’s the permanent curse of the entrepreneur.” In a previous YC talk, Marc told founders that if what you’re working on was the hot thing 3-4 years ago, you’re probably right on time because the infrastructure and consumer behavior has now caught up. Video source: @ycombinator (2016) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“My experience is the great founders almost always feel like they’re too late, and you’re almost always too early.” The reason is because the idea seems obvious to the founder: “You’ve got some idea in your head, and as far as you’re concerned, the world should already work this way, which is why you’re pursuing it. And so it’s a little inexplicable as to why it hasn’t happened to it… It must be just about to happen and I must be too late.” This is how Marc felt at Netscape when he co-authored the first widely used web browser. But in reality, Marc explains, founders are almost always too early: “We almost never see a qualified founder fail because they were too late to market. It’s almost always because they’re too early to market. And I don’t say that critically. When we screw up investments, I think that’s often the reason as well.” It usually turns out that the world just wasn’t ready yet. Marc points out that when Apple launched the Newton in 1989, it was basically the same thing as the iPad. The world just wasn’t ready yet, and the required technologies weren’t in place (e.g. mobile broadband, high-resolution screens, battery technology, etc.). “It convinced people for 20 years that tablet computing would never work. And then they did it again with the iPad, and it worked. I think that’s the permanent curse of the entrepreneur.” In a previous YC talk, Marc told founders that if what you’re working on was the hot thing 3-4 years ago, you’re probably right on time because the infrastructure and consumer behavior has now caught up. Video source: @ycombinator (2016) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
Naval Ravikant gave the following advice to a startup spending $25k outsourcing product development to external developers: “You guys should be coding from the start. Web and mobile startups are so competitive right now. You have to assume that anything you’re doing, there’s a team of 2-4 dedicated, hardcore hackers working 24/7 on something extremely similar.” He continues: “If you have this iteration loop where you have to submit something to someone else and they have to come back to you. Then you’re like ‘no, it wasn’t quite right’ because a lot of stuff was lost in translation, you’re going to get 1-2 cycles per day at best. Meanwhile, that other team is getting 20 cycles per day. It has gotten so intense now that non-coding founders and startups are having a really difficult time adding value at these early stages.” Video source: @forbes (2011) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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Naval Ravikant gave the following advice to a startup spending $25k outsourcing product development to external developers: “You guys should be coding from the start. Web and mobile startups are so competitive right now. You have to assume that anything you’re doing, there’s a team of 2-4 dedicated, hardcore hackers working 24/7 on something extremely similar.” He continues: “If you have this iteration loop where you have to submit something to someone else and they have to come back to you. Then you’re like ‘no, it wasn’t quite right’ because a lot of stuff was lost in translation, you’re going to get 1-2 cycles per day at best. Meanwhile, that other team is getting 20 cycles per day. It has gotten so intense now that non-coding founders and startups are having a really difficult time adding value at these early stages.” Video source: @forbes (2011) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“To raise the first $1 million of seed capital for Amazon, I sold 20% of the company at a $5 million valuation. I sold 20% of the company for a million dollars to 22 angel investors, roughly $50,000 each.” Jeff recalls taking 60 meetings to get to those 22 angels who said yes, which means roughly 40 of the investors he pitched said no. “And by the way, the 40 ‘no’s were hard-earned ‘no’s… They were multiple meetings, working really hard to get people to write that $50,000 check. And the whole enterprise could have been extinguished then.” This was in 1995, and the first question Jeff would always get was, “What’s the Internet?” So Jeff would patiently explain what the Internet was. He would also always tell them he thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment. “In retrospect, I think that might have been a little naive, but I think it was true. In fact, if anything, I think was giving myself better than the real odds.” Video source: @nytimes (2024) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“To raise the first $1 million of seed capital for Amazon, I sold 20% of the company at a $5 million valuation. I sold 20% of the company for a million dollars to 22 angel investors, roughly $50,000 each.” Jeff recalls taking 60 meetings to get to those 22 angels who said yes, which means roughly 40 of the investors he pitched said no. “And by the way, the 40 ‘no’s were hard-earned ‘no’s… They were multiple meetings, working really hard to get people to write that $50,000 check. And the whole enterprise could have been extinguished then.” This was in 1995, and the first question Jeff would always get was, “What’s the Internet?” So Jeff would patiently explain what the Internet was. He would also always tell them he thought there was a 70% chance they would lose their investment. “In retrospect, I think that might have been a little naive, but I think it was true. In fact, if anything, I think was giving myself better than the real odds.” Video source: @nytimes (2024) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
