YC DD S15 ding a ling a ling a ling THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT TO BEGIN. PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT TO BEGIN PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT TO BEGIN PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS THE PROGram IS ABOUT to BEGIN PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS the program... IS ABOUT TO BEGIN PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS just a hominid - searching for a homonym Teabot, make me a sandwich. actually, it's a robot one that makes tea. What's this business model 10 sqft = $10k in revenue, converting space to cash tea is growing faster than coffee, they have a contract 401 ! but not the providence area code, not Project 401 this is CAPTAIN 401. a nervous performer. words flowing like chopped romaine, cherry tomatoes a drizzle of dressing is... impressing? wow on the brand of this medical thing... circle CI meets one medical. It's both. weebly is using them. I've confumed ash room. maybe... I needs a medical soon. seeing through the veil. wait I need a second. DRY HEAVES. a second... Measure! dude these stats are bomb as fuck. I'm seeing numbers they have already hit $600k in annual revenue, so that's coo "This is why second measure WILL BE the next bloomburger" A nervous quarble, a good new drug. How about existing drugs? There was a similar concept in last years batch. Lol at a no laugh Viagra joke. "Pfizer is feeling pretty lucky" Verge Genomics tech good, jokes fizz-less pop cola. Let's get chinese wit it. but how about a little trick? getScale is oDesk for factory workers in China our robot overlords have arrived. 300% fewer defects oops I got distracted. SMS payments, this is for lending. A heart warming photo of a small business owner in Africa some confusing up and to the right, is this big? so the market is 3.5B let's go get it a new kind of car battery? OHM has that 1886 is the year when the old ass battery type was invented now he whispers, really telling us something, on the low supercapacitors+Lithium this is real. and better than duralast. how the hell do I pronounce... Ixchel? ishul. The founders are women in nice rainbow scarves, a better look. drug development with plastic dishes and mice? I'm telling you 3D is the future of simulated human tissue. a british asian guy? Xendit. their 1.5B indonesian transaction number comes out. as USD. 110k. I think they were once called venmo of Indonesia it's compelling, I think there's money flowing Foxpass has a catchy brand, they make great security simple but do they up the stakes on a far ouch room land binge, high on the kites of a fervent desert wind. I have to admit, I don't like the existing solutions. with an andreesen big boi swagger, they take the stage these guys look like they are about to take over the world cymmetria tricks hackers. something like a soviet cyber bannerman two pectoral polo men flanking my opulent technology OOLU, hm was this what i was dreaming about? Cole would love it "we're solar city for off grid West Africa" similar to the Nigeria plan she rode a rural donkey for 6 miles to charge her cell phone. wow they have a little kit they lease, it looks great. pay by text a lot of the numbers today have been user growth, without a $ Can I have a look at your BodyPorts? They rigged up some red head work out man with WIRES, like neo their thing looks like a scale. im starting to have to pee oooh. Click and grow. The sickest shit I've ever seen for $299 it's a hydro setup as a kitchen island, nano-soil keurigs you get but does that mean waste? "cheaper than whole foods" not saying much they already sold $4M worth of table top systems. and now for the most boring thing ever: Ironclad we automate legal contracts for companies so yeah, I'd pay not to have to think about this. _____________________ ok, I'm now fully torqued. I'm back I'm ready torpedo loaded, no lack of flow since six months ago the intensity of this room, lowers my flow a fervor, almost a pro sports game in here inspiring images splay the screen flayed founders, bearing all narcotic elements trickling through the crowd my screen melts the effects one small step can have. allocating some resources here. this is all PRE show QASAR with the loud ass whistle let's do this. Tab. sort of a relevant name for thsometinnhr but it's one off. you can pay with Tab, Guatemala, Argentina Americans are so crass they say "GWATA MALA" ok, this is going to be harder than I thought. Nebia is a great shower head that I've heard of. Garry Tan must have posted about it. Kickstarted -1.9M raised thata way. how delivered bruh? "This creates an experience that is immersive ALMOST CLOUD LIKE" whatever breaks, the format, makes the format may not sound particularly sexy? It ain't fool. they have dollar growth! It peaks out around 150k guessing monthly? so maybe, shit... Justin got Buzzfeeded cause of the weird racist troll. whoa... ok she looks cool. they have $20k in weekly revenue, I think the growth is real The dudes who aren't presenting look SUPER nervous so... they have a tool Zeplin, need more name emph. These guys have that in spades: Supply. charge within 5 feet. amazing tech. These companies are late stage performing on a great stage they need a little paper, scraping minimum wage. Co-factor is another genomics supplier. can we have enough of these we're the team that worked on the human genome project but only you believe it. I'm having one of those saliva factory mouth conditions personally ecommerce in asia? "there's something strange about asia" dude, I'm fucking with this. don't show this ridiculous growth chart, you had me going he uses that tone of voice like we're talking to little kids right now heh. whoa. the dude is having this... self driving electric car. it's dopeAF Auro Robotics. omg I'm having a hard time keeping it together the shit that appears on the sides of websites these days "Vampire looking cat" preventing cost over runs on construction projects seems impossible. counter to the nature of the industry? holy shit, that adds up to $300B a year in the US only Hua calls it: "Let's build, but not waste!" the user experience is the thing that takes a massive, milky hit. laced with hash. iced. careledger I'm sorry but your compelling incentive, snap chat style slide up for 3 seconds is non-compelling from my perspective now we are back to this $300B savings number. guys, it's a three hundred billion dollar industry. did you say trillion? no. not trillion that would be S16's magic number lol. that dude has a huge bicep fuck this, so funny how did he do it? this product ShapeScale is the way to be self conscious of the future so, i think i might be losing body mass due to these hallucinogens first person to actually walk the stage, this guy has done it before most confident format presenter I've seen yet. Insurance on investments they are all wearing vest, they have vests on, they are Vest. but I doubt they own vest.com we built a wheelies at MHQ the other day now we have a so swag hipster stockholm man in some tiny shorts telling us about how wheelies is going to beat starbucks those things are hard to push. Serica is financial services for Cannabis. 