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Last Year02/21/25 - 02/21/26
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Ben gives this advice to the Columbia University class of 2015: “Don’t follow your passion. Now I know you’re probably thinking: ‘That’s a really dumb idea because if you poll 1,000 people who are successful, they’ll all say they love what they do. And so the broad conclusion of the world is that if you do what you love, then you’ll be successful.’ But we’re engineers, so we know that might be true. It also might be the case that if you’re successful, you love what you do — you just love being successful, everybody loves you, it’s awesome. So which one is it?” He continues: “The first tricky thing about passions is they’re hard to prioritize. Are you more passionate about math or engineering? Are you more passionate about history or literature? Are you more passionate about video games or K-pop? These are tough decisions. How do you even know? On the other hand, what are you good at? Are you better at math or writing? That’s a much easier thing to figure out. The second thing that’s tricky if you’re going forward in time with this ‘follow your passion’ idea is that what you’re passionate about at 21 is not necessarily what you’re going to be passionate about at 40. Now this is true for boyfriends, as well as career choices. The third issue with following your passion is that you’re not necessarily good at your passion. Has anybody ever watched American Idol? So you know what I’m talking about. Just because you love singing doesn’t mean you should be a professional singer. And then finally, and most importantly, following your passion is a very ‘me-centered’ view of the world. And when you go through life, what you’ll find is that what you take out of the world — money, cars, stuff, accolades — is much less important than what you put into the world. And so my recommendation would be to follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better. That is the thing to follow.” Video source: @a16z (2015) --- 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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Ben gives this advice to the Columbia University class of 2015: “Don’t follow your passion. Now I know you’re probably thinking: ‘That’s a really dumb idea because if you poll 1,000 people who are successful, they’ll all say they love what they do. And so the broad conclusion of the world is that if you do what you love, then you’ll be successful.’ But we’re engineers, so we know that might be true. It also might be the case that if you’re successful, you love what you do — you just love being successful, everybody loves you, it’s awesome. So which one is it?” He continues: “The first tricky thing about passions is they’re hard to prioritize. Are you more passionate about math or engineering? Are you more passionate about history or literature? Are you more passionate about video games or K-pop? These are tough decisions. How do you even know? On the other hand, what are you good at? Are you better at math or writing? That’s a much easier thing to figure out. The second thing that’s tricky if you’re going forward in time with this ‘follow your passion’ idea is that what you’re passionate about at 21 is not necessarily what you’re going to be passionate about at 40. Now this is true for boyfriends, as well as career choices. The third issue with following your passion is that you’re not necessarily good at your passion. Has anybody ever watched American Idol? So you know what I’m talking about. Just because you love singing doesn’t mean you should be a professional singer. And then finally, and most importantly, following your passion is a very ‘me-centered’ view of the world. And when you go through life, what you’ll find is that what you take out of the world — money, cars, stuff, accolades — is much less important than what you put into the world. And so my recommendation would be to follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better. That is the thing to follow.” Video source: @a16z (2015) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
“There are big things that are really important to manage — and by the way, it’s astonishingly hard to focus on just the big things. Even though they’re obvious, they’re really hard to focus on. But in addition to that, there are all these tiny customer deficiencies. We call those ‘paper cuts,’ and we make long lists of them. Then we have dedicated teams that go fix paper cuts. That’s because the teams that are working on the big issues never get to the paper cuts. They never work their way down the list. They’re working on big things — as they should and as you want them to — so you need special teams who are charged with fixing paper cuts.” Video source: @lexfridman (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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“There are big things that are really important to manage — and by the way, it’s astonishingly hard to focus on just the big things. Even though they’re obvious, they’re really hard to focus on. But in addition to that, there are all these tiny customer deficiencies. We call those ‘paper cuts,’ and we make long lists of them. Then we have dedicated teams that go fix paper cuts. That’s because the teams that are working on the big issues never get to the paper cuts. They never work their way down the list. They’re working on big things — as they should and as you want them to — so you need special teams who are charged with fixing paper cuts.” Video source: @lexfridman (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