Keith is asked how Elon Musk gets so much done, to which he replies: “If you approach every day and every week of your life with the question, ‘What did you accomplish this week?’ I think that compounds, and very few people do that. I think that’s the number one ingredient.” As for the second ingredient, Keith tells a story he heard from some friends at SpaceX where Elon observed a line of interns piling up around the coffee machine. This prompted Elon to send a memo to the company asking: “Why are all the interns wasting all this time? If you feel like you have nothing better to do than waiting in line, you’re at the wrong company. And by the way, I’m installing cameras to make sure that we don’t have lines at the coffee shop.” Keith believes that stamping out entitlement and expecting people to accomplish things every day also compounds over decades in Elon’s career. He recalls a principle PayPal cofounder Max Levchin taught him where he compares startups to gas in chemistry: “Gas expands to the size of the container… If you tell people they have a month, it’ll take a month. If you tell people it takes two weeks, it’ll take two weeks. Tell them a week, it’ll take a week. So you want to constantly compress the container size because those accomplishments add up over months, quarters, years, and decades.” Video source: @chrisvasquez (2024) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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Keith is asked how Elon Musk gets so much done, to which he replies: “If you approach every day and every week of your life with the question, ‘What did you accomplish this week?’ I think that compounds, and very few people do that. I think that’s the number one ingredient.” As for the second ingredient, Keith tells a story he heard from some friends at SpaceX where Elon observed a line of interns piling up around the coffee machine. This prompted Elon to send a memo to the company asking: “Why are all the interns wasting all this time? If you feel like you have nothing better to do than waiting in line, you’re at the wrong company. And by the way, I’m installing cameras to make sure that we don’t have lines at the coffee shop.” Keith believes that stamping out entitlement and expecting people to accomplish things every day also compounds over decades in Elon’s career. He recalls a principle PayPal cofounder Max Levchin taught him where he compares startups to gas in chemistry: “Gas expands to the size of the container… If you tell people they have a month, it’ll take a month. If you tell people it takes two weeks, it’ll take two weeks. Tell them a week, it’ll take a week. So you want to constantly compress the container size because those accomplishments add up over months, quarters, years, and decades.” Video source: @chrisvasquez (2024) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“All new fails” - Zynga CEO Mark Pincus explains his favorite product principle “All new fails. If all new worked, we’d be using new stuff all the time. But how often do you change what’s on the front of your iPhone? How often do the top 10 or 25 apps change? They haven’t changed in 8 years because all new fails. A million new apps a year — they all fail.” This realization led Mark to develop a new approach to building products that he calls “Proven. Better. New.” And he explains how he used it to build Zynga Poker into the largest poker site in the world. “De-risk it. Start with with what’s proven. You don’t have the right to change proven. You should copy every pixel of [an experience that already works — legally, of course]… What you think is ‘better’ is called ‘new.’ When you say it’s better, that’s because you’re naive. Grow up. I’m guilty of this too — we all are. We get emotional and fall in love with our own ideas, so we need something to hold us accountable.” Zynga Poker copied every other online poker game as their starting point. The next step is to add one thing that’s undeniably better for users. For Zynga poker this was not having to download the application. “You lose half your users every time they have to click download,” Mark explains. “I don’t even need to ask, I know that’s better.” The last step is to add something new that might work. For Zynga Poker, this was adding pictures of real people — often your friends — to the game. The game was an instant hit. Mark urges founders to look at the product through your user’s eyes — not your peers: “This isn’t about getting respect in this little bubble [of Silicon Valley]… This is about normal, real-life humans. They don’t care if you copied. They don’t care how innovative it is. All they care about is, ‘Does it feel better?’ And they can’t even tell you why… Innovation often comes in smaller bits.” Video source: @speedrun (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“All new fails” - Zynga CEO Mark Pincus explains his favorite product principle “All new fails. If all new worked, we’d be using new stuff all the time. But how often do you change what’s on the front of your iPhone? How often do the top 10 or 25 apps change? They haven’t changed in 8 years because all new fails. A million new apps a year — they all fail.” This realization led Mark to develop a new approach to building products that he calls “Proven. Better. New.” And he explains how he used it to build Zynga Poker into the largest poker site in the world. “De-risk it. Start with with what’s proven. You don’t have the right to change proven. You should copy every pixel of [an experience that already works — legally, of course]… What you think is ‘better’ is called ‘new.’ When you say it’s better, that’s because you’re naive. Grow up. I’m guilty of this too — we all are. We get emotional and fall in love with our own ideas, so we need something to hold us accountable.” Zynga Poker copied every other online poker game as their starting point. The next step is to add one thing that’s undeniably better for users. For Zynga poker this was not having to download the application. “You lose half your users every time they have to click download,” Mark explains. “I don’t even need to ask, I know that’s better.” The last step is to add something new that might work. For Zynga Poker, this was adding pictures of real people — often your friends — to the game. The game was an instant hit. Mark urges founders to look at the product through your user’s eyes — not your peers: “This isn’t about getting respect in this little bubble [of Silicon Valley]… This is about normal, real-life humans. They don’t care if you copied. They don’t care how innovative it is. All they care about is, ‘Does it feel better?’ And they can’t even tell you why… Innovation often comes in smaller bits.” Video source: @speedrun (2025) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
Jensen offers a glimpse into his schedule and what “insanely hard work” looks like: “I work every day. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t work. And if I’m not working, I’m thinking about work.” He’s asked when he wakes up and goes to bed: “I wake up at 5am, and the moment I wake up, I start working… I’m asleep probably by 9:30pm. I like my sleep and sleep is really important to me.” When does he relax? “Working is relaxing for me. Solving problems is relaxing for me. Achieving something is relaxing for me. And the most relaxing is just hanging out with my family. I relax in a whole bunch of different ways…. I’m pretty relaxed.” Video source: @norgesbankinvestmentmanagement (2023) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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Jensen offers a glimpse into his schedule and what “insanely hard work” looks like: “I work every day. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t work. And if I’m not working, I’m thinking about work.” He’s asked when he wakes up and goes to bed: “I wake up at 5am, and the moment I wake up, I start working… I’m asleep probably by 9:30pm. I like my sleep and sleep is really important to me.” When does he relax? “Working is relaxing for me. Solving problems is relaxing for me. Achieving something is relaxing for me. And the most relaxing is just hanging out with my family. I relax in a whole bunch of different ways…. I’m pretty relaxed.” Video source: @norgesbankinvestmentmanagement (2023) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“Where do I think the next amazing revolution is gong to come? And this is going to be flat out one of the biggest ones ever. There’s no question that digital biology is going to be it.” Jensen continues: “For the first time in human history, biology has the opportunity to be engineering, not science. When something becomes engineering, not science, it becomes less sporadic and exponentially improving. It can compound on the benefits of the previous years. And every researcher’s contributions compound on each other… We’re going to have incredible tools that bring the world of biology—which is very chaotic and constantly changing and diverse and complex—into the world of computer science. And that is going to be profound.” He tells the student audience at Berkeley: “If you happen to love this intersection, I think it’s going to be rich with opportunities. It’s going to be a giant industry.” Video source: @berkeleyhaas (2023) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“Where do I think the next amazing revolution is gong to come? And this is going to be flat out one of the biggest ones ever. There’s no question that digital biology is going to be it.” Jensen continues: “For the first time in human history, biology has the opportunity to be engineering, not science. When something becomes engineering, not science, it becomes less sporadic and exponentially improving. It can compound on the benefits of the previous years. And every researcher’s contributions compound on each other… We’re going to have incredible tools that bring the world of biology—which is very chaotic and constantly changing and diverse and complex—into the world of computer science. And that is going to be profound.” He tells the student audience at Berkeley: “If you happen to love this intersection, I think it’s going to be rich with opportunities. It’s going to be a giant industry.” Video source: @berkeleyhaas (2023) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“Most product people start by saying, ‘There’s a problem and we’re going to build a product that’s going to solve that problem. Then we’re going to market it,” NFX founder James Currier observes. Of the 45 companies James has spoken to in the last 18 months, at least 40 of them have said some version of this. “I was also taught this back in the 1990s,” James says. “But through experimentation, I’ve realized that this is actually the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it — if you want to grow your business — is to ask, ‘What is the language? How am I going to market this?’ . . . Figure out what the language is and then build the product to fit what the language is.” James gives the example of a photo sharing site he launched years ago: “It said ‘Store your Photos’ on the homepage, and we were not growing. So one day, we literally just changed the homepage to say ‘Share your Photos.’ The team that was working on it said, ‘Our site doesn’t actually share photos. It just stores the photos.’ I said, ‘Well, fix that.’ What ended up happening was they started building features that allowed people to share their photos, and we registered 47 million people in 6 months. And that was back when the Internet was 250 million people.” He continues: “What we realized was that by changing the language, you change how the users are interacting with your site. And you also change your thinking about the product so that the features and subsequent language in the product actually fits with the main value proposition.” James gives another example: “We had a matchmaking site, and the promise there was ‘Find a date.’ It wasn’t growing and we had to buy all this traffic from Google and elsewhere to keep the whole thing going. So what we did was we changed the language and the value proposition to say, ‘Help people find a date.’ When we did that, we registered 28 million people in about 9 months, virally with no cost to us. We changed the language, and then we changed the product subsequently.” --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“Most product people start by saying, ‘There’s a problem and we’re going to build a product that’s going to solve that problem. Then we’re going to market it,” NFX founder James Currier observes. Of the 45 companies James has spoken to in the last 18 months, at least 40 of them have said some version of this. “I was also taught this back in the 1990s,” James says. “But through experimentation, I’ve realized that this is actually the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it — if you want to grow your business — is to ask, ‘What is the language? How am I going to market this?’ . . . Figure out what the language is and then build the product to fit what the language is.” James gives the example of a photo sharing site he launched years ago: “It said ‘Store your Photos’ on the homepage, and we were not growing. So one day, we literally just changed the homepage to say ‘Share your Photos.’ The team that was working on it said, ‘Our site doesn’t actually share photos. It just stores the photos.’ I said, ‘Well, fix that.’ What ended up happening was they started building features that allowed people to share their photos, and we registered 47 million people in 6 months. And that was back when the Internet was 250 million people.” He continues: “What we realized was that by changing the language, you change how the users are interacting with your site. And you also change your thinking about the product so that the features and subsequent language in the product actually fits with the main value proposition.” James gives another example: “We had a matchmaking site, and the promise there was ‘Find a date.’ It wasn’t growing and we had to buy all this traffic from Google and elsewhere to keep the whole thing going. So what we did was we changed the language and the value proposition to say, ‘Help people find a date.’ When we did that, we registered 28 million people in about 9 months, virally with no cost to us. We changed the language, and then we changed the product subsequently.” --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is that they’re not specialists. They’re something closer to polymaths.” Thiel continues: “If you have a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he’d be able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things. He can speak about the details of the Facebook product. He can talk about the way people think about social media — the psychology and the way the culture is shifting. Management of the company, he has ideas on that. He has ideas on how [Facebook] fits into the bigger history of technology.” Thiel then contrasts this to a more typical academic view: “The academic view is that you’re sort of a narrow expert on one thing and that’s what you do. But it’s much more this polymath-like intellect that understands all these different things.” Video source: @rubinreport (2018) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is that they’re not specialists. They’re something closer to polymaths.” Thiel continues: “If you have a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he’d be able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things. He can speak about the details of the Facebook product. He can talk about the way people think about social media — the psychology and the way the culture is shifting. Management of the company, he has ideas on that. He has ideas on how [Facebook] fits into the bigger history of technology.” Thiel then contrasts this to a more typical