This video from Y Combinator's Startup School explains that startups should launch early and often, rather than waiting for a perfect product. It emphasizes the importance of getting early user feedback to see if your product solves a problem people will pay for. The video also covers how to create a clear, concise one-sentence pitch for your company and discusses various types of early-stage launches, such as silent launches, friends and family launches, and engaging with online communities.
Key Takeaways
1
Founders often overthink their first launch, believing they have only one shot, but it's better to launch continually and iterate.
2
Launch your product as soon as possible, even in an unpolished state, to determine if you are solving a problem people will pay for.
3
It's better to make a few people really happy with your product than to make many people semi-happy.
4
Create a strong one-sentence pitch by leading with what your company does, avoiding jargon, and being concise to clearly communicate your vision.
5
The "X for Y" construction for a company description can be effective if X is a household name, it's clear why Y needs X, and Y is a huge market.
6
Practice and refine your idea by launching continuously through different channels to test messaging and understand user responses.
7
Implement a silent launch with a simple landing page that includes your company name, a short description, contact info, and a call to action.
8
Launch to friends and family with your MVP, but don't stay in this phase too long as their feedback might not be ideal.
9
Talk to strangers and potential customers as early as possible, like DoorDash did, to gather direct feedback and avoid building the wrong solution.
10
Leverage online communities, such as Hacker News, Reddit, or specific industry forums, to get first users and early feedback.
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foreign
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[Music]
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head of Outreach at y combinator so I've
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been at YC for about nine years now and
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that means I've seen over 3 500
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companies go through the program and
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launch at YC one of the things my team
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does is help companies with their first
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launches and today I want to change the
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way you think about launching most
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Founders overthink their first launch
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they think they have just one shot at
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launching their product publicly and
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that the messaging has to be perfect or
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that no one will ever buy or use or
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invest in their product
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I talked to Founders constantly who
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lovingly prepare their launch for months
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but if you're like most startups you'll
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launch something and no one will care
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and if it takes you six months to get
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the first version of your product in
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front of anyone your startup may be dead
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before you get another chance to launch
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So In The Same Spirit of always be
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shipping I want you to think about
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launching as something that you do
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continually so here's what we're going
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to talk about today first we'll talk
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about when to launch and why second
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we'll walk through some strong one-line
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company descriptions including some that
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I pulled from the startup School
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community and third we'll talk about the
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types of launches you can do during
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startup school so first a lot of people
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ask when should I launch and the answer
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is ASAP it's probably right now why so
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Founders are really good at lying to
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themselves a lot of you have really
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strong convictions about what you're
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building and that's good Founders need
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that conviction but many of you have
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strong but theoretical Notions of how
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you're going to solve a problem and how
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people are going to interact with what
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you're building so putting your product
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out there even in its earliest state
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will help you determine whether you're
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solving a big enough problem that
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someone is willing to pay for you or use
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you even in the products really
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unpolished state so if you launch too
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early what's the worst case scenario
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what's the worst thing that can happen
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people might think the product is ugly
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or it sucks investors might hear about
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the product before it's ready you know
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competitors might see it or Worse no one
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will see it or no one will care and
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that's fine just launch again
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Airbnb launched three times before they
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really started to get users launching
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and having no one care that feels
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terrible but it's not a reason to give
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up it's a reason to iterate and launch
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again launch and iterate launch and
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iterate until you have a core of users
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who really love you Paul Buchheit he's
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the creator of Gmail and a long time YC
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group partner he has said it's better to
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make a few people really happy than to
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make a lot of people semi-happy
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so early on as long as you've made
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something that a few users absolutely
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love you are on the right track it'll be
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good for your morale to have even a
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handful of users who really love what
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you're doing and it'll help you figure
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out what to focus on
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what is it about your product that they
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love and how can you do more of that
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where can you find more users who love
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that sort of thing that you're doing if
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you have a core of users even 10 users
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who really love you all you have to do
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is expand that number and it might take
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a while but if you keep going cockroach
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style you can win in the end so now that
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we've determined you should all launch
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let's talk about something every one of
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you needs before you launch to create a
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strong one sentence pitch you need
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Clarity of vision
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we believe that people who have thought
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deeply and about about an idea can
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explain it clearly and succinctly they
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use less words they can explain con
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complex Concepts in a way that a
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five-year-old can understand and having
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a clear idea is important because a
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clear idea is the best foundation for
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growth the best companies and movements
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grow organically by word of mouth and
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that's good news because Word of Mouth
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growth is the cheapest way to grow and