Y Combinator accepts or rejects a company after just a 10 minute interview. Sam admits he didn’t think you’d be able to do much better than random with only 10 minutes, but he doesn’t think that’s true anymore. “It turns out that in 10 minutes if the only question you’re trying to answer is: Does this person have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg?… [You don’t get to] 100% accuracy, obviously, but it’s good enough that our business model works.” Sam continues: “The obvious thing is intelligence… You can tell that really quickly, much less than 10 minutes… The hardest trait that we’re looking for is determination, and when we’re really wrong one way or the other on a founder, it’s because we were miscalibrated on how determined that founder seemed.” As Sam explains in the clip, he also looks for clarity of vision, communication skills, and non-obvious brilliance of the idea. Video source: @khoslaventures (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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Y Combinator accepts or rejects a company after just a 10 minute interview. Sam admits he didn’t think you’d be able to do much better than random with only 10 minutes, but he doesn’t think that’s true anymore. “It turns out that in 10 minutes if the only question you’re trying to answer is: Does this person have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg?… [You don’t get to] 100% accuracy, obviously, but it’s good enough that our business model works.” Sam continues: “The obvious thing is intelligence… You can tell that really quickly, much less than 10 minutes… The hardest trait that we’re looking for is determination, and when we’re really wrong one way or the other on a founder, it’s because we were miscalibrated on how determined that founder seemed.” As Sam explains in the clip, he also looks for clarity of vision, communication skills, and non-obvious brilliance of the idea. Video source: @khoslaventures (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
Your first goal should be to launch quickly: “This is something that’s been part of the YC ethos from the very beginning. It’s been great advice for 10 years, and it continues to be great advice. If you walk away with one thing from this presentation, it’s launch something bad quickly.” The second goal is to get some initial customers: “Get anyone interacting with your product and seeing if they can get value out of it… You’d be surprised at how many founder’s journeys end before a single user has actually interacted with a product they’ve created. It’s very, very common. So please get past this step. It’s extremely important.” The third goal is to talk to your users: “This one is also an extremely common mistake because most founders have in their heads an idea of what they want to build. So they have this weird feeling that if they haven’t built the full thing, getting feedback on the initial thing is kind of useless.” The reality is that the idea you have in your end might turn out to be something customers don’t want at all. Michael has a saying: “Hold the problem you’re solving tightly. Hold the customer tightly. Hold the solution you’re building loosely.” The last step is to iterate and make sure you don’t fall in love with your solution. He gives an example of founders trying to build a screwdriver for a mechanic. If the screwdriver isn’t good, don’t ask yourself what other problems it can solve (e.g. “maybe I can use it to cook or to clean?”): “If your screwdriver doesn’t help the mechanic solve the problem, keep the mechanic, keep the problem. Fix the screwdriver! That’s the thing that’s broken… Continue improving on your solution until it actually solves the problem.” 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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Your first goal should be to launch quickly: “This is something that’s been part of the YC ethos from the very beginning. It’s been great advice for 10 years, and it continues to be great advice. If you walk away with one thing from this presentation, it’s launch something bad quickly.” The second goal is to get some initial customers: “Get anyone interacting with your product and seeing if they can get value out of it… You’d be surprised at how many founder’s journeys end before a single user has actually interacted with a product they’ve created. It’s very, very common. So please get past this step. It’s extremely important.” The third goal is to talk to your users: “This one is also an extremely common mistake because most founders have in their heads an idea of what they want to build. So they have this weird feeling that if they haven’t built the full thing, getting feedback on the initial thing is kind of useless.” The reality is that the idea you have in your end might turn out to be something customers don’t want at all. Michael has a saying: “Hold the problem you’re solving tightly. Hold the customer tightly. Hold the solution you’re building loosely.” The last step is to iterate and make sure you don’t fall in love with your solution. He gives an example of founders trying to build a screwdriver for a mechanic. If the screwdriver isn’t good, don’t ask yourself what other problems it can solve (e.g. “maybe I can use it to cook or to clean?”): “If your screwdriver doesn’t help the mechanic solve the problem, keep the mechanic, keep the problem. Fix the screwdriver! That’s the thing that’s broken… Continue improving on your solution until it actually solves the problem.” 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
“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