15% yearly growth rate for that CBD industrial 38% weekly for these guys cannabusiness never looked so, financial. ROSS ! yes. the co-founders are so smugged out, swag souace how old are these guys? let's go replace lawyers together i never seen such swig warmed flunky side mouth grins WE ARE ROSS. mergh... started to get too many presentations in a row how god damn mortal I am. we all are? why the fuck born into this serious ass world Tesorio, I'm sorry I missed you. fuck yeah. "Transcend Lighting" a new LED grow light entrant 3.6B projected 2020 LED market size in US An HPS grow in Saskatchewan could be making twice as much with cheaper LED electric power from Transcend ok these gig ups are merciful short. __________________________ transversal the more I think about it, maybe Kendrick was right when he said "When it's all said and done, Dr. Dre will go down as the best ever to do it" or maybe. it's because I saw the NWA movie, or maybe Kendrick was right when he said: "I'm MAD! but I ain't stressing" the presentation gives me pause. space, or comma. buttons advancing as do we X O triangle, KEY all while chilling in the corner is the esc i guess that shets why what makes me the daddylonglegs with long webs, 3z. LUNA, the smart mattress cover. "Nest for your bed" should still be called Nest. does it repel mosquitoes? they fucking revenged on me last night were they pissed about Friday, when I killed 5. A nasal voice, a strong hand. TetraScience oops. I'm taking the conversation to Wen's chat box telling her weirdly about "Or as I dreamed it last night, ‘lilu'" oops... focus. focus evan. GrowSumo, is that logo not racist-or-hilarious enough to get your attention two out of four co-founders are built for it, strong neck theres a type of meta level growth happening but for what Klarisimo!!! I'm already saying it in my head. eww... this 3D model of the body is disgustingly real subcutaneous vs. visceral fat? these things exist now we have the "Google street view" of subcutaneous fat. xfers is solving what feels like a really f'ed up problem people are paying IN CASH for online buys??? this is for Southeast Asia, a land where banks don't have API's this brand name is unstoppably good. "xfers" 1.8M processed so far beaming co-founder of GiveCampus. revolutionizing education fundraising bringing watsi to the developed world "developed" we shake it like a polaroid picture. boom boom boom shit. I'm missing Hickory it's an 8B thing to you know do what you Drone delivery service, made real, by a quick witting chap Flirtey. Working? Kitty hawk moment in the history of the industry yeah last slide "now is the time" ... "Drone Mcdonalds" says wen This coffee pitch guy is making me really want coffee while "real work" looms overhead in slack chats popping I'm going to hit this guy up during the next break and ask him to pop me on a pod of coffee. hemophilia app er, micro. something The way he is talking about it, I think there's something real behind this multi-miliioon dollar contracts on the way, big users. microhealth LEADA, brian says "how is everyone doing" that's nice he's also already working with us and walked by while I was having my lucid nap. funny things these lives. they work with Zenefits and have saved them $75k.mo by someone's reckoning Jeremy Cai, is the bottom of the stage guy, for a cool new app Onboard eye kwai? purple is the pigment all the more kawaii the data on hourly workers is highly valuable, you could have said... lyfted all the fuckin' shit I typed in drop capital it's piped in back of my throat coat on this white lightning crash with the Simba, lion king ooh it's the guy who's robot made me a sandwich. Teebot always failed at that task. in fact, this shit can make 300 sandwiches per hour. I like the idea of this. It's actually really delicious, I just ate one. 911 services... FOR $30 million a year already. from an elite team ... takes? nursing homes ... best start up in the batch? "Ive fallen and I can't get up" - saver of 2(million) lives. Qasar announces the end of day one, so I guess we are nearly halfway there. off the record here's a little software XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX that gives you data on what the fuck happens between that conversion - and not converting. this feels dangerously much like something that will get caught in between waves _________________________ Day 2... we got a couple more to get through Lugg will come through uber for moves, lyft for boobs I'd say that's a pretty value add service gigster has an icon that looks like ico. I'd say that's tweeter neetles. there anything better? "we are the world's engineering department" a lot of little ghosts under the hood. Founder of Mafia Wars? zynga royalty Dhaka is sounding like an interesting market their 7000 sqft facilities they have 2 built already cost $250k to build and staff. pays back in a year The amazon (strikethrough)fresh( / ) of bangladesh "HER" wow. helping women connect with each other this pitch is unstoppable - 80,000 weekly users Lesibian/BI/Queer women talk more online than any other audience there's another chapter to this. it's not just for Queer women. WE are HER. Jopwell! Diversity has become a pipeline problem. now a network connects black, hispanic, or native american a big number is $346k, but what exactly is that or over a $9 billion dollar industry to make the workforce more colorful. The co-founder at this company is wearing a sick t-shirt fully encoded, in symbols. Fonticons. how do they make money? sort of. ok source DNA. oooh. App store rejection on your DNA source code so burn. so diolysergic. Or I heard that RNA is actually the cooler "NA" these days they can detect issues in apps. almost like a mesopotamian Ashipu massmassu, pouring over a sacred tome. Goat eyeball, milk of taro. red carpet is a thing taking over India, order for in store pickup. great photo of a market in India. the original conversion funnel people opt in to be converted, it's a mall of a world. everything's for sale motherf*cker! what are YOU buying? they've grown 6x in the last 2, 3 or 4 months, depending on which slide gravitational? the boss from Dilbert? what about the dog from. tired of animal shit. man dogs shitting, cats puking, excreting bullshit. this place needs work. the guy from interviewed has a classic look, I think because he was on a panel I've taken notes on this dude before. pull up in my company. the