Tips For Technical Startup Founders | Startup School
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- čas přidán 7. 06. 2024
- YC Group Partner Diana Hu was the CTO of her YC startup Escher Reality, which was acquired by Niantic (makers of Pokemon Go). She shares her advice for being a technical founder at the earliest stages - including topics like how to ship an MVP fast, how to deal with technology choices and technical debt, and how and when to hire an engineering team.
Apply to Y Combinator: yc.link/SUS-apply
Work at a startup: yc.link/SUS-jobs
Chapters (Powered by bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Intro
00:09 - How to Build and Perpetuate as a Technical Founder
01:56 - What Does a Technical Founder Do?
04:38 - How To Build
08:30 - Build an MVP: The Startup Process
11:29 - Principles for Building Your MVP
15:04 - Choose the Tech Stack That Makes Sense for Your Startup
19:43 - What Happens In The Launch Stage?
22:43 - When You Launch: The Right Way to Build Tech
25:36 - How the role evolved from ideating to hiring
26:51 - Summary
27:59 - Outro - Věda a technologie
I was in a startup that died because choosing tech took over a month and then we spent a few month learning these new 'cool' technologies. Then I built an MVP if my own idea with PHP and javascript in few evenings.
You're supposed to hire or have people who know the tech stack.
nothing wrong with a more elaborate stack, but you've got to have the expertise upfront, otherwise its usually a waste of effort.
Good ol' PHP.
What do you guys think of Django and Svelte for a startup?
@@theworldismine7788 just as discussed above - doesn't really matter the framework - all of them are more or less decent and save time compared to working with vanilla version. Most important is how the technical co-founder(s) are familiar with it and whether they can achieve results with it rapidly.
That was amazing inspiration! I've been stuck so long behind the idea of building the perfect product from the beginning, I haven't even started. Here I go!
Diana held a session with women in tech at USC. She's awesome! Thanks Diana
I am in the MVP stage. I’ve been taking to all of my 20 something users and I just need to move quickly. This is GOLD, thank you Diana Hu! Exactly the lecture I needed to hear. 🚀
same here, building a fintech startup, good luck!
Oh nice Elijah, I am a product manager and can be of help. What are you building?
How's your startup going?
@@saitaro I took a 5 month break from this project but I returned to it recently and just this week I made a lot of progress on the development of the product!
Stages
1. Ideating
- Build prototype quickly
2. Build an MVP
- Do things that don't scale
- Create a 90/10 solution
- Choose tech for iteration speed
3. Launched
- Quickly iterate with hard & soft data
- Continuously launch
- Balance building vs fixing
Takeaway: Startups move quickly.
Took me hours to finish watching this. I was writing a blog post on it as I was watching. thanks Diana and YC.
Could you please share the link to your post?
This was very useful and informative! I hope we can see more content from YC pertaining specifically to the process of product development. My friend and I are working together on a project, and we both have technical expertise, so we're very much splitting the product dev work 50-50
Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) -
00:00 - Intro
00:09 - How to Build and Perpetuate as a Technical Founder
01:56 - What Does a Technical Founder Do?
04:38 - How To Build
08:30 - Build an MVP: The Startup Process
11:29 - Principles for Building Your MVP
15:04 - Choose the Tech Stack That Makes Sense for Your Startup
19:43 - What Happens In The Launch Stage?
22:43 - When You Launch: The Right Way to Build Tech
25:36 - How the role evolved from ideating to hiring
26:51 - Summary
27:59 - Outro
Very nice to see someone who actually understands the difference between SW and HW/deeptech and speaks to them differently. So many of these YC videos only talk about SW and the challenges faced there.
Yep, HW and deep tech =/= SW
This is such great advise as I think as human beings we tend to want to present the perfect product instead of just a functional product then iterate.
Thank you so much for this information. Start-Up School has given me so much beneficial knowledge for free, truly you guys are an amazing company.
it just changes my mind towards past product mistakes, really good insights.
This is insane… I love every bit of the video… So practical… Thanks 🙏🏾
Loved this talk. Especially the bit on choosing the tech stack. I think this was really something other talks were missing.
I loved this video because I'm not even into Tech. I'm a writer, but your insight gave me a new perspective on formatting a project. Thank you!
I needed to hear this. I want to launch a prototype but keep thinking it needs to be 80% developed.