Brian first advises those who are currently employed to not build your project on company hours or on your company laptop: “If you build it on company time or on the company hardware, the company probably owns the IP.” Then he describes his schedule for working on Coinbase while still working full-time at Airbnb. “I would often work [at Airbnb] until 7pm. I’d come home, eat dinner, and then I would work from 8pm to midnight. I would do that maybe 3-4 days a week on weekdays. And then on the weekend I’d work Sunday afternoon for 7-8 hours.” Brian did this consistently for about a year and a half until Coinbase was far enough along for him to get seed funding from Y Combinator. “It sucked. I mean I was tired after the full day of work [at Airbnb]. But this is where determination comes in… At that moment in time, I was in my late 20s, and I was like, ‘I really want to try to build something important in the world.’” When asked how he maintained friendships during this time, Brian replies: “I was pretty intense about it. I would say I sacrificed friendships for it. It’s not like I was just never responding to people, but I’ve seen this happen to various people. They get to a certain point in their life. Sometimes they turn a certain age where they thought they would have more done by then or maybe someone in their family passes away and they’re like, Oh my god, time is finite. It’s precious. And something happens where they’re like, ‘I’m going to get this done, no matter the cost.’” Brian tells those out there who might be in a similar situation: “Go hard at it. Finish your book. Launch your thing. Just start doing stuff - and even if you don’t know what to do, just do anything, because action will produce information and it’ll help you get to the right thing.” Video source: @steven (2022) --- 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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Brian first advises those who are currently employed to not build your project on company hours or on your company laptop: “If you build it on company time or on the company hardware, the company probably owns the IP.” Then he describes his schedule for working on Coinbase while still working full-time at Airbnb. “I would often work [at Airbnb] until 7pm. I’d come home, eat dinner, and then I would work from 8pm to midnight. I would do that maybe 3-4 days a week on weekdays. And then on the weekend I’d work Sunday afternoon for 7-8 hours.” Brian did this consistently for about a year and a half until Coinbase was far enough along for him to get seed funding from Y Combinator. “It sucked. I mean I was tired after the full day of work [at Airbnb]. But this is where determination comes in… At that moment in time, I was in my late 20s, and I was like, ‘I really want to try to build something important in the world.’” When asked how he maintained friendships during this time, Brian replies: “I was pretty intense about it. I would say I sacrificed friendships for it. It’s not like I was just never responding to people, but I’ve seen this happen to various people. They get to a certain point in their life. Sometimes they turn a certain age where they thought they would have more done by then or maybe someone in their family passes away and they’re like, Oh my god, time is finite. It’s precious. And something happens where they’re like, ‘I’m going to get this done, no matter the cost.’” Brian tells those out there who might be in a similar situation: “Go hard at it. Finish your book. Launch your thing. Just start doing stuff - and even if you don’t know what to do, just do anything, because action will produce information and it’ll help you get to the right thing.” Video source: @steven (2022) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ 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 her TED Talk “Visionaries are People Who Can See In The Dark”, Justine Musk shares her experience reading a recent profile Elon: “He’s quoted as saying something to a friend — and this happened during the time we were still married together… He said that he was prepared to sacrifice his entire fortune to get a rocket into orbit. And he said, ‘I don’t care if Justine and the kids and I end up living in Justine’s parents’ basement. I’m going to make this happen.’ And so I read this and kind of wanted to go back in time, go up to him, take him by the shoulders, look him very seriously in the eyes, and say, ‘Have you seen my parents’ basement?’” Justine reflects what it means to be a visionary: “Visionaries take all that passion, their badass personalities, their mad skills, and the mastery of their chosen subject matter, and they use it to put themselves on the line unlike anybody else you’ll ever meet. And it’s this that allows them to open up windows into another, deeper reality in which transformation is possible and things of awe happen on a regular basis.” She continues: “In the beginning, we don’t trust them because we think they’re crazy, but by the end, we trust them because we know they’re crazy. They’re crazy enough to accomplish anything and risk it all in order to bring us something new to believe in. They might make lousy husbands and terrible wives. They might be the friend who never sends you a birthday present and forgets to show up for coffee. But they bring light to the dark, and they show us the universe.” Video source: @ted (2017) --- 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 her TED Talk “Visionaries are People Who Can See In The Dark”, Justine Musk shares her experience reading a recent profile Elon: “He’s quoted as saying something to a friend — and this happened during the time we were still married together… He said that he was prepared to sacrifice his entire fortune to get a rocket into orbit. And he said, ‘I don’t care if Justine and the kids and I end up living in Justine’s parents’ basement. I’m going to make this happen.’ And so I read this and kind of wanted to go back in time, go up to him, take him by the shoulders, look him very seriously in the eyes, and say, ‘Have you seen my parents’ basement?’” Justine reflects what it means to be a visionary: “Visionaries take all that passion, their badass personalities, their mad skills, and the mastery of their chosen subject matter, and they use it to put themselves on the line unlike anybody else you’ll ever meet. And it’s this that allows them to open up windows into another, deeper reality in which transformation is possible and things of awe happen on a regular basis.” She continues: “In the beginning, we don’t trust them because we think they’re crazy, but by the end, we trust them because we know they’re crazy. They’re crazy enough to accomplish anything and risk it all in order to bring us something new to believe in. They might make lousy husbands and terrible wives. They might be the friend who never sends you a birthday present and forgets to show up for coffee. But they bring light to the dark, and they show us the universe.” Video source: @ted (2017) --- Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read the free newsletter at startuparchive.org