hell are ya'll not bumpin' me? makes me wonder how good I even am at my job now. or what my job really is. I'm willing to try this product. I'm trying to be ready to die but is there an app for that? there is now. I could create my will right now. and I love that idea say it takes 8 minutes to fill out. 1 out of 4 people landing on homepage create only life can pay for death but what can death pay for? about $130M or users according to these guys watch videos of skilled programmers, watch the tricks this is an impressive concept. calling out Twitch - but this is not just a game, these are real skills and the audience murmurs in agreement looking forward to unleaching so chaucid lines on all you prospective investors manifesters and barrel chesters leeking to my laif n see what festers! dank chrill green between swarms weave charms to set screens a net beams over treble and almost edible here's my little opposistic lapse into chmance parable. Shotput. AWS for Fulfillment Bao chicka wow wow..... bunnanana yeah yeah bun bunnnanana here we are. nick cort with the sport cort looking so star. The dudes are cloudstitch and they'll tell you what's up. we had em all. i dunno condomed up I guess and now for. VIVE, with a font like HER, but where more is sold and less is bold. it's a blowout not a sale, but a hairdo treatment for women and in the future, all kinda good do's Afrostream is a netflix for black people, but not in the US. Europe, Africa, and SudAm Hollywood makes good black content, but it's stuck in the US they actually charged $100k already. love that Convox is taking on a gorilla in Heroku, but. a heroku alternative would be pretty great, with better uptime? from the guys who USED TO WORK at heroku talk about the heroku guys worst nightmare. Karma's a bitch huh. they don't have a free tier, so better for biz? the up and to right is aight, but looking the numbers on the left are still a little bit light silence for. L. taLia, in some better outfit than anyone else up there what condoms do women want? those are the ones men want does unprotected still feel better post karma? "making condoms is cheaper than printing money" back. missed one or two my name is Harj, I used to be a partner now im pitching TripleByte cause we stay hungry. the co-founders are post exit. they know the space. im a fire faced magnate I could never stagnate GEMnote style impeccable I think she's right there in our Teespring SWAG space no, spend money on shit that actually makes a difference. the same thing the Rap Genius shirts said at my alumni demo day: "FUCK SWAG" roomblocker has your hurt on locker. knits on these hits finding fitness in a foot soccer 2.35 B room nights. how many quiet time lovers. Is this competitive with nextravel? don't be a drag im the blood on the rag im the sutter home and sublter with fluttering fragments scoping out 350M calls per year now or then? I can't really tell. oh it's speculative more of a scope you in techno tomorrow solution get an expert on AR I'm high on caffeine, shrooms and weed I got it from a pen so it can't be seen I'm scoping out some start ups tryna lobby for seed hardly in my element but fuck it I'm clean. wow, he looks exactly like the guy in the shirt on the picture thanks, MADEright. looks like you made it right on time. "Just take a look around you. Everybody is wearing clothes!" I want to create a cool hack space called "Hack Space" breakout room. this looks cool. fun. the better webinar. let's redefine the webinar. reminds me of that scene in the NWA movie Eric pulls a silenced assault rifle in the hotel yeah. Paribus on the cusp of I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE brain drifting off to a nother location. wen can I be out there with "the people" sebastian, used to be a pro e-sports commentator I feel like I have heard his voice before. notes is starting to bug out. making a lot of copies of this file e-sports has some promise. work with instant. the salon industry needs a makeover. NEW FILE NEW FILE MF ERERAWEORAKO because the old file could not handle it not even one little bit and we need A FRESH start. StyleBee brings the services on demand. Will they hook me up a haircut? fly like that. see me at the end of this? swag is so tangible find a new cadence three lines make it manageable. sywork needs a hykoo looking just lykoo twitch for creators, are we hitting a niche? 100 M digital artists, all lift off, for the J, make it swish? buffering. you might think it's funny but it's actually, an entire fucking industry. on BitMovin ooh it just loaded! they are making $30k a month right now. founder and CEO of snipe. share. somehow this makes me want to fire myself I'm junk. my ex girlfriend appears to me in dreams, morphing an echo reminds me what we had rubs me glad. nuts! me sad. New story is one of the non profits. well thanks. this is converting tent slums I start my morning off with fire and much purpose Monday is my gun day. blazing ace - service. (picktrace) the OS for farms, that run circles around my head. or as I've been wanting to say for a while: Farmander. scent/send bird allows women to date perfumes before marrying them or the other question: would you marry someone who wears perfume? the pitch is oddly compelling. they are profitable. there's money in smelling good I'm stripe like John C. Ollision the pitch I've been polishin' will leave em all demolished all the small ish I'm swallowin' drinking it down if there's another number tuber then it's snuck in the ground. ___________________________ now I'm watching on the TV from the back row can't tell you how much better this is. I think all of demo day should move in this direction and incorporate HDR. can you do all that securely? THE PROGRAM IS ABOUT TO BEGIN. PLEASE TAKE YOUR SEATS qasar: "It's time to sit down... LUCAS!" there will be refreshments after and isn't that nice. right? social features make better games. pre-packaged software solution Heroic labs. you could be my he ro instant camera. marble maybelline, data we stream. and how the hell you play with playdough cretins. credo is based on plato there's philosophy here. the blue crew is the new crew, back with a drippy dick or was that just me? wish I was reborn just a damn slight less lusty! there's some video thing going on, like a road trip but more of a trippy time. surfing, smurfing. I'm finally barfing. oooh. Markhor. they have those great shoes. craftsman only makes $5 on a $1000 Gucci shoe they can get these great shoes to me for $250. when you've met someone before, you like them more. the circumstances of the first meeting don't matter. or do they? or are they literally everything. the tickets are what matter having the right tickets at the right time. sorry I can't keep writing the poem now. I'm Bizzy.this matters. Increases the revenue on Shopify stores internet marketing in the box? it feels so right. must speak with her after. can't keep up with demand? can't keep up with ‘the man'? times are tough, but here's MIMIR copy cats are detected. grades are effected sensitive bits all protected. hella encryptid. poly Mantid? expand on that. starting this Spring and then blow fans on that. we are getting closer to... the noisy end of all things lost lipids, crime on my like ID?