<story><title>How to Succeed with a Startup [video]</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-how-to-succeed-with-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rexreed</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll counter with some more basic and more broadly applicable advice.&lt;p&gt;1) Build a product people actually want and need and will pay money for&lt;p&gt;2) Promote yourself incessantly because others will be promoting themselves even more incessantly.&lt;p&gt;3) Spend your money wisely - focus on people, product, and marketing. Don&amp;#x27;t waste your money on office trappings and stuff that makes you feel good. Save your lunch money.&lt;p&gt;4) Ignore Venture Capital. If you are actually selling something people want, you can grow on revenues. If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want or if your growth is greater than revenue, then the VCs will want to talk to you anyways. Because a) you&amp;#x27;re growing and b) customers actually want what you have. But don&amp;#x27;t start by focusing on what VCs want. Focus on what your customers want instead.&lt;p&gt;5) Always be selling. To your customers. To the press. To your employees. To anyone who matters. Never stop talking about your company.&lt;p&gt;6) Always be listening. To your customers. To your employees. The easiest and best ideas come from others.&lt;p&gt;7) Re-invest. Plow your earnings back into the company and promotion.&lt;p&gt;8) It&amp;#x27;s ok not to have a competitive advantage. What? Ok maybe you need to have some advantage but it doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be nearly as significant as is stated in this video. You need to have some reason for your customers to buy your product or service instead of competitors&amp;#x27;, so there&amp;#x27;s always some advantage. It could be price. Features. better service. But it could also be just a better connection with your prospects. Or perhaps you manage to place yourself in the right place at the right time. Or maybe you&amp;#x27;re just spending a lot on marketing. If you want to be successful, you need to identify at least one FAIR competitive advantage that your customers care about. And if you want to be super successful, identify one UNFAIR competitive advantage that locks out the competition. That could be an exclusive partnership, some intellectual property advantage, or connections with your customers that your competitors can&amp;#x27;t easily obtain.&lt;p&gt;This applies no matter if you&amp;#x27;re running a silicon valley style startup or a cybersecurity enterprise-focused government client startup -- both can make you millions or billions.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to Succeed with a Startup [video]</title><url>https://blog.ycombinator.com/sam-altman-how-to-succeed-with-a-startup/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sinatra</author><text>- &amp;quot;Product so good that people wanna tell others about it&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mean this is an excuse to hide in a corner and keep building the product. Product can&amp;#x27;t be &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; if it&amp;#x27;s not based on frequent and lots of conversations &amp;#x2F; interactions with users.&lt;p&gt;- The point about &amp;quot;exponential growth in market&amp;quot; is very important if your startup wants to raise money from VCs and has similar goals. Otherwise, focusing on creating value even in mature markets can be a good choice too. Same point applies to the &amp;quot;Huge if it works&amp;quot; point too.&lt;p&gt;- His point about real trend vs fake trend is also a good point for your own product&amp;#x27;s real usage vs fake usage. Are people &amp;quot;really&amp;quot; engaged and using your product or are they just thinking that it&amp;#x27;s cool but not really using it?&lt;p&gt;- I have nothing to add to what he said about the team, but team is so important that I wanted to mention it as well.&lt;p&gt;- His point about optimism is another point where team (or advisors or well-wishers) help. A startup is a roller-coaster. You will have days of negativity and doubts. At that moment, a team member (or someone similar) who pushes you and encourages you is very important!&lt;p&gt;- Love the points about &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;ll figure it out&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve got it&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- &amp;quot;Bias towards action&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t mean being busy for the sake of being busy. In my career, I&amp;#x27;ve seen so many months wasted because action wasn&amp;#x27;t based on well-thought-out logic. So, certainly keep bias towards action, but don&amp;#x27;t use it as no excuse to not think. A good way to not move fast is to move fast in unnecessary directions.&lt;p&gt;- The &amp;quot;Never lose momentum&amp;quot; point is so difficult in real world (unless you&amp;#x27;re lucky). But, good to be reminded about.&lt;p&gt;- The point about &amp;quot;Distribution startegy&amp;quot; is another great point. Every distribution strategy we are thinking of is going to turn out to be harder than we thought. Still, finding new &amp;#x2F; unexplored distribution sources compared to your competition can be a great win!&lt;p&gt;- I am sure this wasn&amp;#x27;t intentional, but I&amp;#x27;ll say that the talk didn&amp;#x27;t focus enough on users &amp;#x2F; customers. In the end, it&amp;#x27;s all about creating genuine value for the customers &amp;#x2F; users.</text></comment>