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Pedro Franceschi shares Paul Graham's advice on scaling Brex: a founder's job is to figure out how to be happy and sustain their role long-term, citing the Collison brothers and Mark Zuckerberg as examples.
Naval Ravikant discusses how following your natural intellectual obsessions leads to success, citing examples like Bryan Johnson and Balaji Srinivasan.
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan discuss how startup founders' initial visions often evolve and expand as they learn from customers, arguing that too much certainty about the vision is probably wrong.
Y Combinator shares a Startup School talk in which Science Corp CEO Max Hodak discusses the company's retinal implant that has enabled a blind patient to read a 300-page novel, along with lessons on startup infrastructure, hiring, and judgment.
Patrick Collison speaks at Startup School 2026 about Stripe's origins, startup advice, and what Stripe's data says about the AI economy.
Paul Graham explains why founders shouldn't try to be visionaries, arguing that big things start small and that having a blurry vision like Columbus beats a precise one.
Y Combinator co-founder Jessica Livingston tells Sam Altman that startup ideas always evolve, using Airbnb as an example of how the original concept changed drastically through user interactions.
Airbnb founder Brian Chesky shares his approach to interviewing and reference checking new hires, emphasizing follow-up questions, off-the-record references, and building a talent network.
Marc Andreessen shares startup advice on the importance of having a working prototype before fundraising and navigating the 'idea maze' through deep domain expertise.
Peter Thiel criticizes the Lean Startup methodology, suggesting that founders over-rely on customer feedback and lack a definite vision, using PayPal's early pivots as an example.
A founder shares advice on how to make the most of YC AI SUS to improve chances of getting into Y Combinator, including networking with peers, talking to YC partners, and leaving with actionable outcomes.
A founder shares 12 rules from Y Combinator that helped them grow from 0 to over 1,000 paid customers in 20 weeks, emphasizing retention, manual onboarding, and shipping quickly.
Gergely Orosz praises Sirupsen for his deep understanding of networking and latency basics, referencing an interview where Sirupsen used napkin math to build a 10x cheaper or faster product.
Peter Thiel shares his principle of working on problems that would not be solved without you, contrasting social entrepreneurship with mission-oriented companies like SpaceX.
Carles Reina shares a detailed retrospective on what he would change about ElevenLabs' go-to-market strategy if starting over, including faster hiring, earlier enablement, more outbound focus, and bigger bets.
The article warns startup founders against using AI as an escape from reality, arguing that while AI accelerates building, the hard parts of startups—risk, rejection, courage—remain unchanged. It emphasizes focusing on real problems and human interaction over overbuilding.
A common pattern in tech where startups naively pitch anti-tech news outlets for launch coverage, only to be ignored or receive hit pieces, as illustrated by a case with WIRED and a robotics startup.
Frank Slootman advises founders that becoming a CEO requires intellectual honesty and a willingness to face hard truths, unlike the reality distortion that helps in founding.
Brian Armstrong, founder of Coinbase, advises entrepreneurs to think bigger and tackle ambitious, long-term projects that involve both tech innovation and regulatory challenges, emphasizing that solving hard problems creates value.
Chamath Palihapitiya shares the growth principles that drove Facebook to billions of users: focus on getting users in the door, to the aha moment quickly, and delivering core product value often, rather than chasing virality. He emphasizes invalidating gut feelings and concentrating on a single metric, like getting users to 7 friends in 10 days.