/ ewm;M RIIJ SO POEMS HA[[ENEDD ALREADD D. D. 21K5TEEN why see before you C mee. but then I'm plagued by a dream of Lu that won't let all the you-ness through so I'm depraved of a dream for two the path paved, b'th seam weaved through. it's the same games that make newness new the light waves that make blueness brew. with my plate half full half empty, I prop up Plate IQ and if told you that this meal ain't HAPPY, large chains like McD's - they knew delITeful there eden you're towards the end. I'd say by now. we've had it. a jello lover. I'll take more. but I'm not begging for it. so, I guess I'm fuckin' south bay royalty. had to conquer Oakland just to prove my loyalty. app canary in a coal mind underground my mole mine these hackers are for real, with no known joke among them. but see, we have Plate joy here, tryna flip my grin from a fat face frown to a single chin. the key word here is "default" which is a word with similar letters to: Feudal (t) meanwhile, they are switching out the radiator on my new old 300zx instawork bold slide deck here DOS blue, white text, this feels, not technically advanced. or maybe pre-apple. if that was an era. ready and willing spaghetti I'm killing confetti is swiveling up in the air. is all of your Karma and fear of big Pharma and confident cannabis fresh out the lab. with testing, de-pesting, and active or resting and ratings and rhizomes and danker the treasure is SaaSable measured in raquetball bounces put that on my tab. put multiple glasses 'bernet on my tab unthinkable that they would leverage the lad. the cad, the mark, the tenders at Sparc. they vaulted from Stanford we panzer commandered and that's where the fuck that we landed with that!!! Serious Sam with the shorts that go Blap!!!!!!
you have nothing you have no one you are nothing you are no one you are a meditative breath a blade of grass a drop of wind you have nobody you have nothing you are nobody you are nothing you are a lull a staring off an unfinished list you have you have you are you are you are the stillness waiting to be song
Flying in dreams is a very rewarding experience. Short of hang gliding or sky diving it's the only way for a normal person to have the experience of taking flight. It can be beautiful, relaxing, meditative, exhilarating - it can really feel like you are flying.
What I've also found is that it's often possible to realize that flight is possible in dreams short of actual lucid dreaming. In other words you may not realize you are dreaming but still realize that you can fly and enact it. That said it's helpful to train your flight abilities in lucid dreams because you can put that extra intentionality into your flight technique that then informs future lucid and non-lucid flight.
So let's say you are dreaming and you want to fly. One thing that can quickly overwhelm the experience is the question of where you are flying to. You can focus on a particular point in your vision and imagine pulling yourself towards it. You may move in the direction but the feeling of flight is not necessarily there, especially if you keep thinking about what you are going to see over the horizon or around the bend.
Another approach would be to focus on pushing yourself along through the air. Putting the intentionality into the motion vs the destination. This "push" approach can sometimes work but often doesn't allow the mental space to figure out direction and feels belabored.
Satisfying flight is more about the sensation of flowing through the air and a sense of controlling the direction in which you travel. What I've found is the best path to this experience is to use an object similar to the sail on a boat. Imagine if you were as light as a feather and holding a large flat object to catch the wind. You'd be flying around and able to control your direction by turning and positioning your "sail".
In summary my experiences with flying indicate that a superman approach (pushing yourself forward through the air by force of will) and a spiderman approach (pulling yourself towards a fixed point in the distance) are less effective than more of a Mary Poppins approach (grab the nearest umbrella and let yourself be pulled along by the wind).
YC DD W15 or “Y is She Leaving Me” and “Y is She Still Here” higherme could be another name for meadow “okcupid for hourly jobs” how about hourly okcupid, ok with you cupid? 40% weekly growth is… fake? nomiku, as seen in birthday boy garry tan’s FB feed cool device? gastronomy for novices? same trajectory as microwave, late night TV dinner demandingly sous vide, barking orders at ya. holy shit, these cofounders are twins. they look the same distraction - makes for easier rejection let’s help these candidates, make the most of em. ok, a network FX for hiring, something worth it Cleany. CccKCck Cleannnnnleee bwah bwahhh bwawmm good growth curve, with some numbers to back ex israeli army dudes though, funny but scary. shit man, it seems like they could pull this off messaging automation, funnel conjunction what’s the company? outbound the up and to the right ain’t right but uhm. yeah we could use it, if it worked. custom framing, 2B in the US, are we ready to call that small? are we ready for a useful company, with nice creative ouch, coming off evil on the shut downs in small towns framez priyaiyaiyai priime, featured as best new app. garry posted that. got a crack team kid, kickin it up 90k installs already best app in the apple store Kuhcoon, I know this dude, ad campaigns The logo looks like a butt, dude is a little nervous the market is frickin’ huge, that’s my TS money “if we optimize every dollar on the market” VRban, these guys, crazy headsets good pitch for VR replacing shit like fake apple stores the opp is that poppin? architects want VR now profitable in april that’s a big wish, lovin’ it whoa, pigeon guy gets us to laugh after his 5 yr prison stint talking in terms of quarterly growth, but it matters saving people money to connect with the caged youth what a cool opp wishin’ them well. treeline, show some good honey and im gonna make a beeline sails, is like rails for JS. sounds good smart guy, platform, what, here and there github luv how are these guys, and why did it dip during christmas? trying to be beat github, dangerous space well, those guys do move fast, omniref the name is strange, the game will change gitlab. me wanna flit and hit that dab