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Step inside the Group Partner Lounge to hear Y Combinator Group Partners Harj Taggar, Michael Seibel and Brad Flora discuss what startups waste money on—from marketing and sales to legal and hiring.
Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) –
00:00 – Introduction
02:19 – Hiring lies
04:50 – Contractors
06:51 – Marketing spend
09:53 – Brand advertising
11:02 – Approach events like a startup founder
12:20 – PR
16:01 – Lawyers
20:22 – Advisors
24:39 – Devil’s advocate
Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
Work at a startup: https://www.workatastartup.com/
#startups #money #tech #business
Date: July 8, 2022
Thanks so much for all these discussions and videos. Learnt a lot from you guys. You show the reality of startups. No wonder , it is pain to start a company.
YC is so valuable. It hits me so hard everything they say and so relatable.
I have a term for unnecessary contractors, PR firms, marketing & ad campaigns, devtools too early on. The term is "pickpockets" Focus on the foundations and spend time/money on research and building until you reach the level where it justifies the spending. Just because you have the money doesn't mean you should spend it recklessly
You folks are fabulous to be sharing this valuable information. Thank you
I hired a bunch of Philippinos to do SEO on my website. Safe to say the business got shut down and it was partly because of a weak level of employees. Never ever hire dumb people it doesn’t work
I hired a bunch of Philippinos to do SEO on my website. Safe to say the business got shut down and it was partly because of a weak level of employees. Never ever hire dumb people it doesn’t work
While i do agree with the context and examples used here…
I think videos like this are meant to give you perspective, not instruction.
The idea of "doing it all yourself" has been disputed on both sides since the beginning of entrepreneurship. The idea of "do not spend money" has also met equal questioning. Doing it all yourself just to save money, works, if you have a small idea for a specific niche market. If you want to build something that is meant to be world wide available, you will fail. You need support from marketing, legal, tech and so on.
What the book E-Myth describes is that you cannot apply "delegation by abdication". You cannot pay someone to do a task, expect them to take it 100% as seriously as you, the founder, and just walk away completely and just trust that they will do it. That never works.
However, i would say to invest reasonably in a resource that would otherwise cost too much to do or learn yourself. This idea of "Just learn to code" and build it yourself only works for people with a certain capacity.
Example, Marketing. You can easily learn to make a logo by reading a $20 design book on Amazon, paying a $20 Photoshop subscription and making one within a few days of effort.
On the flip side, you could also pay an agency upwards of $100k to invent a $100k worth of reasons why they can do a better job and justify the cost and thought behind the logo.
I would definitely not recommend you to go learn coding to build a platform that is supposed to become a leading contender. That will take years of coding expertise. Which a small investment can get you in a few months. You just need to be involved and on the ball.
Not spending money on anything is not a good strategy in 2025. The startup space has grown 100x in the last decade and it will only get more difficult to stand out.