Why (and how to) start a Startup | Sam Altman at PlatziConf Mexico

44 tips from Sam Altman around Stratups.
Source: https://platzi.com/clases/54-startup-class/4091-why-start-a-startup-sam-altman-at-platziconf-mexic/

• Build product users love.
• It is more important to build a product some users love than build a product a lot of users like.
• Build a product some users love: Vertical strategy.
• It is easier to start companies, that some users really love than build a company that a lot of users really like.
• It is easier to expand from a small group of users that love your product.
• The most successful companies founded by YCombinator, a small group of users love it. And then expand from there.
• This is your first task as a startup: build a product that some people really love.
• The second task is to figure out how to grow.
• The most functional strategy to grow is to build a product people really love.
• Google, Twitter, and WhatsApp grow through word-of-mouth.
• Word-of-Mouth is the best growth strategy,
• The third thing you need to do is: how to build a defensible business.
• If you build a startup where you win, you should stay as the main winner, and stay in the first place.
• If you win, you remain the winner.
• All startups have problems, and the problems only go bigger.
• Startups get suicide in a more common way than being killed by others.
• If you do not have a great team, eventually the startup could implode.
• Hiring is the most important task for CEOs.
• If you do not hire very well, your company does not become a great success.
• As a CEO the most important task is growth and hiring people.
• Recruit the best people in the world.
• You can build the best company or the best product if you hire the best people in the world.
• It is important to fire people quickly.
• Hire well, and fire well.
• Remain frugal.
• Be as frugal as possible.
• The best startups are very frugal.
• Extreme frugality is very important for success.
• The best startups are very focused and very intense.
• The best startups are really focused on the two or three things that really matter right now and they made these things incredible intensely.
• The speed of the best start-ups operates is incredible.
• The best startups instead of say I am going to do it in the next week or in the next month, say, I am going to do it in the next hour or in the next four hours.
• You can do a 5% iteration every 4 hours, that compounds very fast.
• Very focused, on a few things, but the right things.
• Preferably work as this, instead have big plans and never getting things done.
• Some of the best start-ups sound like terrible ideas.
• But you can be skeptical of something that sounds like an obvious good idea, because a lot of people could do that, and the competition could be brutal.
• Best founders are people who understand the problem or idea very well.
• Ignore people who tell you your idea is bad.
• The only way to know if an idea is bad is to build it.
• Instead of saying: we are going to be the Uber for Latin America, say; I am going to build the best product for my market even if we solve the same problem as Uber.
• Do not constrain yourself by thinking you need to build something that exists in the US and build a version of that for Latin America.
• Just do something better than something that already exists in the US, and maybe could be adopted in the rest of the world.
• If you build a great product. Apply to Y Combinator.