Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss Paul Graham’s essay “Default Alive or Default Dead.” They share strategies to cut your company’s burn rate and keep your startup alive to see another day.
Paul Graham’s essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html
Trevor Blackwell’s startup growth calculator: http://growth.tlb.org
Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs
Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) –
00:00 – Introduction
00:23 – Default alive or default dead
02:14 – The calculator
02:59 – Founder’s distraction – Fundraising game
07:32 – Fundraising leverage
09:57 – Math are different
11:29 – Kill or cure
15:37 – The fatal pinch
19:22 – Tough decisions when default dead
19:40 – Headcount
20:46 – Ad Spend
22:50 – Raising prices
25:16 – Personal bankruptcy – Taking a big hit to growth rate
26:28 – Twitch’s pirate ship
32:22 – Takeaways
32:27 – Survive to thrive
33:15 – To burn or not burn
34:06 – 10x better if operationally intensive business
#ycombinator #startups #burnrate
Venture Debt is evil. Venture Debt is the Adjustable Rate Mortgage of the startup world.
What if your bank is suddenly insolvent?
2:40 oh snap I run a barbershop and my app launches very soon.
The part between the naive startup founders vs sophisticated startup founders and their differences of flying into the mountain vs flying close by is such a big difference. I was on the edge of my seat and sweating while they said it.
Such a great episode
A+ content
"No one wants to buy problems" – Dalton.
The reason is the same doctors and lawyers fresh out of school or worked at large companies, are not expised to buisness, they left in the field of law, medical engineering
It was called "fast" 😂 for a reason.
Thank you, Michael and Dalton! The more our startup BINGE WATCHES YC videos the more we course correct and accelerate. Is watching the Michael and Dalton and YC videos the equivalent of receiving a FREE Masters Degree in 'How to do a startup?! Thank you so much, Michael and Dalton. Don Macallister (a idiot trying to be useful).