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Lessons from working with 600+ YC startups | Gustaf Alströmer (Y Combinator, Airbnb)

2 Mar 2023 26 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Gustaf AlströmerLenny Rachitsky

Claim mix

belief 10evaluation 6recommendation 4uncertainty 2observation 2commitment 1preference 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

26 published records

01 / recommendation

Recommends The 100% Solution.

“Gustaf Alströmer The first one I recommend, I think I have it here. Yeah, this one. It's called The 100% Solution. It's written by Solomon Goldstein-Rose. It's for people who think climate change is a problem but don't know what to do about it, or they're just kind of in despair or think they're like, "Ah, everyone are going to die," right? There are some books written where the outcome of the book is like, "We're all going to die," but the truth is that we're not all going to die. This book is trying to cover the 100% of all the solutions in detail, kind of much more detailed version of the request of Sharp that we wrote. It gets you freely optimistic. And I give that to anybody who's cared about climate change because it really lays out this from a very optimistic way of looking at the world. And that's why I recommend that book more than almost anything else. That's probably my number one book.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

02 / uncertainty

How about autocratic and kind of like, I don't know, I think of Steve Jobs-like versus kind of consensus, collaborative driven, if this is a spectrum at all.

“How about autocratic and kind of like, I don't know, I think of Steve Jobs-like versus kind of consensus, collaborative driven, if this is a spectrum at all.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

03 / belief

Another company, actually two Airbnb guys that started, they actually ran ads I think on LinkedIn to find specific people to talk to and that specific role.

“Another company, actually two Airbnb guys that started, they actually ran ads I think on LinkedIn to find specific people to talk to and that specific role.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

04 / evaluation

I think he wrote the article Do Things That Don't Scale as a learning.... The learning there was the Airbnb founders doing the trips to New York and learning about how to build Airbnb, which is a very counterintuitive idea, which is when you have to spend the most amount of time with your customers.

“I think he wrote the article Do Things That Don't Scale as a learning.... The learning there was the Airbnb founders doing the trips to New York and learning about how to build Airbnb, which is a very counterintuitive idea, which is when you have to spend the most amount of time with your customers.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

05 / uncertainty

Gustaf Alströmer I don't know if I have an answer to that question because I think when you work at early stage, you might look different than when you work at late stage.

“Gustaf Alströmer I don't know if I have an answer to that question because I think when you work at early stage, you might look different than when you work at late stage.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

07 / belief

Gustaf Alströmer It's actually kind of hard for screen for motivation, I would say, in interviews because the purpose of this kind of Office Hour question is to highlight why someone is there and highlight the diversity of reasons people are there and sometimes even highlight from one founder to another co-founder why they are doing this.

“Gustaf Alströmer It's actually kind of hard for screen for motivation, I would say, in interviews because the purpose of this kind of Office Hour question is to highlight why someone is there and highlight the diversity of reasons people are there and sometimes even highlight from one founder to another co-founder why they are doing this.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

09 / belief

One of them is if I think back on Paul and Jessica's motivation to start YC, this is a surprise to them, but starting a company is incredibly lonely.

“One of them is if I think back on Paul and Jessica's motivation to start YC, this is a surprise to them, but starting a company is incredibly lonely.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

11 / belief

Speaking of Airbnb, you once tweeted about how special an experience that was for you, and I think even more interestingly, how many of the people that have left Airbnb can't find another place that's as special that just like that bar has been set too high.

“Speaking of Airbnb, you once tweeted about how special an experience that was for you, and I think even more interestingly, how many of the people that have left Airbnb can't find another place that's as special that just like that bar has been set too high.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

12 / evaluation

You mentioned that you've worked with over 600 companies at this point, which is absurd. It feels like it's you get some statistical significance on takeaways at this point of what works and doesn't work.

“You mentioned that you've worked with over 600 companies at this point, which is absurd. It feels like it's you get some statistical significance on takeaways at this point of what works and doesn't work.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

13 / belief

I think there's a strong sense of individual responsibility in Sweden, which kind of reaches over to unfriendliness, [inaudible 01:22:10] from an American or foreign lens because this is so crazy.