Sam Altman recalls: “I remember in 2011, people would say WhatsApp is never going to work because they charge a dollar and it’s a viral app and that’s just going to kill it right there.” But Jan explains that charging $1 was a very intentional lever WhatsApp used to slow growth: “I know it sounds very counterintuitive - why would you want to slow your growth? We wanted to slow our growth so we could better support our existing users. So we could build servers that don’t crash. So that we could build a product that doesn’t drop messages. So that we could answer their customer support emails.” A lot of people told Jan and the WhatsApp team this was a bad strategy, but Jan compares it to what Facebook did in the early days: “They were doing colleges only, and they weren’t open to the entire world.” WhatsApp wanted to do the same thing: “We wanted to make sure that we have our existing users happy, and that when people sign up, they have a great experience, and that the app works, and it’s fast, and the servers are up and running all the time. And I think that worked for us because we were really able to focus on the product.” 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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Sam Altman recalls: “I remember in 2011, people would say WhatsApp is never going to work because they charge a dollar and it’s a viral app and that’s just going to kill it right there.” But Jan explains that charging $1 was a very intentional lever WhatsApp used to slow growth: “I know it sounds very counterintuitive - why would you want to slow your growth? We wanted to slow our growth so we could better support our existing users. So we could build servers that don’t crash. So that we could build a product that doesn’t drop messages. So that we could answer their customer support emails.” A lot of people told Jan and the WhatsApp team this was a bad strategy, but Jan compares it to what Facebook did in the early days: “They were doing colleges only, and they weren’t open to the entire world.” WhatsApp wanted to do the same thing: “We wanted to make sure that we have our existing users happy, and that when people sign up, they have a great experience, and that the app works, and it’s fast, and the servers are up and running all the time. And I think that worked for us because we were really able to focus on the product.” 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
“The most important thing is there are no formulas. At the end of the day, you have to do what you love, and you have to do it even though people tell you it’ll never work. But that being said, if there was a formula [for starting a company], I would put it something like this.” Naval started seven companies before AngelList and this is the checklist he recommends running through before starting a startup: 1. Pick a great cofounder. This is most important: “You can do a company on your own, but it’s like you can raise a child on your own, but you probably shouldn’t. You need someone who’s going to be there with you.” This has it’s own checklist. Your cofounder should be: a. Very high intelligence (”hopefully they make you feel dumb, or they’re not smart enough”) b. Very high energy (”They should be extremely hardworking. A founder is someone who never has to be motivated. You should not have to be telling them to do their job.”) c. Very high integrity. (”a smart, hardworking crook who’s going to cheat you is the worst kind of person to be paired up with.”) 2. Pick a very large market. “Notice I don’t talk about the idea. I think ideas are almost irrelevant… The more important thing is that you pick a large space that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. And then you will figure out what the right thing to do within that space is.” You want to be able to say to investors: “This is a space where there’s a huge market. I’m really knowledgeable and passionate about it. Here’s the great person that I have doing it with me. And here’s the minimum viable product that we have built. That will show that we can test in the marketplace… You iterate until you get to product/market fit… And then you go and you raise money from people you trust. And you use that money to scale.” --- 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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“The most important thing is there are no formulas. At the end of the day, you have to do what you love, and you have to do it even though people tell you it’ll never work. But that being said, if there was a formula [for starting a company], I would put it something like this.” Naval started seven companies before AngelList and this is the checklist he recommends running through before starting a startup: 1. Pick a great cofounder. This is most important: “You can do a company on your own, but it’s like you can raise a child on your own, but you probably shouldn’t. You need someone who’s going to be there with you.” This has it’s own checklist. Your cofounder should be: a. Very high intelligence (”hopefully they make