academic view: “The academic view is that you’re sort of a narrow expert on one thing and that’s what you do. But it’s much more this polymath-like intellect that understands all these different things.” Video source: @rubinreport (2018) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“Marketplaces are incredibly defensible at scale, and maybe it’s because they’re incredibly hard to start. And the problem is simple - they call it the chicken and egg problem.” As Brian explains, it was tough to bootstrap Airbnb in the beginning because travelers couldn’t book homes if there was no inventory, and homeowners didn’t want to list their homes unless people were going to book them. “We didn’t know what to do for a while .We tried a lot of different things. And I can tell you what worked. Summer of 2008, the press announces that Barack Obama is moving from a 20,000 seat basketball arena to an 80,000 seat football stadium. And we said, that’s our shot. You have 60,000 people that don’t have housing, surely at least a few of them are going to need a place to stay… And so we literally started with local people in Denver. Then we started emailing bloggers. We got the bloggers. Then the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News covered us. Then the local ABC and NBC and CBS affiliates. And then the Wall Street Journal. Then the New York Times and CNN are in our living room… We did that in a matter of three weeks.” Brian continues: “We started these little infernos. You start getting a few users here, a hundred here, fifty there… And we did the same thing with the inauguration. And when you have a hundred people here and there, then you obsessively meet them… Paul Graham, our first investor, said it’s better to have a hundred people love you than a million people kind of like you. And the reason why is it’s really hard to build off of a really wide but shallow base. But with a hundred people, you can find out everything they want… You meet them, you spend a ton of time with them, and once they fall in love with your product, they’ll tell every one of their friends. That’s why [Airbnb] took a really long time to start, but it grew much faster later on.” Video source: @cwclub (2011) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
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“Marketplaces are incredibly defensible at scale, and maybe it’s because they’re incredibly hard to start. And the problem is simple - they call it the chicken and egg problem.” As Brian explains, it was tough to bootstrap Airbnb in the beginning because travelers couldn’t book homes if there was no inventory, and homeowners didn’t want to list their homes unless people were going to book them. “We didn’t know what to do for a while .We tried a lot of different things. And I can tell you what worked. Summer of 2008, the press announces that Barack Obama is moving from a 20,000 seat basketball arena to an 80,000 seat football stadium. And we said, that’s our shot. You have 60,000 people that don’t have housing, surely at least a few of them are going to need a place to stay… And so we literally started with local people in Denver. Then we started emailing bloggers. We got the bloggers. Then the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News covered us. Then the local ABC and NBC and CBS affiliates. And then the Wall Street Journal. Then the New York Times and CNN are in our living room… We did that in a matter of three weeks.” Brian continues: “We started these little infernos. You start getting a few users here, a hundred here, fifty there… And we did the same thing with the inauguration. And when you have a hundred people here and there, then you obsessively meet them… Paul Graham, our first investor, said it’s better to have a hundred people love you than a million people kind of like you. And the reason why is it’s really hard to build off of a really wide but shallow base. But with a hundred people, you can find out everything they want… You meet them, you spend a ton of time with them, and once they fall in love with your product, they’ll tell every one of their friends. That’s why [Airbnb] took a really long time to start, but it grew much faster later on.” Video source: @cwclub (2011) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 11,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) Instagram Stats & Analytics

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) has 259K Instagram followers with a 1.96% engagement rate over the past 12 months. Across 551 posts, Startup Archive received 346K total likes and 17.4M impressions, averaging 628 likes per post. This page tracks Startup Archive's performance metrics, top content, and engagement trends — updated daily.

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) Instagram Analytics FAQ

How many Instagram followers does Startup Archive have?+
Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) has 259K Instagram followers as of July 2026.
What is Startup Archive's Instagram engagement rate?+
Startup Archive's Instagram engagement rate is 1.96% over the last 12 months, based on 551 posts.
How many likes does Startup Archive get on Instagram?+
Startup Archive received 346K total likes across 551 posts in the last 12 months, averaging 628 likes per post.
How many Instagram impressions does Startup Archive get?+
Startup Archive's Instagram content generated 17.4M total impressions over the last 12 months.