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if you think back to the first time you
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heard about something like say tick tock
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or a slack there's a good chance you've
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heard about it through a friend or
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co-worker talking about what you do
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clearly and succinctly is going to be
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one of your most important jobs as a
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Founder it's a skill that you'll need to
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convince potential co-founders investors
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users employees and eventually hopefully
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shareholders to believe in you it's also
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a skill you'll need to grow to grow you
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need to get all these groups of people
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talking about you to help you spread the
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word that's why it's necessary to make
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it easy for anyone your grandfather or
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the person that you meet at the airport
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to talk about what you're doing so that
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word can spread about you virally when
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people sit down at the dinner table they
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should be talking about you and your
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company and you don't have to be
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naturally good at talking about your
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company at first it takes some of our
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Founders at YC months to get comfortable
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doing this so here's how we think about
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coming up with a short memorable
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description of your company so first we
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recommend leading with what not with why
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and this may seem counterintuitive
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because we tell most stories
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chronologically it's natural to start
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with you know how you discover the
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problem you're solving and why it's
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important
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and one reason a lot of you do this is
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because you're all very ambitious people
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and you want to solve these big problems
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and that's really awesome and Founders
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need that ambition but
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when you only have a limited time with
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someone it's important to give them
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context up front so start with the
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company name and what you do and there's
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no need to set up the problem just get
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to the point so I'll use a real example
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from a YC companies application the
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company is called pave if they'd started
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with why they were building this company
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they would have said many of my friends
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are super confused about their stock
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options and it pisses me off how
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stressed they get thinking about them
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but before you give me the back story
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again start with one sentence that tells
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me what you're building First Press
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people and investors and even other
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Founders get pitched tens of times per
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you know per day definitely per week and
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they have particularly short attention
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spans so here's the actual description
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of the company pave pave lets companies
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plan communicate and Benchmark your
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compensation in real time this is a
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straightforward description of what
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they're building and who they're
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building for they are building 2 tools
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to make compensation and pay more
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transparent for companies uh and and
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their employees so hopefully whoever
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you're talking to asks follow-up
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questions and then you can get to the
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why later so the second mistake Founders
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make is adding a lot of meaningless
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marketing speak to their pitches so this
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is a tweet from Gary tan he said
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meaningless jargon is the number one
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issue I spend time trying to fight when
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helping startups so here is an actual
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description of a company don't worry
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it's not a startup School company or a
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YC company indiecloud is a know-how and
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Synergy platform don't say like
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this it has zero informational content
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about what you actually do when you're
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describing your company the person
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you're talking to should have some idea
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of you know what they'd have to build to
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reproduce what you're talking about a
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know-how Synergy platform could
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literally be anything it could be a
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collaborative edtech company or it could
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be a Marketplace for experts like you
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literally have no idea what you what
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you'd have to build to reproduce a
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know-how Synergy platform another
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mistake Founders make is rambling they
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just go on and on and on and don't do
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this the person you're talking to will
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have already zoned out so here's the
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actual description Airbnb used on their
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YC application we built the first Online
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Marketplace that lets Travelers book
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room to locals instead of hotels this is
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a tight description it describes the
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problem they're solving and who they're
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solving it for so here's one I pulled
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from the startup School Forum open queue
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find and talk to your target B2B users
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fast again they tell you the problem
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they're solving and who they're solving
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it for they're making it easy for B2B
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companies to reach potential customers
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and you can sort of imagine what you
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might have to build to reproduce what
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they're doing okay here's another one I
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pulled from the startup School Forum yum
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it's a clever name adaptive ml driven
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mental health for your team and I get
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this what this is It's a digital mental
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health tools to help your team cope with
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stress and burnout but I think you can
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Workshop it a little bit if you're
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showing this to potential customers I
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think they'll care less about the fact
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that the product is ml driven and more