sorry homies but the game ain’t fair. not gonna try to get this. feature creeps. they make money, wear cool purple shurtz Team Note. hong kong guys, making real dough 150k emps as users, plus profit, 180% mom-y still trying to get the product, but who cares? all these fools are one win deep. you are spoiling it with those orangish pink hoodies coral? it goes weird with the YC orange working corporate with BnB n others making some small time loot on gifts a smart guy with a lock on a strange market. clinical "metric wire is helping clinical trials run faster” he’s out of Waterloo … GimmeTap! "We’re the tom’s shoe’s of water bottles" honest about the good they are doing, clever free water refills if you have the bottle wow great speaker, pitching enterprise sales wins Chariot… that bus don’t ride public transit, those old asian ladies crowding onto, that bus my employees were all checking if they could use it Democrazy OS. I been wondering what they do 30 governments around the world have implemented philanthropic seed round, who’s in? we are - for $50k : P cloud streaming, no dreaming paperspace is smooth stream virtual seems like there’s potential sometimes potential is just potential. __________________ eSuitcase i want one called bluesmart they made 2.5milli “comefly with us” platzi we teach hire their own dogfood 125k? booktrope these guys don’t have the typical YC look the founders could be a band of highschool english teachers ivy league profs in another life perhaps indulutionizing the publishing revistry. solar city is operational in mexico - like that. immediately going after india, brazil, and china is ballsy oh shit it’s actually called bright why was that not made clear make money playing games by betting on yourself? casual gamers can’t make money, only pro’s if it’s legal, it’s straight money - he read my mind “Kickback”, it’s legal. “kickback is coming on all of them” lol readme? wow what a name how did they get it. URL? that brand is so damn frosty every API will run on readme suddenly, the room is filled with sunlight. beautiful “Hi I’m Scott Clark, a serious mother fucker” SigOpt will optimize the shit out of your shit “what optimizely did for A/B testing, we’re going to do… for everything!” Raven tech, building voice OS yeah, it still kinda sucks on my android so yea product demo, show how it’s not Siri cool, but where will the distro come from. worklife man, I feel like I have two much of bewth make meeting work better homie. automate meeting best practices, so you have to do it “growth is build into the product” shift, messaging app for “shift workers” excuse me for being a douchy tech guy, I don’t know what that is another burst of sun, it quickly fades the MOM is on the MAU’s, I need to see the [[[is it snowing outside? hella shit is blowing in the air by that redwood tree]]] Sirum, helping peope with medicines, saving it the name is so standard, it brings me down our medical industry is leaking $300B a year? medicine donations are the name of the game! Frazer and Chris are on the TaskPipe, connecting SaaS mind wandering to dark places… those dreams what is lucy getting into? what am I getting out of there’s a terrifying cloudy sky. cinder… completely unrelated to Tinder, if you can believe it this is a sicker foreman grill. temperature control is precise. It’s like my convection shit. a little war between these fools and nomiku? haha. did you know there are 8M “higher income, food loving Americans”? A for profit making software for non profits - the “Give Effect” small? nah, non-profits are getting $360 B a year buddy “one software to rule them all” can they sign the big names? hold them, make it meaningful? moltin lava. there’s a dude with some hair moltin oh shit, it could be a teespring competitor I’m scared no, not scared. Detroit water project. we have contributed they make donations go direct to the water charity water bills indicate other problems how about water arbitrage? we could use some out here I . O is the thing - it’s AI, it’s Russian, it’s Luka Cool text chat with Luka to reserve a table I wanna give this a shot - i might need it for a date haha “Luka is already better than Siri” smartspot doing some gym work keep going on those reps need more variation in your tone here broth CTO doesn’t look like a user $50B data analytics market pachyderm wit the elefant. seems like it will take off but not in a way I’ll understand Lol.. Bagaveev guy does crazy shit hard to get your sattellite to space these days “the whole world is launching 12 rockets a year, we will launch 50” wooooooee ______________ PAKIBLE mr. has a twisted stache 775k unit order by soylent. hope the packaging is less ghetto now and somehow environmental… Jobzle branding. PopPays. still limit on Instagram Get @paulOctavius omg, scary mcdonalds add better way to advertise. $135k in a month on hi return yhat. ynot I’m just clinging in here mind drifting back to the garden. email optimization Slidemail 30% DAU growth per day, in the low k’s these late kicks come slow and soft. Oliver gets the Sun, color coordinated in Pomello green how are we not on the customer list? I tried to recommend them … an apology note sent will we sign with pomello this eve? I’m out… the VAN hawk guys pull me back in with a amazing looking bicycle want that thing so bad. will pay cash pretty “Magic is Uber for everybody” wow, now it’s Trackin focus is fading, a light glaze sets in even the coffee can’t save me now. it’s time for a basketball break. mashgin guys signed a $50M/mo LOI would instantly make them bigger than TS wow guys, cool product no bar codes, this really feels like the future hard act to follow but here comes pushmark they lifted the sames of California limited how does this work? would it work for me? - eCommerce marketing DEMO DAY… here comes a copter. perceptive labs comes up with the quad eyes for my flybot cool stuff [redacted] [redacted section] So how secure is XXXXXXX? I’m gonna guess the answer is “pretty fuckin’” “the problem is, hackers kee4p changing their patterns” “by learning what it means to be human…” __________________day2(not really) dunnanana how did Jobzle get into YC? CampusJob they have 100k+ users and 10k more per week 52 hrs to get a job filled it’s better than Jobzle, maybe even bester, the best. transcriptic robotic cloud majigery thing i dunno man I’m only so technical a humble man really flat monthly pricing domestic transaction, wires are free i needed this when I got my mortgage seed stage banking for smubs da big pill kevin hale is intent on the quality of the batch, Cowell Justin K. celeb status, swanky Abdul ignoredly, the show goes on focus is becoming a room wide issue. too much for any reasonable mind to consume. and… we just cured Ebola for .2 nanoseconds of processing time. Nextravel repping Zenefits. come