This is exactly what is needed right now as an aspiring startup founder
Great vid, I built my first webapp in PHP when I was 13 and remember it was just so easy everything made sense & I could build & deploy stuff with like pretty much no money and so fast, now I’m getting back into coding for a new app and that meme made so much sense having gone through the messy middle stage learning modern web dev frameworks and now considering just continuing my MVP in PHP before I’ve gone too deep into the new frameworks that scale but are new for me.
Vanilla technologies - HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and MySQL just work. No need for over-engineering…
Great video. Very true that by the time you need to really scale in a big way you can afford to spend the time to do it. Spending a year mucking about making an expensive scalable product that no one wants to use is a complete waste of time.
Great content as always! Can we have a video for non technical founders ?
What is the font used in headers of the presentation that the speaker is using in the video?
fantastic video and insights. choose for iteration speed in the startup context is great advice.
Thanks for sharing Diana. I am building a fintech startup, I'm a solo technical founder, it's hard to build just an MVP, because of the regulation and laws in fintech industry.
She did give the example of Stripe’s Mvp, how they were basically doing transactions manually on the backend
If I were in your position I would try to find a cofounder, either 1) someone who’s technical, if you’re savvy in the fintech industry and can take charge of the business side, or 2) someone who’s business savvy and can navigate the fintech world, while you take care of the tech side. I’m from Mexico and I’ve seen a few fintech startups that are doing well here, and in pretty much all of them there was someone who was savvy about the fintech industry (or at least knew the financial sector well enough to know what mattered and how to navigate the waters)
@@exmachina767 thanks a lot for the advices. After interviewing 7 technical founders, I selected a senior engineer at Amazon that working on the payment system. I am technical too by the way.
I love this content and am really thankful for it.
I really needed this. Husain from Oman.
This video just changed my life forever ♾️
Great presentation Diana! Cheers
Loving this new series! Can we have a non-tech founder video?
This was great. THANK YOU
what a great video! thank you to much for sharing. I think that people scale team too fast and overbuild all the time.
Absolutely agree!
Do you have any idea of startup communities I can be a part of, where things like this are taught?
Great vid! I often bash Rails and MVP frameworks over k8s and microservices but maybe I should consider the situation first 🤔
You should. Rails rules.
I guess the takeaway is that the best engineering in the world won’t matter if you build the wrong product and you only have so much time to discover what that product is before you run out of money
this jacket seem very popular amongst san francisco tech people, what brand is it ?
What about for non-technical founders?
Thanks Diana
Awesome sharing , really helps
MORE Diana please! 👏
i'm done with the prototype and partner is showing to potential customers to get feedback. Was really stuck what to do rn. was planning mvp and thought would start after this and that. then saw this gold :chef_kiss: starting now... back to my cave XD
These video are super inspiring and give a lot of great insights. Thanks for sharing! I have a question, I'm a web developer that works full time for a company, so no much time left during the week.. Would you consider "bad" starting an MVP using a CMS like Wordpress just to get the attention of some users and present the project to some potential investors? once the funds would come in, the all project would be done properly. Thanks to anyone who will reply
No, not bad at all. That’s exactly the point she made with “prototype quickly in a matter of days or weeks”. At that stage you’re just trying to figure out if your ideas resonate with users (i.e., are you after an actual problem?)
Hiring at the MVP stage can indeed pose challenges and slow down progress, and we appreciate you shedding light on this aspect.
However, it's important to acknowledge that there are situations where tech founders require additional support and expertise to handle tasks efficiently. In such cases, outsourcing or outstaffing can be a fantastic solution. By engaging a skilled team for a specific period, you gain flexibility without the commitment of full-time employees. It allows you to focus on your core tasks while ensuring essential work is completed by experts.
this is beautiful, thanks!
Hu's on point!
This is great, thanks!
This is truth right here. “Comfortable with chaos”
Thank you 🙏🏽
Thank you so much!
as a tech person, whats the best way to find co founders?
Learn business stuff
Love this, thank you
Amazing video...
Very helpful!!
There's something I just cannot understand. Everybody says don't overbuild, yet when we show MVPs to customers, they reject them as being underbuilt.
Even the customers who are more early-adopterish, they refuse to pay for underbuilt software. And we can't get thorough user study as the customers won't commit resources.