“I think there's a strong sense of individual responsibility in Sweden, which kind of reaches over to unfriendliness, [inaudible 01:22:10] from an American or foreign lens because this is so crazy.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

14 / belief

I think that the cases where I've seen non-technical founders make this work is that they have really good engineering teams who feel like they're founding team.

“I think that the cases where I've seen non-technical founders make this work is that they have really good engineering teams who feel like they're founding team.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

15 / evaluation

I guess that just comes back to why it's so important that your product is solving a real pain and not just a nice little toy that is better than what's out there, but not so much better that you're like, "I need this right now.

“I guess that just comes back to why it's so important that your product is solving a real pain and not just a nice little toy that is better than what's out there, but not so much better that you're like, "I need this right now.”
Speaker
Lenny Rachitsky
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

16 / belief

An investor isn't going to want to invest in someone who's completely not confident in that idea. So learning to first build your own confidence for what you're working on and then predicting that confidence to the people around you I think is critical.

“An investor isn't going to want to invest in someone who's completely not confident in that idea. So learning to first build your own confidence for what you're working on and then predicting that confidence to the people around you I think is critical.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

17 / recommendation

The right perception there is the expectations or the use of the product from the customers. So if you are meaning focus on the product or cares about the product in that sense that your customers care about, then absolutely, I think that's a really, really critical, important thing to have early on, like talking to users, doing things you don't scale.

“The right perception there is the expectations or the use of the product from the customers. So if you are meaning focus on the product or cares about the product in that sense that your customers care about, then absolutely, I think that's a really, really critical, important thing to have early on, like talking to users, doing things you don't scale.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

19 / observation

In Ukraine for example or in Eastern Europe, it's very common that if they start their own startup, they actually have a full-time job as a contractor while they're starting the startup because that's how you pay the bill because often you can't raise money.

“In Ukraine for example or in Eastern Europe, it's very common that if they start their own startup, they actually have a full-time job as a contractor while they're starting the startup because that's how you pay the bill because often you can't raise money.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

20 / recommendation

I actually send them to people all day long because the Start School videos that we made are a lot of preparation went into it and it answers most of the questions that people have.

“I actually send them to people all day long because the Start School videos that we made are a lot of preparation went into it and it answers most of the questions that people have.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

21 / evaluation

They're really afraid of being the last one who's not changing and then the world will move past them and then they're going to die. So I think the motivation here is intrinsically survival and it's really about sort of adopting this because this is where the world is going.

“They're really afraid of being the last one who's not changing and then the world will move past them and then they're going to die. So I think the motivation here is intrinsically survival and it's really about sort of adopting this because this is where the world is going.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

22 / recommendation

The reason you want to have a technical co-founder and not a hired engineer or not a hired contracting team is because so many of the decisions you're going to make are technical and so many of the iterations you're going to make relies on engineering.

“The reason you want to have a technical co-founder and not a hired engineer or not a hired contracting team is because so many of the decisions you're going to make are technical and so many of the iterations you're going to make relies on engineering.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

23 / evaluation

A lot of carbon emissions come from freight ships around the world. That's not obvious solution how you would solve that because the kind of oil that they run on is really cheap and it's a very low margin business and they don't have a whole lot of incentives to change besides what is coming down regulatory.

“A lot of carbon emissions come from freight ships around the world. That's not obvious solution how you would solve that because the kind of oil that they run on is really cheap and it's a very low margin business and they don't have a whole lot of incentives to change besides what is coming down regulatory.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

24 / observation

You know how a lot of non-technical people don't know how to automate things? So they will do the same thing in Excel like a million times by just tapping because that's the only thing that they know and they're not technical enough to write some kind of script to do it, and you just have to watch those people to just feel the pain.

“You know how a lot of non-technical people don't know how to automate things? So they will do the same thing in Excel like a million times by just tapping because that's the only thing that they know and they're not technical enough to write some kind of script to do it, and you just have to watch those people to just feel the pain.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

25 / commitment

Because climate is one of the biggest problems that we're facing, if not the biggest, we've decided that we are going to stop doing the things that we're doing and we're going to change our entire energy system and change all the things that we do that emits carbon.

“Because climate is one of the biggest problems that we're facing, if not the biggest, we've decided that we are going to stop doing the things that we're doing and we're going to change our entire energy system and change all the things that we do that emits carbon.”
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast
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