on man my butt cheeks hurt from the implied spanking. Senefits of me to china, europe, or shin ja pwa “we are the future of corporate travel, thank you" can i say this? the ceo is signing me on Peggie Mango from SparkGifts. gift me a stock? hell yeah. now, they are implementing a fractional share it’s good concept. …this is me, esc reporting to you live from YC , A.D.D. dub two thousand fifteen hockey sticks split screens of legitimate green the mid game yes, we are fucking with you. come join with us and rule the world gradberry will help me find an engineer eBrandValue, we blew them off on email better than nielsen, I can believe that. omg I have a little bit of root beer left in my can a guy with a fake leg, it cost $23k I would not think he had a fake leg, it’s kinda badass this is some next level 3d printed zombie crap but you just can’t argue with that water leg Willis wit the tech list. how bout this dr. chrono guy next to me he runs the largest tech meetup in asia. probably not a bad guy to know rescue forensics. it’s real, it saves babies help law enforcement dig into that ugly side of CL FBI, LAPD already signed up a sting man’s silver lining to the dark web finally, meadow is here! We get cheers around the room. only co. “You push a button, you get marijuana” user growth is slow and steady, they don’t touch the nug get in the business, “come stand with us on the right side of history” Lumi guys were at TS a month ago or more. I like their product, pop it at the Urban O. “teespring is a billion dollar business” I guess we gotta go out and make that true, eh. Another medical scheduling thing. i get that it’s important, but i don’t get it. there’s more to it, residency a billion dollar budget I’m sure. ooh lala wine. I could use some of that right now wine on demand, can I fuck with it yes. hella zoomed in gif on that happy wine drinker guy is awesome you win prizes and shit. awesome, they did $300k last month!! diassess. not my thing. medical maybe one day, I’ll get into the medical stuff not the MJ. the device and scheduling and oooh, the pills, the money in those pills. ___________________ was that 32 to go, or 37 to go? spire breath sensor censor breadth, mentors razor pays slice u in some major ways cater to blaze uhhh ok analyticsMD I see? but through bleary eyes an active mind, overactive in action in real time waste of mind space and time, low impact. somebody need to pull the mic back thought you said Nasdaq for bongs, but when it was bonds I lost interest, checked my pinterest hint that I might interject an adjective unravel it financially sound, these people are all animate parking lot pimpin. now this I can see if you are in an industry where a 20% increase is huge, are you in the right industry? they have contracts, these guys are making paper. omg they are called “Smarking” but if names get you off, how’s “iMicrobes” wow, they are doing some real industrial level shit here tonight as dusk’s first wind comes under the garage door there’s good money in this microbe game, real energy level shit oh crap I nearly lost my mind, writing at the top instead of here. thompson was wringling in my wind. having watched the first half of fear and loathing last night miracle my girl said yes to that. tylenol comes from petroleum… whaaat? they created a bacteria that turns sugar into acetaminophen producing molecules with bact. awesome $980Bn 'Specialty Chemicals’ Market (20n) 100m people each day getting dangerous infusions let’s capitalize and sell some product they do have a pi chart make a trilli look small cool companies. right in the zone let’s send more money to the farmers, direct I agree with that let s py the frmersmoreeel morrey eel. winding wingdings im getting tense. water revenues, we are trying to collect more we can optimize this get more sales more water usage, for less water brickslot, no cribslot. wait cribspot there we go young men, college age really. 175 colleges they are already on, 100k rentals 25B in student rent yearly, more than I expected last minute uber mention may not behoove these young fellows as a guy comes on and riles UP THE CROWD instavest gets me in on some good investor plans this number mongering is getting rough “OVER A QUARTER TRILLION DOLLLLAS” show me that kinda loot YC? you gonna need about 33 of me. or maybe one big pill poppin’ phama brand battery acid producing bacteria? and here’s kickpay. and you lost me. seeing the day die in this hellish warehouse of fire orange OL ! yes, buy a home without a real estate agent I like the sound of this. $5k flat fee per transaction, you keep the 3% agent fee “Real Estate agents, are fucked” lol this new tech for medical has my attention Notable Labs “Sadly, my dad passed away 3 weeks ago, but his legacy lives on as notable labs."
wretch in the gut of travelling
daggering thirty thousand high
in a time javelin
Techult that we revel in
/embezelling
the puzzeling thing
monopoly unstopably
takes probably out of profit, see
yet here while we apparently parent for transparency
currency dribbles out of the meadow stream
down burlingame way
these lofty currents
insurance against
conspiracy
rogue’s island with the piracy
spyroakland city dragon’s teeth
that sink into the shining sweet
and glide into sheets…
ghosts.
zobie goblins
feared man killing courtships on the outerim
quixote ick floundering
this ish signs off
papi longstorf
the spiderly one.
and out of love
with the dapper gentleman,
just “of love”
shtick with that
“of love”
“of”
properanxiety tuned in the elderly act
smearing it on a wall
images we exposed her to
images… we exposed her too
the brooding gentleman
head in hands
heavy yogic breaths
sands over the hill, roads
crawling city ants, a beehive
density of haze, that glow that links
the internet of wings
matter under mind
mum
mud
muthafuckin’ muppets
a dollop of bird shit plopping down
cars
passing endlessly
in the distance
The title of Mr. Thiel's talk was "Developing the Developed World" - perhaps an arrogant lead in when addressing a room full of older men in suits eating charred salmon filets in a gilded era ballroom of the San Francisco Olympic club. With regard to the truly under-developed and those attempting to help them, he wrote off social entrepreneurship as a "dismal failure" in which the vast majority of companies achieve merely a semblance of helping society.
Peter Thiel is not one of those rare geniuses blessed with an optimistic outlook. His intensity of mental prowess and techno-societal clairvoyance weigh heavily on him as he quips that in an apocalypse "you don't go into outer space" commenting on the film Gravity, by which I think that he meant Interstellar (but who can blame him?) confirming the sad reality that the tech industry's greatest minds are driven to obsession over notions of doomsday preparation.