In fact, MVP is just bullshit (but do not tell YC....)
Mvp to them us always a complete product that hasn't morphed to accommodate customer feedback
Superb
Great content as usual, BUT… Would be so appreciated if more of these resources were aligned for hardware and deep tech plays.
Where's the Spotify Podcast :(
How about non technical founder??
15:10 NextJS, Vercel, Supabase. Iteration speed 🚀
Great Video
startups move quickly!
Yep, I am feeling the heat of the technical debt 😂
same
The speaker is really down-to-earth.
Inspirational😮
We also want tips for non tech founders and how to build as a non technical founder?
In my experience, the best advise for non-technical founders trying to build a product, is to become technical yourself.
Trying to find a technical co-founder that is passionate about your business idea just as much as you is highly unlikely.
Design the product yourself using Figma.
Dev shops are usually a trap, but they can sometimes be helpful.
Use CZcams/ChatGPT as much as possible to assist with the development. Coursera is great for learning to code for free.
Hiring part-time hourly based developers to help you when you get stuck.
This is what has helped me as a non-technical founder that turned technical.
A quick and easy solution is to find a technical co-founder 😂
Does this mean I should write dirty code?
It means that, in the beginning, you should prioritize discovering actual problems your users have and a product that solves them over excellent engineering. Because the best engineering in the world will be worth nothing if you don’t find product-market fit before you run out money.
It was an intense battle between what she was saying and how she looked. Glad they both won
This is been great advice. Thanks.
On a side note, the glasses you are wearing are no good as they kept sliding of the nose.
Angela Yu has so similar accent ❤
How about Tips For Non Technical Startup Founders ?
What is MVP
Minimal Viable Product
@@ephreyilunga6360 thank you for answering 😊
You could've googled it. Move fast! jk
What if we are family business?😅
I’m a technical founder. Was hoping for insights. Instead, the video is, essentially, a summary of broad ideas that are often repeated, for founders of all types, in Silicon Valley. What would have helped:’how technical founders efficiently solved problems that are common. That is, case studies from YC that could be broadly applied.
The large majority of technical founders are still making these mistakes, and their target viewers with these videos are people who don't have the experience to understand this. I think this video will do a huge service to the startup ecosystem as a whole.
Would be valuable to share the things you mentioned as well, of course. But it wouldn't be practical for most people viewing this video
@@OskarD90 Am not sure how you've reached the conclusion that my point is 1) in the distinct minority 2) repetition of easily available material and points is necessary. I'm the obvious counterexample. The question is if YC has data that can validate that repeating the same points, made elsewhere and at YC, are more worthwhile than, for instance, the point I made.
where have you found good insights?
@@markjackson8181 Talking to other technical founders. The answers I get, to my questions, are very different from what the videos I've watched, on YC's CZcams channel, on most topics. (Can provide an example or two if you ask.)
@@posthocprior please do. additionally, may I ask how did you build this network signed a tech founder in progress
Love how everyone at Y Combinator are midwit meme connoisseurs
I can't appreciate this video more..the yc content has always been good.
But this time it's even beautiful 😍
Cool
Ok so to be successful you need to build software in about 15 seconds that users will pay for. EZ
Loura kaoo
listening carefully, plenty of mixed messages in here, poor signal .. kinda dumb
No I thank you.
So, basically find someone that is willing to work with you for free in the begening ?
Huh?
Diana who? 😂😂😂 good talk 😂
Diana who?
Quick, fast, ... time is money ... and then ... where is the susyainable quality? Who cares. Money!
You can improve your product once you’ve proven product-market fit (i.e., once you’ve proven there’s a market that’s willing to buy your product). The thing is, that product is often the result of many feedback iterations after initial launch. If you do it backwards, it’s more likely than not you will find yourself with great engineering that serves no customers. That’s the point repeated over and over again at YC.
Feels like some of those are problematic for devtools companies. I mean if you're building something for engineers, will they be ok to pay for imperfections or just go "well i could build this myself" for which engineers have a tendency already :D
We need a video about Non- Technical founder/CEO for tech startup!!! @ycombinator
I spent like two months working on an mvp and making onboarding and that kind of things 🥲 know I realize I just could call one of my customer, request the initial data and bring him the actual service he needs and start testing and validating the idea base on that 🥲
Diana who?