Dalton Caldwell: belief

Transcript context

…So interesting. And it connects so much to what we've been talking about. Just don't die. Don't lose hope in what you're working on. A founder hearing this might feel like, "Man, I don't know if I'm so convinced this is going to work." In your experience, how much of this is internally, they're so certain and convinced versus externally, they need to show this confidence? Well, I think it's internally they're convinced. Yeah, I'm not sure it's external. But, and this is the big but, no one has this at the early stages when they don't have a good idea and they don't have customers and it's objectively not working. And so again, I know a lot of founders are like, "Well, I don't feel that way. Oh no, maybe I'm an imposter and I shouldn't do a startup." Well, of course you don't feel that way if you haven't talked to any customers and haven't built a product. But what usually happens is you pivot to a good idea where you start with a good idea that you care about and customers you care about and you launch it. And the better the product does, the more obsessed you get with your own company. I think in the case of Stripe, I don't want to tell Patrick's story for him, but I recall him saying at some point he wasn't as sure that Stripe was going to work until they were a year or two in. And then once it started working and then they really believed in it. But it wasn't like he woke up one day and like, "Stripe is the thing. It's going to work." I think you build conviction and you have this network effect virtual cycle where you get work conviction. The more customers reflect back to you and data reflects back to you that you're on the right track. This is exactly what Scott Belsky shared in our episode when I asked him when to pivot is, do you have more conviction this is going to work or less conviction over time? And so I like that connection we just made there. Okay, so we've talked about all these way startups fail, bad ideas, tarpit ideas. I want to go to the flip side and talk about good startup ideas. So recently you put out a request for startups, which is essentially 20 categories of ideas that you want to fund, that YC wants to fund. Can you share some of these ideas that you're excited about? And basically you're looking to fund and looking for founders to work on.…

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