Y Combinator
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2022–2024
59:06 · 1.1M views · Sep 5, 2018
Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel lectures at Startup School on building a product people want: identifying the problem, the customer, an MVP and which customers to pursue first.
HN commenters point to it as practical YC advice on iterating on a product and talking to users.
6 comments from Hacker News
I don't think you hit product market fit, though. It should be pretty obvious. If you had, and the market was as big as you say, then people would be flocking in just by word of mouth. I would suggest to iterate on product, talk to your users, get some good metrics on usage, etc. There's great content about that at the YC YouTube channel. this video [LINK] [LINK]
Watched this lecture by Michael Seibel to YC in 2018 and thought it was useful. this video Thought it could be helpful to keep other founders accountable to build their mvp quickly and get it in front of customers.
The classic YC advice is "make something people want." This video dives into how that looks in practice: this video The guiding principle is simple, but in practice it can be hard and complex.
Yes but YC cannot force a team to “launch” Many teams will stay in a perpetual loop of product development because they feel it’s not ready. YC has no control over this and are outspoken about this death spiral. In one video Siebel reminisces about how many startups will reach out for help when they’re 30 days from running out of cash, instead of 6 months or a year earlier. At this point with no traction it’s too late to course correct. this video
To be frank, I’ve never used Instacart, so anything would be (a hopefully educated) guess. But it might be some version of Michael Seibels's classic "Who is your customer?" ( this video )