YC’s Essential Startup Advice

In this article there’s a nice list of basic things that you can learn every morning as part of your startup activities. I’ll dive into a couple of them as part of my experience.

Do things that don’t scale

Early on, it’s important to focus on tasks that cannot be scaled. They include defining a target customer profile, getting your first deals done, or selecting a technology stack. Tasks that can’t be delegated to 10–100 employees because they will be following the well-trodden path rather than paving the way to a new reality.

Write code — talk to customers

These’re communicating vessels that affect each other. Customers articulate the pains you’re trying to solve, but they can’t articulate the solution path. This is already your task. So write the code and look at the outcome, which can be assessed through conversations with your client.

Get sleep and exercise — take care of yourself

If I were an investor, I’d really put it together as a term of the contract, because a tormented funder creates tormented products. Keeping a balance is important, but don’t confuse balance with hedonism. Balance is created through actions that restore your energy. Because many activities in a startup waste energy. For some it’s important to go to raves once in a while, for others to swim in the pool. Without exception it’ important for everyone to get enough sleep, I can tell you that.