#103 - Michael Seibel

Michael Seibel is a partner and the CEO of YC. He cofounded Justin.tv, which was in the winter 2007 batch and Socialcam, which was in the winter 2012 batch. In this episode Michael comments on five of his essays. The essays are: Why Should I Start a Startup?, One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup, The Real Product Market Fit, Users You Don’t Want, and Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money? Michael’s on Twitter @mwseibel. The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon. *** Topics 0:00 - Intro 0:42 - Why Should I Start a Startup? 2:00 - Three types of people: people highly motivated when working for themselves, people that could succeed starting a startup or within a big company, and people that could succeed within a big company. 6:00 - How do you decide what type of person you are? 7:30 - Identify bias in advice givers 10:30 - Peer advice becomes less valuable during college 14:40 - One Order of Operations for Starting a Startup 15:40 - People aren’t taught how to find ideas 17:20 - Find a particular problem that you’re passionate about 20:55 - Find some friends and brainstorm a solution 23:20 - Build an MVP 25:55 - Two failed orders of operations for starting a startup 29:57 - The Real Product Market Fit 30:57 - Why do many founders think they have product market fit when they don’t? 35:42 - Building a successful company is not a single variable problem 37:27 - Socialcam didn’t hit product market fit 38:37 - Justin.tv had $1M in profit before reaching product market fit 42:27 - Some companies take a long time 42:55 - Users You Don’t Want 44:25 - The spectrum of how users are using your product 45:55 - Users that take a lot of customer support time 48:50 - Don’t let the hijack users control the product roadmap 49:31 - Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money? 50:31 - A team, a product, and an office are all just a means to an end 51:31 - If you don’t really deserve money, what is an alternate path to create leverage? 53:16 - Breaking even at Justin.tv was a moment of infinite clarity 55:31 - Series A program and leverage