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about the fact that it's personalized
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digital therapy so I I changed it up to
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personalized digital therapy programs
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for your team some people ask me whether
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the X for y construction is too cliche
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to use when describing their company and
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let's be honest the term you know Uber
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for x or Airbnb B for X has been a bit
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overused
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I want to emphasize that all of you
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should have a one-line description that
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does not use the X for y construction
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but the X for y construction can be used
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in certain cases so for example paisy
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which is a YC Alum can describe
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themselves as stripe for his former
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Soviet Union countries but they could
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also describe themselves as payment
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processing for former Soviet countries
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but let's talk about when it's okay to
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use the X for y Construction
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going back to paisy if the founders are
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talking to people in Silicon Valley so
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investors or press for example uh then
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it might make sense you might use the X
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for y analogy if it really is the best
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way to paint a picture of what you're
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building very quickly if you go with
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this construction you need three
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ingredients first of all X should be a
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household name
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second it should be reasonably clear why
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y might want X
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and third y should be a huge market so
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one YC company described themselves
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early on as buffer for Snapchat even
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know buffer is doing well as a company
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it's not a company that not everyone
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necessarily knows when I was reading
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this description in their YC application
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I literally had to go to Google and
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Google buffer so in this case you're
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better off describing the problem that
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you're solving so here's an X for y
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example from the startup School
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community that I think works hark alive
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is Airbnb for dance and movement classes
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it paints a fast picture of what Harker
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live is but honestly you could also just
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as easily say harkalive is a Marketplace
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for dance and movement classes so to
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review the best one-liners are
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descriptive they describe what you do
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the problem and who you're solving it
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for
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they're conversational and don't use
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jargon or marketing language and there's
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no long-winded lead up they're concise
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short and sweet so now that you know
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what you need for a good one sentence
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pitch let's talk about why you want to
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launch continuously even before you have
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a fully functioning product
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launching early gives you the chance to
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practice and refine your idea you can a
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B test the idea or messaging on people
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you get an opportunity to see how people
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respond to it and then once you have a
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product launching through different
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channels will give you an opportunity to
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see how people respond to the actual
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product and launching on different
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channels will also help you determine
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whether you're even talking to the right
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users different channels will naturally
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reach different audiences so let's talk
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about some of the types of launches you
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can do in your early stages here are
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different types of launches and I'm
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going to go through each one of these
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briefly so first is the silent launch
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and this is something every one of you
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should do while you're in startup school
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I clicked on 10 random startup School
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companies today and only half of them
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had landing pages so you don't need
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anything fancy at the very least you
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need a domain name your company name a
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short description a way for users to
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contact you and a call to action your
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call to action might be sign up for a
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newsletter or sign up to here when we
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launch here's an example of a startup
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School company landing page Lara they
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have their domain name a company name
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short description and a call to action
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sign up for the wait list and this is
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all you really need the next type of
12:56
launch is to friends and family
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even if you're at idea stage you can
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test out your one to two sentence pitch
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on friends and family and once you have
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an MVP you should do a friends and
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family launch as quickly as possible so
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in its earliest days Reddit was shared
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among the founders of the first YC batch
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I use the Wayback machine to find the
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earliest view of Reddit I can find from
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2005. so this was even before they
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called upvotes upvotes so share your
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product with friends and family watch
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them use the product and ask them for
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feedback but one thing about the friends
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and family launch don't stay in this
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phase for too long because your friends
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and family might not be the ideal users
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for what you're building and sometimes
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their feedback isn't going to be as
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helpful as a real users next type of
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launch launching to strangers I want to
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share the MVP for doordash this is the
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very first version of the doordash site
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when they first started out the founders
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were building other things they were
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building tech for small business owners
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and so they started approaching store
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owners for feedback and they spent a lot
