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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
Sam is asked what a founder should do if they have an idea but don’t want to talk about it because a big company might steal it. He responds: “Here is one of the things that takes founders a long time to learn: No matter how great your idea is, no one cares. Everybody is so distracted that you could probably put that idea with exact instructions for how to implement it on Tim Cook’s desk and take no risk.” Sam continues: “Extreme secrecy among founders is a bad sign. You want to keep some things secret for sure, but you should be willing to talk about the broad sketches of what you’re doing because you need that to recruit people, to get investors, to get customers.” Talking about your idea is also how you get feedback from other really smart people. Sam gives his own experience with Y Combinator as an example: “We at YC talk about everything we do. We talk about how to operate. We give our best possible advice. I have given talks before to rooms of people that want to start accelerators. And I say: ‘If you want to start an accelerator, here is exactly what to do step by step, and here are the mistakes to avoid step by step.’ And people always say, ‘Are you crazy? You’re giving away YC secrets.’ And we are, and yet no one ever listens… It was hard for me to learn this lesson of not fearing this… But don’t be afraid of telling people what you do.” Video source: @washuengineers (2016) --- 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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Sam is asked what a founder should do if they have an idea but don’t want to talk about it because a big company might steal it. He responds: “Here is one of the things that takes founders a long time to learn: No matter how great your idea is, no one cares. Everybody is so distracted that you could probably put that idea with exact instructions for how to implement it on Tim Cook’s desk and take no risk.” Sam continues: “Extreme secrecy among founders is a bad sign. You want to keep some things secret for sure, but you should be willing to talk about the broad sketches of what you’re doing because you need that to recruit people, to get investors, to get customers.” Talking about your idea is also how you get feedback from other really smart people. Sam gives his own experience with Y Combinator as an example: “We at YC talk about everything we do. We talk about how to operate. We give our best possible advice. I have given talks before to rooms of people that want to start accelerators. And I say: ‘If you want to start an accelerator, here is exactly what to do step by step, and here are the mistakes to avoid step by step.’ And people always say, ‘Are you crazy? You’re giving away YC secrets.’ And we are, and yet no one ever listens… It was hard for me to learn this lesson of not fearing this… But don’t be afraid of telling people what you do.” Video source: @washuengineers (2016) --- 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 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
Keith shares his “Barrels and Ammunition” framework for building effective teams: “Most companies—once they get into hiring mode—just hire a lot of people. And you expect that as you add people your throughput and velocity of shipping things is going to increase. But it turns out it doesn’t work that way. Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don’t get that much more done. You sometimes get less done.” Keith argues that the reason for this is that most people in a company—even great people—are “ammunition.” But to improve velocity, you need “barrels”. He defines barrels as extremely talented people who can take ideas from inception all the way through to fully shipped product. Most companies start with one barrel (the founder). And when they add another, they can get twice as many things done per week, quarter, etc. But true barrels are incredibly difficult to find: “When you have them, give them lots of equity, promote them, take them to dinner every week because they’re virtually irreplaceable. They’re also very culturally specific. A barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company.” Video source: @ycombinator (2014) --- 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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Keith shares his “Barrels and Ammunition” framework for building effective teams: “Most companies—once they get into hiring mode—just hire a lot of people. And you expect that as you add people your throughput and velocity of shipping things is going to increase. But it turns out it doesn’t work that way. Usually when you hire more engineers, you actually don’t get that much more done. You sometimes get less done.” Keith argues that the reason for this is that most people in a company—even great people—are “ammunition.” But to improve velocity, you need “barrels”. He defines barrels as extremely talented people who can take ideas from inception all the way through to fully shipped product. Most companies start with one barrel (the founder). And when they add another, they can get twice as many things done per week, quarter, etc. But true barrels are incredibly difficult to find: “When you have them, give them lots of equity, promote them, take them to dinner every week because they’re virtually irreplaceable. They’re also very culturally specific. A barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company.” Video source: @ycombinator (2014) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ 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
When junior team members at Khosla Ventures ask Vinod if they can serve on portfolio company boards, Vinod responds: “You haven’t earned the right to advise an entrepreneur. Just because you got an MBA and joined a venture firm doesn’t mean you’re qualified to advise an entrepreneur.” Vinod believes one of the best ways to earn that right (but not the only way) is to build a large company yourself: “Have you gone through how hard it is, how uncertain it is, how traumatic it is to go through?… If somebody has never dealt with this decision-making under ambiguity, they’re not qualified to help you… Whose advice to trust on what topic is the single hardest decision an entrepreneur makes. It’s also where the right investors can really help you.” He gives the example of asking a marketing executive at IBM for marketing advice: “They’ve never dealt with things where the market isn’t established… They’re not qualified to invent whole new markets.” He also recalls a recent argument with a co-investor who wanted their healthcare portfolio company to hire a healthcare executive from an established company: “They wanted this healthcare person who had never dealt with change beyond 2% a year, and I’m like, experience doesn’t matter. The rate of learning matters [for a role like this].” Video source: @ycombinator (2019) --- 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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When junior team members at Khosla Ventures ask Vinod if they can serve on portfolio company boards, Vinod responds: “You haven’t earned the right to advise an entrepreneur. Just because you got an MBA and joined a venture firm doesn’t mean you’re qualified to advise an entrepreneur.” Vinod believes one of the best ways to earn that right (but not the only way) is to build a large company yourself: “Have you gone through how hard it is, how uncertain it is, how traumatic it is to go through?