Every founder faces moments where they’re not sure what to do next — such as how to go to market with AI products, when to pivot, and who to hire.
In this episode of Office Hours, YC partners Pete, Brad, Nico, and Gustaf answer real questions from founders and share stories about how great teams build conviction, learn faster, and make better decisions as they grow.
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
0:36 – Building an AI company in a legacy industry
7:00 – Time to grow vs long term defensibility
14:31 – Spending for temporary edge vs waiting for model leap
16:10 – When should you consider pivoting if you’ve got traction?
26:07 – The power of technically challenging problems
30:42 – When to start hiring?
35:18 – When is it a good idea to open source an enterprise SaaS product?
38:16 – Outro
First comment 😆 – these recent videos have been so good.
Right time while looking for gtm for our product.
my notes:
– find out who you’re selling to and how to get their attention, these are the two big magic tricks every founder has to master
– don’t chase growth or hire sales teams until you’ve personally figured out how to sell your product, ai can scale but not invent your magic
– learn faster by going smaller, chase quick feedback loops, not just big enterprise contracts that slow you down
– pivot when you stop believing your own idea will work, even if you have some traction, conviction beats revenue
– if a problem is technically challenging, lean into it, high difficulty means high impact if you pull it off, and fewer competitors will try
Great episode
Many thanks, guys, for sharing these precious insights with us.
Firecrawl: It doesn't flood the servers?
This was one of the juiciest episodes so far! Thank you!
another banger
Outstanding episode
French speakers at 2x is hard. I love this .. but I have to slow down for the fun guy on the right …