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"I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." -- George Bernard Shaw
Katelyn Gleason
16.9K posts
Katelyn Gleason
@katgleason
founder and ceo @ eligible, yc s12. early at drc (yc w11, acquired)
- founder of duolingo is crazy impressive • sells first startup for a few million • reinvests back into himself and authors recaptcha, sells to google • sprouts idea for duolingo in 2009 • private beta in 2011, launch 2012 • 3 mill users by 2013 • 200 million users by 2017
- most startups will fail because the people working on them will give up just keep going, that’s half the battle
- in my early 20s i jumped from job to job to job. everyone had written me off as “extremely bright and capable but tragically unable to commit” it wasn’t until i was working on my startup, all my eggs in 1 basket, that i got anchored and stopped jumping ship wandering ≠ lost
- remember when you wanted what you have now
- both airbnb and doordash are run by “non-technical” cofounder/ceos
- controversial take: companies who just figured out that remote is cool & works will next figure out that they don’t need half their workforce
- i bet craigslist has had the same team of less than 50 working there for 20+ years. just chilling in their own lane. solar systems away from any drama. touching millions of lives a day. generating hundreds of millions in revenue a year. tens of millions of profit a month. nbd.
- i can’t think of any generation defining startup that was founded after 2014
- aws just gave us $200k in funding to move to serverless containers and some other modernizations (just free money not an investment i.e. no equity etc) and my mind is just completely blown away by this
- a decade or so of unreasonably hard work is the barrier of entry to a rare life.
- stripe is a master class in how to balance everything perfectly: product, design, writing, press, fundraising, twitter, people
- employees who join a startup while its hitting its inflection point but before its next venture round are pretty much winning the lottery
- • working full time since i was 17 • put myself through college • went to school for theatre • didn’t know a soul in startups or silicon valley before i moved to mv • started my company 10yrs ago with 5k to my name, parents house was foreclosing absolutely no fall back