Thiel went on to deliver the most compelling case for establishing a monopoly that I've witnessed outside the weathered cardboard flaps of a Hasbro board game. It was in this thesis that he truly shone. His philosophy on entrepreneurship echoed something that I've always held dear but never been able to articulate so well: dare to be exceptional.
He evoked images of the rat race of law school - students competing to be the best by a tiny a margin in a cruel zero sum game. The restaurant industry in San Francisco - a land of perfect competition in which achieving a profit is nearly impossible. One need not look farther than the insane price wars between Uber and Lyft to recognize how this paradigm can play out in the technology industry ($2.25 was how much I paid to get to the lunch).
The way around the madness? Do something different enough from what's out there that there is no competition. Don't be the best player in the game - invent a new game, one in which you are the only player. In short, he proclaimed, "competition is for losers".
"All happy companies are different" stated Thiel, riffing off of the opening lines of Anna Karenina. In fact, the best companies are those that need to redefine what they do in order not to seem like a monopoly. Google for example, frames itself as being one of many players in a "technology" space where companies like Apple and Microsoft are fierce competitors, but in reality they are completely dominant in the field of web search - a true monopoly.
When Q&A came around, Thiel was posed with a question that he himself suggested for interviews earlier in the talk: "What do you know is true that nobody agrees with you on?" Answering this with ease in a number of over-your-head inklings, and eventually moving on to talk about how he feels that the higher education is simply a sham - "a weird club with a velvet rope and a long line out front, with nobody inside." He compared colleges in the US today to the Catholic church in the 1500's. "Anyone who does not have mild Aspergers will be systematically talked out of pursuing any original idea that they conceive of."
The question that finally stumped Thiel was the following:
"What made you think differently? Family? Education? Experience?"
After a seemingly unending series of stutter starts and "well let's see's" he landed on an answer that you could tell didn't fall into his thesis on higher education.
"There was something about running the only Conservative Libertarian publication at Stanford. It forced me to confront differing ideologies, to have the hard conversations."
Thiel's new book, Zero to One is now sitting in a gift bag on my desk.
I'm not claiming to be an expert. After all I've only been on this planet for 25 years and doing "the startup thing" proper for about 5 of them. That said, I do give people advice on their startup ideas and aspirations very frequently, and I like to think that I'm generally somewhat helpful to these people.
One thing I've noticed is that I tend to give people variations on the same advice over and over again, which lead me to the idea of creating a guide in which I try to sum up these concepts so that people can get these tips without having to actually speak with me. Still if you do want to speak with me, feel free to reach out.
Here's my general outline for what I'd like to write about:
0. When to Start
1. What Makes a Good Team
2. What Makes a Good Idea
3. Explaining Your Idea
4. Raising Money
5. Knowing When (not) to Quit
In all likelihood I'm going to touch on themes that have already been extolled upon by others. Paul Graham's essays, for example, serve as a direct or indirect source of inspiration for many of the concepts that I preach when it comes to starting a company. I'm not going to be comprehensive in ascribing credit to all the sources because i'm not in college anymore : )
0. When to Start
If you want to start a company the answer of when to start is really quite easy: now!
What this does not mean is that your current idea, current team, current corporate entity, etc. are all the one that will bring you to success. I'll elaborate more on some of the signs you should look for to know whether you should stick or switch on any of these facets in later sections.
What this does mean is that if your intention is to get involved in entrepreneurship, and you've gotten as far as reading this guide, then you need to start the process of becoming an entrepreneur today. Yes, that means that you shouldn't "get a job at a big company for 2 years, and make enough money that I can do my own thing" if you can possibly avoid it, because it more than likely won't work out that way. What you should do starting today (if you haven't already) are things like:
- Learn to code
- Start hacking and iterating on your current idea
- Build something and try to get people to use it
- Don't plan for a future where you depend on someone paying you a salary to survive
- Go through the process of creating a company
- Find the people who will be your co-founder(s)
- Apply for incubators (the process of applying will force you to consolidate your ideas even if they aren't ready)
1. What Makes a Good Team
Founding team is more important than idea. Good founding teams will arrive at good ideas more frequently than good ideas will attract the appropriate founders.
Each member needs to bring something to the table in terms of execution ability. Please don't be that start up whose founders are two non-coders that "just need a third technical cofounder" to get their idea working. I think that there's a carrying capacity of one non-technical co-founder per company that can work, but what's better is if each member of the founding team is contributing to the actual building of the product.
If you don't know how to build what you are thinking of building, then you are likely to be making assumptions about how feasible it is or what things should be built first that may not be correct. In other words you can't accurately make a cost/benefit assessment of the features of your product if you don't viscerally understand the costs. This is what's so frustrating about hearing the "all I need is an engineer" storyline of many startup attempts.
The founding team that worked for us was this:
Walker - CEO / Idea Guy / HTML / CSS / Some JS / Photoshop / Investor Relations
Evan - CTO / Tech Guy / PHP / Some Dev Ops
So we basically had one front end dev and one back end, and our first angel investor helped us out with a lot of the nitty gritty business setup stuff. This was a perfect arrangement because it allowed us to focus on product, though we gave up a bit more control than we might have if we had had a business focused cofounder.
Another major ingredient to our success was initial failure. Our first company, Jobzle, did not take off but served as a didactic dry run for Teespring which ended up doing well. We learned that we worked well together, and a bunch of things not to do in our next company.
So yes I believe in "fail fast, fail early" and in the process of those failures, try to find the people that are willing to weather the storm with you and who have the right skills, and those will be your co-founders.
2. What Makes a Good Idea
A good idea is easier to find, but harder to identify, than a good team. The crazy thing is that nearly everyone thinks their idea is good but the vast majority of ideas are bad. In order to solve this issue I'm going to lay out a series of questions for you to ask yourself about your current idea.
1. Do other people seem to think that your idea is a good?
If No to (1):
1a. Do they actually understand it based on the way you pitched it?
If No to (1a):
- If they do not understand your idea because it is too complicated, you need to simplify your idea and start at (1) again.
