Sam Altman (YC) on Hard Startups - summary & perspective

Hey Guys,

Sam Altman CEO of Y Combinator wrote about Hard Startups. It’s a great post, below a summary and my insights. I'm a founder of a saas developer tool that visualizes code.

Summary:
✅ It’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one,
✅ A hard startup requires a lot more resources and development than most startups,
✅ When Instagram started to get popular over 1,000 photo sharing startups were funded,
✅ An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind,
✅ The most precious commodity in the ecosystem are talented people,
✅ Talented people want to work on something they find meaningful,
✅ Your startup will rise to the level where it can attract enough talented people,
✅ If people are doing significant work, it helps with hiring, advice, partnerships or fundraising,
✅ It’s easy to get the first five people to join, but later you have to recruit people aligned with your mission,
✅ Also true for careers - the growth factor is how many talented people you can work with.

My insights from my startup - Visual Editor for GraphQL:
1️⃣ It was easy to get amazing advisors on board,
2️⃣ We got a lot of feedback from top enterprises and successful funders,
3️⃣ Top-notch venture funds cold mailed my inbox to check how we’re doing,
4️⃣ We’ve received some free PR and reviews on media and blogs,
Feel free to share your experience.

Also if you enjoy that read - like the original version at my LinkedIn.