Just pick people the way you would pick people if you were picking friends. So when you meet people who seem smart, but somehow distasteful, you think, "Okay this must be normal for business," but it's not. You think business is supposed to be this slightly distasteful thing. They meet someone, who seems impressive, but about whom they feel some misgivings and then later when things blow up, they say, "You know I knew there was something wrong about that guy, but I ignored it because he seemed so impressive." There is this specific sub-case in business, especially if you come from an engineering background, as I believe you all do. In fact, one of the big mistakes that founders make is to not trust their intuition about people enough. Your life so far hasn't been much like starting a startup, but all the interactions you've had with people are just like the interactions you have with people in the business world. You can, however, trust your instincts about people. That's why there are a lot of ski instructors, and not many running instructors you don't see those words together, "running instructor," as much as you see "ski instructor." It's because skiing is counterintuitive, sort of what YC is-business ski instructors-except you are going up slopes instead of down them, well ideally. If founders' existing intuition gave them the right answers, they would not need us. You don't need people to give you advice that does not surprise you.
Q: Why do founders persistently ignore the partner’s advice? A: That's the thing about counterintuitive ideas, they contradict your intuitions, they seem wrong, so of course your first impulse is to ignore them and, in fact, that's not just the curse of Y Combinator, but to some extent our raison d'être. Batch after batch the YC partners warned founders about mistakes they were about to make and the founders ignored them, and they came back a year later and said, "I wish we'd listened." But that dude is in their cap table and there is nothing they can do. When I was running Y Combinator we used to joke that our function was to tell founders things they would ignore, and it's really true. If you remember nothing more than that, when you're about to make a mistake, you can pause before making it. The first thing on it is the fact I just mentioned: startups are so weird that if you follow your instincts they will lead you astray. What I'm going to give you today is the beginning of the list, the list of the counterintuitive stuff you have to remember to prevent your existing instincts from leading you astray. Startups are as unnatural as skiing and there is a similar list of stuff you have to remember for startups. Eventually you get new habits, but in the beginning there is this list of things you're trying to remember as you start down the hill: alternate feet, make s-turns, do not drag the inside foot, all this stuff. So, as I learned, part of learning to ski is learning to suppress that impulse. But lean back on the skis and you fly down the hill out of control. It's like skiing in that way - any of you guys learn to ski as adults? When you first try skiing and you want to slow down, your first impulse is to lean back, just like in everything else. It could be simply because knowledge about them has not permeated our culture yet, but whatever the reason, this is an area where you cannot trust your intuition all the time. Startups are very counterintuitive and I'm not sure exactly why.
You're literally going to get what I would tell my own kids, since most of you are young enough to be my own kids.
So even though my kids are little, I already know what I would tell them about startups, if they were in college, so that is what I'm going to tell you. So even though my kids are little, my two year old today, when asked what he'll be after two, said "a bat." The correct answer was three, but "a bat" is so much more interesting. One of the advantages of having kids is that when you have to give advice to people you can ask yourself, "what would I tell my own kids?", and actually you'll find this really focuses you. Your annotation will appear both here and on Genius. If you'd like to add your own insights, comments, or questions to specific parts of the lecture, visit the lecture page on Genius, highlight the relevant text, and click the button that pops up. This text is annotated! Click on the highlights to read what others are saying.
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