you feel dumb, or they’re not smart enough”) b. Very high energy (”They should be extremely hardworking. A founder is someone who never has to be motivated. You should not have to be telling them to do their job.”) c. Very high integrity. (”a smart, hardworking crook who’s going to cheat you is the worst kind of person to be paired up with.”) 2. Pick a very large market. “Notice I don’t talk about the idea. I think ideas are almost irrelevant… The more important thing is that you pick a large space that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. And then you will figure out what the right thing to do within that space is.” You want to be able to say to investors: “This is a space where there’s a huge market. I’m really knowledgeable and passionate about it. Here’s the great person that I have doing it with me. And here’s the minimum viable product that we have built. That will show that we can test in the marketplace… You iterate until you get to product/market fit… And then you go and you raise money from people you trust. And you use that money to scale.” --- 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 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
“This is a slight aesthetic thing that I believe in very strongly: the names of companies are often very predictive of future failure or success.” PayPal and Napster are the first example Thiel gives: “PayPal was a very friendly name — it was the friend that helps you pay. Napster was a bad name — you nap some music, you nap a kid. That sounds like a bad thing to be doing, and it’s no wonder the government then comes in and shuts the company down within a few years.” “You want to be very careful of how you name companies,” Thiel warns founders. In the context of the sharing economy, he likes Airbnb more than Uber: “Airbnb sounds very innocent like this virtual bread and breakfast — this very light, non-threatening sort of company. Uber sounds like a bad name from Germany sometime in the 1930s. What are you exactly above? Maybe the law? This is probably something that, again from a regulatory perspective, I think Airbnb is a vastly better name than Uber.” And on the social networking side, Thiel likes Facebook more than MySpace: “You can say that all these social networks involve both reading and writing… Over time, reading dominates writing. Facebook was about learning about people around you — about their real identities at Harvard. MySpace started among wannabe actors in Los Angeles, and it was about them coming up with fictional narratives around themselves and a lot of other people in LA who are generally like that. And because reading dominates writing, Facebook would ultimately dominate MySpace. There’s a certain version where the whole arc of the company and the whole product arc was implicit in the names.” Video source: @mercatuscenter (2015) --- 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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“This is a slight aesthetic thing that I believe in very strongly: the names of companies are often very predictive of future failure or success.” PayPal and Napster are the first example Thiel gives: “PayPal was a very friendly name — it was the friend that helps you pay. Napster was a bad name — you nap some music, you nap a kid. That sounds like a bad thing to be doing, and it’s no wonder the government then comes in and shuts the company down within a few years.” “You want to be very careful of how you name companies,” Thiel warns founders. In the context of the sharing economy, he likes Airbnb more than Uber: “Airbnb sounds very innocent like this virtual bread and breakfast — this very light, non-threatening sort of company. Uber sounds like a bad name from Germany sometime in the 1930s. What are you exactly above? Maybe the law? This is probably something that, again from a regulatory perspective, I think Airbnb is a vastly better name than Uber.” And on the social networking side, Thiel likes Facebook more than MySpace: “You can say that all these social networks involve both reading and writing… Over time, reading dominates writing. Facebook was about learning about people around you — about their real identities at Harvard. MySpace started among wannabe actors in Los Angeles, and it was about them coming up with fictional narratives around themselves and a lot of other people in LA who are generally like that. And because reading dominates writing, Facebook would ultimately dominate MySpace. There’s a certain version where the whole arc of the company and the whole product arc was implicit in the names.” Video source: @mercatuscenter (2015) --- 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 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
“No other commitments outside of work. No attachment to money. Obsessively curious about the work. Willing to work for very long periods of time with no success. No ego attachment to outcomes.” Spenser imagined an extreme — almost fanatical — archetype. A persona almost no sane person would attempt to emulate. His reasoning: The fewer distractions, the greater the chance of building something great. Spenser adds: “Peter Thiel said CEO pay is anti-correlated with company success. I thought — great, I’ll just not pay myself anything.” He wanted to stack every advantage, even small ones: “The more I can be this person, the more likely it is I’ll build a successful 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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“No other commitments outside of work. No attachment to money. Obsessively curious about the work. Willing to work for very long periods of time with no success. No ego attachment to outcomes.” Spenser imagined an extreme — almost fanatical — archetype. A persona almost no sane person would attempt to emulate. His reasoning: The fewer distractions, the