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Personal update: on building a meritocracy in our startup ecosystem - Happy New Year! I am so excited and...
Elizabeth Yin 💛
40.3K posts
Elizabeth Yin 💛
@dunkhippo33
- As a CEO, your 3 roles are: 1) Ensure your company has enough cash (fundraising + sales) to operate 2) Hire well 3) Keep morale high That's it.
- Largely true: first time founders start consumer companies. Second time founders start b2b companies.
- I don’t know who needs to hear this but you are not your startup. Whatever happens to your startup will happen. But take care of yourself - you are important.
- Unpopular opinion: we should get rid of all fundraising round names and just use numbers. Eg: “I’m raising $5m” Vs “I’m raising a pre-seed, seed, mango seed, post-seed, avocado seed, pre-A, series A depending on who is interpreting.”
- What the @#*($&# is product market fit? I've been trying to study PM fit for the last decade. First with my own startup (that never reached PM fit) and then with my < 300 companies I've invested in and the tens of thousands I've reviewed. Here are my thoughts on PM fit:
- From many conversations: Young crypto investors don’t want to invest in anything tied to physical things. It caps upside. Older real estate investors don’t want to invest in anything not tied to physical things. It limits downside. A paradigm shift is happening in investing.
- When I was a founder I was completely clueless about fundraising and what investors would ask me. And also why they were asking certain questions. I don't think founders should ever be blindsided by the process. A thread -- read on >>
- Unpopular opinion: In most cases, for software startups, it's better to build an audience *first* before building product.
- Today I want to talk about the legal aspects of startups. How to set up? How to think about legal costs? Fun! Read on >>
- 10 yrs ago I started my startup. Couldn’t raise $: the economy was sh*t & my co was not venture backable. Craigslist gigs I did to pay bills: -categorized whiskeys -critiqued ppl’s resumes -allowed a Xerox Parc researcher to follow me around You don’t need investors to start.
- One thing “experienced older entrepreneurs” don’t talk about publicly enough are all the health issues they accumulated from running their startup. Easy to think you can power through the stress and late nights forever but eventually it manifests into something chronic forever.
- Let me tell you about my experience writing $25k-$50k pre-seed investment checks @HustleFundVC. In 99% of cases, I make a decision after just one convo, in 2 working days, & don’t care who else is in. We are often 1st check & set terms w the founder directly on a SAFE. Why? >>
- Unpopular opinion: you can sell almost anything before actually building it.
