sydneyliu

This is epic! Just subscribed to a few of my faves!

For this example, let's pretend the product is Twitter. Since I think everybody knows enough about to Twitter to think about the scenario.

I worry that questions like "What could we change" would miss the cases of "I was just busy" or not hit the heart of the issue. Seems like it'd be really good question for a B2B product

For example, pretend you run product at Twitter and you want to learn from the people in your target demographic who don't come back regularly to Twitter after signing up. What would you ask them to get good/useful product feedback?

we meet a lot of users during the week (and also sometimes have other meetings) so weekends are a really great time to focus on the product and build slightly larger changes to test during the week. fewer distractions and emails on the weekend

I think Sam is saying that without YC, there are some companies that may not end up succeeding or being able to raise and continue on (without YC's network, advice, speed, focus etc. to help them)

The distinction is that they want to fund companies who would continue working on it even if they didn't get into YC. They are so passionate about the problem that they will try to make it succeed no matter what.

Sam also just tweeted that 300 YC companies are no longer around. Amazing how much transparent they are and how great YC is at picking and training. So many really crazy ideas that most would think are insane and YC is able to find the ones that make sense and help them. Seems like that's a bit less than 1/3 of all YC companies

Tweet is here: https://twitter.com/sama/status/636586179970752512

I thought this tweet from Twitch is pretty relevant and funny: https://twitter.com/Twitch/status/609429653271384065

A question I always ask myself for products I'm building and products I'm thinking about is: "If I removed this product from my life or my user's life, how hurt or upset would they be?" I think this is a good frame for answering that questions as well.

If a startup is a nice to have, where if you have the extra cash it adds a layer of convenience, those companies will be more likely to fail than the ones who are the core of a user's lifestyle.

I think good examples of this are companies like Box, which is extremely integrated into many company processes. Slack is another great example. Companies rely on this for their communication. Removing it is like removing a key piece of a company. On the consumer side, Honest Company has become a staple to many people's lifestyles. Perhaps Spotify, which I know many people refuse to switch from simply because they have invested time and resources into getting it just how they like it.

I think traveling and staying in 1 place or area is a great way to learn and immerse yourself in a new place. I don't think I'd need 15-20k to do it.

I'd spend all 4 weeks in an area where I don't fit in. Some South American country probably, perhaps Peru. As an Asian American, I think I'd feel too comfortable in any American, European, or Asian country. In South America I'd be able to challenge my comfort zone.

I'd use the money to take necessary precautions on necessary resources and safety, but otherwise, I'd go lean and rather push myself to do things and meet people there. I think 4 weeks is a good enough to time learn a new way of life and really change how you see things.

Facebook's usually really good about fighting spammers and multiple accounts from what I've seen. Early community was facebook was filled with spammers but it's much harder to find spam accounts nowadays. Basically every account I encounter is real....I wonder what crazy thing he had to do to get 500k spam accounts

Congrats to Andrew Chen! Heard him on the Product Hunt podcast and have learned a lot from his newsletter and Tweets.

This article is fantastic. Thanks so much for the share! Will definitely be studying this and thinking about this when meeting with our users.

Really great to see this. I was a heavy Coursera user in high school (took 6-7 courses at a time) and loved it. It taught me a lot about what I was interested in, what I hated, and pushed me to really learn things before I got to college. Many people I know couldn't stick it out, but I finished all the courses I started at the time and met some amazing people.

The interface and experience has come a long way since I first used them. I hope they encourage more community building and interaction. That was one big area that I felt was missing from the education that I've gotten through college and high school.

This is from what I've heard. I use SO all the time but don't really post, so don't quote me on this.

The community can be fairly tough on people who are wrong or missing part of the answer. People who aren't extremely experienced sometimes feel scared that their answer may not be the best for whatever reason and feel a lot of heat. This is also true for "stupid" questions. If you ask a bad question on SO you can feel the heat as well.

Something I've always thought about with IoT is the fact that everything is hackable. There are very few things that the best hackers can't get to. With more and more things being automated (often times with more important info), there are more vulnerabilities that appear. I think a self-driving car is an example. The security on things like cars and anything in the home need to be extremely high to ensure the safety of the users. As the home becomes more and more smart, need to make sure it's not just a buffet for hackers.

Venture Deals by Brad Feld is great for how to fundraise and he does go over most of the basics and how things work.

Mark Suster, from Upfront Ventures, has a really great list of blog articles you can read about raising VC: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/pitching-a-vc/

This should give you a general idea of how VC's operate: http://founderequity.com/the-new-reality-of-venture-capital/

I could see a future where there is an automated restaurant or cafe. In those cases, if optimized a bit more, you could have cheaper/better long term returns and also scale to locations without changing the experience. Many chains seem to have a manual to keep the experience constant. Robots won't have that issue.

There are obvious tradeoffs, but I could see it happen

I believe YC read applications as they came in for the fellowship (just as they say they do for most batches). This means that they likely spent a bit more time on the earliest applications since I imagine the flood came in on the last day. That being said, 6.5k applications to read split between likely not THAT many people, even though founders did help, is a lot of applications. The applications likely got more read time than the average resume does for a job application and the readers likely had to read more than most recruiters do so props to them!

Congratulations to all of the startups who launched!!

A lot more health, bio, and food related startups in this batch.

Tea and sandwich making robots makes me think that one day YC will open its own automated coffeeshop or restaurant. Theoretically lower operating costs, making the business much higher margin. Call9 and Circle Medical look very interesting in the medical space.

And of course, gotta cheer for onboardiq. Their users really love them. They're bringing on clients so quickly and are some of the hardest and smartest workers I've met.

Congrats! I always see these guys working, working, working. Even during the time we were hanging out they'd be on sales calls, sending out emails, etc. Keep killing it.

"While HR SaaS is never sexy" <---I disagree