- If they do not understand your idea because you can't get it across, review section 3 of this guide and start over.
If Yes to (1a):
- Maybe this person isn't the right person for your idea because they are too far from the use case. Find more relevant audience and start over.
- More likely, you should re-evaluate your idea if people generally don't resonate with it.
If Yes to (1):
2. Do people use or show interest in actually using your idea?
If No to (2):
- People may pay you lip service by saying they like your idea once they understand it, but if they don't actually use it or show genuine interest in using it then you have a problem. Reconsider your idea.
If Yes to (2):
2a. Do people show interest in paying for your idea or actually pay for it?
If No to (2a):
- You may still have hope if the idea is so contagious that 100's of millions of people could use it and you can do an advertising or data play. This is an extreme long shot though that many ideas fall into, and has a near 0 chance of success. Consider re-evaluating.
- If people won't pay for it and and you can't imagine it becoming used by the masses, then it won't work.
If Yes to (2a), then you pass the easy part... whew. Now for the hard stuff:
3. Does your idea require network affects to work (i.e. would your idea add value to one user if nobody else was using it)?
If Yes to (3):
- You have just opted yourself into a chicken-egg problem. This is going to be an uphill battle. Dangerous territory.
- The only way this can work is if your users recruit one another, and this behavior is built into the fundamentals of your idea.
If No to (3):
- Phew.
4. Does some or all of your idea replicate a technology that already exists?
If Yes to (4):
4a. Is the existing technology something people generally like?
If Yes to (4a):
- Then, please, do not attempt to rebuild it. If some component of your idea looks like Facebook, for example, then you should be thinking or building a plugin or leveraging Facebook's API, not rebuilding FB.
If No to (4a):
- There's probably a reason people haven't already switched. No offense to LinkedIn, but it's not an interface that everyone is in love with, yet people still use it. This doesn't mean that you should invent the next LinkedIn, it means that people don't have an appetite for a better LinkedIn, because if they did, it would already exist.
If No to (4):
4b. Do people use something that resembles or is similar to your idea?
If No to (4b):
- Great! You have an idea that's completely original. Actually, just kidding, if people aren't using anything that's somewhat similar to your idea, then why would they start now? Your idea is ahead of it's time and that means you should probably throw it on the back burner and go for something less idealistic.
If Yes to (4b):
- This is actually ideal! You can't create new user behaviors, people do what they do. Stick with the language of today and you'll be more successful.
5. Does your idea solve a problem people currently have, but don't have a solution for.
If No to (5):
- You probably won't get here because I'm sure everyone thinks that their idea is a yes on (5) but honestly ask yourself, if your idea is a vitamin or a painkiller (look it up).
If Yes to (5):
- Are you sure? Is it really a problem or is this just something that would be nice to have?
- If there's one part of your idea that's a Yes to (5) and No to (4) then focus on that component of your idea. That is your idea and the thing that will take you to success, the rest should be worried about later or by other people.
- If it truly solves a problem that many have, then it should resonate in (1) and (2). You may actually have a good idea. Congratulations.
So to review/summarize, a good idea is something that:
- Solves a problem currently not being solved
- That people actually have
- In a way that isn't foreign to today's users
- That they are willing to pay for
- And doesn't require network effects to work out of the gate
3. Explaining Your Idea
Even the best idea will go nowhere if you don't find a way to communicate it well. In the sea of thoughts swirling through your head of implementation details, feature possibilities, and use cases, it's essential to pin down the 30-60 seconds worth of description that will immediately get across what you are trying to do, why it's special, and why it will work to everyone you talk to about what you are doing.
Know your audience.
I achieved start up glory
when I was twenty four
in the year twenty fourteen
always on chat, emails and calls
no white lines of code on my black wall
hanging by my neck from the wing of a plane
put an HBO show to shame
with my live game.
A vast and dangerous night of dreams. Flight, fancy, DMT, and mushroom symbolism.
At home, but things take a turn. I find myself in a peaceful state. The house becomes an aquarium, im swimming around in. The colors are myriad and unearthly, rainbow reefs sprouting from every table and forgotten corner, the door hand blossoming into a beautiful vaginal jellyfish flower. I'm so enthralled, marveling and inspired by the amazing details and wondering how I got here. Dream drugs or magic?
I wanted to share it with everyone, and told the story of the aquarium dream again and again throughout the night. I was so lucidly dazzled and awed by that powerful cavern of hyper-realistic fantasy.
Before the magical counsel I wanted to show off that I could fly. Was it the devils trick to fly? I'm soaring around and our leader seems pleased. It is a highly enjoyable type of flight, on wings and currents above a crowd.
In the wilderness I practice flying with my friends. My tool is a tiny paper circle, like what you'd get if you glued a chopstick wrapper into a ring. I find it's enough to catch the wind that buoys me into flight high above canopies of pine and alpine creeks. While I'm lifted, the ring snaps and I fall, softly catching the limbs of a tree on my way down. Turns out I don't really need a prop to fly.
It's like the aquarium thing but later, but I take what is supposed to be DMT. I'm dreaming and I know it but the effects of this ethereal dosage are palpable. So you dream on DMT. The man who I am talking to begins to splinter out into a muddled paisley of black, turquoise and deep red. The scene dissolves into dark but vibrant hues.
I keep telling everyone in the tavern/cavern about my dream exploits. There is some fighting and it's scary down there. There are some bugs in this crawlspace and I'm just trying to get away from them. A bunch of old professors want to play quarters with me, Lucy came in with one of them. They can't finish their pizza. Everyone drinks beer. Zane gives me another chunk when I tell him I dreamed that he gave me the piece I ate in the last paragraph. Eminem is dissing me. He tells me I'm on 6 people's nuts. I tell him he's on 10 million peoples nuts.
There's nothing like it. A glowing presence. A bright light. Voices to be heard. Floating in bliss we wonder