… If somebody has never dealt with this decision-making under ambiguity, they’re not qualified to help you… Whose advice to trust on what topic is the single hardest decision an entrepreneur makes. It’s also where the right investors can really help you.” He gives the example of asking a marketing executive at IBM for marketing advice: “They’ve never dealt with things where the market isn’t established… They’re not qualified to invent whole new markets.” He also recalls a recent argument with a co-investor who wanted their healthcare portfolio company to hire a healthcare executive from an established company: “They wanted this healthcare person who had never dealt with change beyond 2% a year, and I’m like, experience doesn’t matter. The rate of learning matters [for a role like this].” Video source: @ycombinator (2019) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ 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
All founders will hire the wrong person at some point. When asked what signals he looks for to realize he’s made a hiring mistake, Max responds with a quote from the movie Ronin: "Whenever there's a doubt, there's no doubt." He explains: “When you're staring at a peer - or if you're the CEO, at a direct report - and you catch yourself thinking, I wonder if you're here next year. This person shouldn't be here today. Unfortunately, it's that binary.” Importantly, this is not the same as hating a person’s guts at times - Max caveats that brilliant people cause that sort of emotional response. Wondering if a person will still be at the company next year is different: ”Boring people, untalented people, not hardworking people, people that don't have the company's best interest in mind, people that are undermining each other. Those people make you think I should have fired you yesterday… No one's ever said I wish I had fired that person later… When there's a doubt, there is no doubt. That's also applicable just about every other situation in life, but in people it's infinitely applicable.” Video source: @khoslaventures (2024) --- 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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All founders will hire the wrong person at some point. When asked what signals he looks for to realize he’s made a hiring mistake, Max responds with a quote from the movie Ronin: "Whenever there's a doubt, there's no doubt." He explains: “When you're staring at a peer - or if you're the CEO, at a direct report - and you catch yourself thinking, I wonder if you're here next year. This person shouldn't be here today. Unfortunately, it's that binary.” Importantly, this is not the same as hating a person’s guts at times - Max caveats that brilliant people cause that sort of emotional response. Wondering if a person will still be at the company next year is different: ”Boring people, untalented people, not hardworking people, people that don't have the company's best interest in mind, people that are undermining each other. Those people make you think I should have fired you yesterday… No one's ever said I wish I had fired that person later… When there's a doubt, there is no doubt. That's also applicable just about every other situation in life, but in people it's infinitely applicable.” Video source: @khoslaventures (2024) --- 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
Aditya recalls starting at Facebook in 2005. A few weeks into his new role, Mark Zuckerberg comes up to him and suggests he build a search engine: “When people come to Facebook, the first thing they want to do is search for people.” Aditya’s first reaction was that search was a really important thing to get right and he had never built a search engine - wouldn’t it make more sense to just hire somebody from Google or Yahoo to do it? Mark replied: “If I can build Facebook, you can build a search engine.” And he was right - Aditya did end up building search for Facebook. This interaction also left a lasting impression on Aditya: “All of us can build whatever we put our minds to. And this is the culture that for me still defines Facebook - there is this hacker, can-do, total-ownership culture. If I could tell every startup in the world to take one thing, it would be you can do whatever you want as long as you put your mind to it. It’s probably easier than you think.” Video source: @southparkcommons (2024) --- 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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Aditya recalls starting at Facebook in 2005. A few weeks into his new role, Mark Zuckerberg comes up to him and suggests he build a search engine: “When people come to Facebook, the first thing they want to do is search for people.” Aditya’s first reaction was that search was a really important thing to get right and he had never built a search engine - wouldn’t it make more sense to just hire somebody from Google or Yahoo to do it? Mark replied: “If I can build Facebook, you can build a search engine.” And he was right - Aditya did end up building search for Facebook. This interaction also left a lasting impression on Aditya: “All of us can build whatever we put our minds to. And this is the culture that for me still defines Facebook - there is this hacker, can-do, total-ownership culture. If I could tell every startup in the world to take one thing, it would be you can do whatever you want as long as you put your mind to it. It’s probably easier than you think.” Video source: @southparkcommons (2024) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ 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

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) Instagram Stats & Analytics

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) has 260K Instagram followers with a 1.97% engagement rate over the past 12 months. Across 600 posts, Startup Archive received 394K total likes and 19.5M impressions, averaging 657 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 260K Instagram followers as of June 2026.
What is Startup Archive's Instagram engagement rate?+
Startup Archive's Instagram engagement rate is 1.97% over the last 12 months, based on 600 posts.
How many likes does Startup Archive get on Instagram?+
Startup Archive received 394K total likes across 600 posts in the last 12 months, averaging 657 likes per post.
How many Instagram impressions does Startup Archive get?+
Startup Archive's Instagram content generated 19.5M total impressions over the last 12 months.