Y Combinator's president, Sam Altman - in his startup playbook - breaks down what it takes a startup founder to build a successful startup. This stretches from the product, team, to execution. Below, we have selected 6 videos that we believe every early-stage founder must watch.
1. The Start: In the video below, Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz, Cofounder of Facebook, Asana, and Good Ventures talk about what it takes to start a startup. Sam covers the first 2 of the 4 Key Areas: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution; and Dustin discusses Why to Start a Startup.
2. The product: Michael Seibel, a CEO and Partner at YC outlines how successful startups think about building something people want.
3. Product Market Fit: Peter Reinhardt, co-founder, and CEO of Segment, shares his experience on finding product-market fit.
4. Funding: In this video, Michael Seibel talks about how to pitch your startup to investors
5. Hiring and Culture: Stripe and Pinterest founders - John Collison, Patrick Collison, and Ben Silberman - take Q&A from Sam Altman as they discuss hiring and Culture.
6. Scaling: Sam Altman sits down with Reid Hoffman to talk about the key changes founders should think about as they transition from a startup to a scaleup.
7: The Fundamentals: As a wrap-up, Paul Graham - the founder of YC, talks about the fundamentals of startups. He talks about six principles of startups that would be helpful to those looking to start a business. Paul also talks about why it is not always a good idea to start a startup and the opportunity cost if you do.