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of time talking to this one store
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manager Chloe she was the manager of a
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macaron store in Downtown Palo Alto in
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talking to Chloe they realized that the
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app they were building really didn't
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solve any of her problems but just as
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they were about to leave Chloe always
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said hey there's just one thing I want
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to show you and it was this thick
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booklet with pages and pages of pages of
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delivery orders
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she said this drives me crazy I have no
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drivers to fulfill them and I'm the one
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doing all the deliveries over the course
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of the next few weeks the founders
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interviewed over 200 small business
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owners across the bay area and they kept
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hearing the same issue deliveries are
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painful
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then after they you know absorbed enough
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information about the product they built
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this their MVP in just a few hours
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so if they'd waited too long to get
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direct feedback from their customers
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they might have spent way longer you
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know six months plus building out the
14:59
wrong solution for small business owners
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so I'd recommend you get out there even
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if it makes you slightly uncomfortable
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and start talking to your potential
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customers as soon as possible do what
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doordash did and talk to 200. so next is
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one of my favorite ways to launch
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through online communities so I think
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you should plan a launch for every
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single community that you are part of
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when a company goes through YC for
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example they have the option of
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launching on Bookface before they launch
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publicly Bookface is our internal
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platform for Founders it's like Facebook
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meets LinkedIn meets quora all for YC
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Founders and there are currently over 6
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000 Founders on bookbase so for many
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companies in YC it's a good way to get
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some first users and some early feedback
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and it's a fairly low risk way to launch
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because you're launching in front of a
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friendly community of other Founders
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there are countless examples of
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companies that have launched and gotten
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their first or first thousand customers
15:53
through online communities another
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community that you have access to is
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Hacker News they have something called
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show hn so many YC alumni Dropbox and
16:04
git lab for example and hundreds more
16:06
have launched on Hacker News Robin Hood
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is an example of another company that
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successfully launched on hn so back in
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December 2013 they had a really simple
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site and all it said was commission free
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trading stop paying up to ten dollars
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per trade
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at the time they only had a button that
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let you join a waitlist the waitlist
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would show you how many people were
16:28
ahead of you in line and how many people
16:30
were behind you in line
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so it was a Friday night and they'd been
16:34
working on building this wait list in
16:36
preparation for a launch they were
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planning the following week with someone
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totally random posted them on hn and
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boom they got to number one on hn and
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ended up getting 10 000 signups the
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first day and then over 50 000 over the
16:50
next week so each Community is different
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they have different tones audiences
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interests launched communities you're
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genuinely genuinely engaged with so be
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authentic don't get bogged down and too
17:04
much marketing and promo language people
17:06
these days just shut off when they see
17:08
that do your research and get an
17:11
understanding of what will compel
17:12
members of that Community to be
17:14
interested in what you're doing so we
17:16
don't have time to do a huge Deep dive
17:18
into these next types of launches but I
17:21
wanted to skim them briefly and share
17:23
some resources and things that I found
17:25
recently so in a q a we did with the
17:27
replit founders a few weeks ago you
17:29
asked amjad and Haya how did you get
17:32
your first users and they said you just
17:35
have to be everywhere Hacker News
17:37
Twitter Reddit Etc so I wanted to share
17:40
a thread that YC Alum Catherine cross
17:42
tweeted out about building her community
17:44
on Tick Tock Anja Health Catherine's
17:46
company helps parents freeze their
17:48
babies umbilical cords and placentas for
17:51
there's some stuff for their stem cells
17:53
so she wrote This Thread about how she
17:55
committed to posting tick tocks to start
17:58
building a community in advance of the
18:00
company's launch and in just a month she
18:02
hit 10 000 followers so she shared this
18:05
thread on tips for building a community
18:07
on Tick Tock which uh we will link to in
18:11
the chat there is of course the
18:13
pre-order launch and if you are a
18:15
hardware or product or physical product
18:17
you can do a pre-order campaign on a
18:19
platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo
18:23
so preparing uh for a pre-order launch
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could honestly be a whole presentation
18:27
of its own and honestly there's a little
18:30
bit more skepticism about crowdfunding
18:32
and pre-orders than there was say five
18:35
years ago so it's worth thinking about
18:37
whether it's the right thing for your
18:38
company but YC Alum ship Bob wrote a
18:42
guide on pre-orders that talks about why
18:44
you should or should not consider doing
18:46
this type of campaign there are a lot of
18:48
great you know sort of guides that walk
18:50
you through uh pre-order campaigns and
18:52
how to prepare for them online as well
18:54
all right and then there's the waitlist
18:55
launch we talked about a really good
18:57
example of that with Robin Hood earlier
18:59
and there are other examples like
19:01
superhuman uh that launch successfully
19:04
with a wait list one note on the
19:06
waitlist launch the longer you wait to
19:09
launch an actual product and the longer
19:12
you wait to onboard people the harder it
19:14
is to convert people from your waitlist
19:17
so please don't sit on your waitlist for
19:20
too long okay so why are we not going to
19:23
talk about press it all in this talk
19:25
these days if you were an early stage
19:28
company that hasn't raised you know say
19:30
a million or more it's going to be
19:32
incredibly hard to land press stories at
19:35
least in the U.S but that said even if
19:38
you do land press it's not a silver
19:40
bullet it's not a scalable way to get
19:42
users it might help you get in front of
19:44
some early users and investors but as
19:47
you see press can't be counted on for
19:50
sustained growth it will not get you to
19:53
product Market fit so don't spend a ton
19:55
of your time during startup School
19:56
worrying about getting press what I do
19:59
want to emphasize is while you're in
20:01
startup school you should start to build
20:03
your own Community it can be as simple
20:06
as starting an email list of your
20:08
supporters and figuring out you know how
20:11
to engage them on an ongoing basis and
20:13
you may be surprised who reads the email
20:15
and shows up to help and in the future
20:17
every time you release a new product or
20:20
a new feature you can use all these
20:22
channels to launch on them again
20:25
stripe has always been great at engaging
20:28
with the community each time a new
20:30
product launches they blog about it
20:32
they've the founders get on Hacker News
20:34
and they talk to the hn community they
20:37
spread the word on social media they
20:39
pitch press
20:40
stripe they are Masters at launching
20:43
again and again so to sum up I want you
20:46
to stop thinking about launching as just
20:48
one moment in time if you launch and no
20:52
one pays attention do what Airbnb did
20:54
and launch again and again
20:59
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