greater the chance of building something great. Spenser adds: “Peter Thiel said CEO pay is anti-correlated with company success. I thought — great, I’ll just not pay myself anything.” He wanted to stack every advantage, even small ones: “The more I can be this person, the more likely it is I’ll build a successful 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 my mind, there probably are only two broad categories in the entire history of the last 250 years where people have actually come up with new things and made money doing so.” The first is vertically-integrated, complex monopolies, which people started building at the end of the second industrial revolution—like Standard Oil and Ford at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th century. As Peter points out, this is done surprisingly little today: “It’s typically fairly capital intensive and we live in a culture where it’s very hard to get people to buy into anything that’s super complicated and takes very long to build.” But if you can pull it off—as Elon Musk has done with Tesla and SpacEx—these companies can be very valuable. “Vertical integration is a very under-explored modality of technological progress that people would do well to look at more.” The other category Thiel has come up with new things and made money doing so is software. “There is something about software itself that is very powerful. Software has these incredible economies of scale and low marginal cost. And there is something about the world of bits—as opposed to the world of atoms—where you can often get very fast adoption.” 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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“In my mind, there probably are only two broad categories in the entire history of the last 250 years where people have actually come up with new things and made money doing so.” The first is vertically-integrated, complex monopolies, which people started building at the end of the second industrial revolution—like Standard Oil and Ford at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th century. As Peter points out, this is done surprisingly little today: “It’s typically fairly capital intensive and we live in a culture where it’s very hard to get people to buy into anything that’s super complicated and takes very long to build.” But if you can pull it off—as Elon Musk has done with Tesla and SpacEx—these companies can be very valuable. “Vertical integration is a very under-explored modality of technological progress that people would do well to look at more.” The other category Thiel has come up with new things and made money doing so is software. “There is something about software itself that is very powerful. Software has these incredible economies of scale and low marginal cost. And there is something about the world of bits—as opposed to the world of atoms—where you can often get very fast adoption.” 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
“The question that investors usually ask is: ‘How big is your market?’ I think this is a terrible question. You would never ask a startup, ‘How big is your current revenue?’ and make your investment decision based off of that. You’d want to know how it was going to grow. It’s the same thing for markets.” Sam continues: “The markets that are best for startups are markets that are small today and going to grow explosively over the next 10 years.” The other factor Sam has found to be predictive of startup success is whether or not the startup has already captured a significant part of some small market: “Airbnb by the end of YC had captured a significant amount of pre-existing apartment renters in New York City. Stripe had captured nearly 100% of YC companies in their current batch that wanted to process payments. We look for something like that, but you don’t always see it.” Video source: @khoslaventures (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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“The question that investors usually ask is: ‘How big is your market?’ I think this is a terrible question. You would never ask a startup, ‘How big is your current revenue?’ and make your investment decision based off of that. You’d want to know how it was going to grow. It’s the same thing for markets.” Sam continues: “The markets that are best for startups are markets that are small today and going to grow explosively over the next 10 years.” The other factor Sam has found to be predictive of startup success is whether or not the startup has already captured a significant part of some small market: “Airbnb by the end of YC had captured a significant amount of pre-existing apartment renters in New York City. Stripe had captured nearly 100% of YC companies in their current batch that wanted to process payments. We look for something like that, but you don’t always see it.” Video source: @khoslaventures (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
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

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) Instagram Stats & Analytics

Startup Archive (@startuparchive_) has 262K Instagram followers with a 2.11% engagement rate over the past 12 months. Across 786 posts, Startup Archive received 686K total likes and 30M impressions, averaging 873 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 262K Instagram followers as of February 2026.
What is Startup Archive's Instagram engagement rate?+
Startup Archive's Instagram engagement rate is 2.11% over the last 12 months, based on 786 posts.
How many likes does Startup Archive get on Instagram?+
Startup Archive received 686K total likes across 786 posts in the last year, averaging 873 likes per post.
How many Instagram impressions does Startup Archive get?+
Startup Archive's Instagram content generated 30M total impressions over the last 12 months.