Conveo (YC S24)’s Post

As founder I raised $4M+ and got into Y Combinator. Here are my 9 biggest pieces of advice on building startups: 1) Beware of “zombie” users 100 users who love your product are better than 10,000 who signed up and forgot about it. Focus on engagement over vanity metrics. 2) Launch early I've got the first 30 customers for Fluently: AI English coach without even having a website or a fully ready MVP. 3) Treat fundraising like sales Build a CRM with as many leads as possible. Ask for intros to get even more leads. Apply for accelerators. On pre-seed/seed rounds sell your team and domain expertise. 4) Charge money as soon as you can Money is the best signal that you’re building something people truly want. Avoid free pilots and long trials. 5) Talk with your users weekly We have support chats everywhere, so users can reach us very easily, and I personally read and respond to all their tickets. 6) Onboard your first users by yourself It’s the best way to see your product through their eyes and find opportunities for product improvement. 7) Set a very high bar for hiring We interview dozens of very talented people for a position to be sure that we have a tier-1 founding team. 8) Don’t take rejections personally I was rejected by 19 accelerators before YC. Each time, I improved my approach—and it worked. Use rejections to learn and get better. 9) Prioritize your mental health This journey is a marathon, not a sprint. Take breaks, build support systems, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. -- 📌 Enjoyed the post? Share it with founders in your network!

2005: Sam Altman founded Loopt at the age of 19, and was acquired for $43 million by Green Dot. 2014: He became the president of Y Combinator to train founders.  2015: He founded Open AI, which may become the world's 1st private company with a $1tn valuation. I've spent 50+ hours researching his blog and interviews and here are 5 things he believes makes really great founders special: #1: “I always figure it out” and “I never give up” Everyone thinks that what really matters is how smart they are, or their domain expertise, or their network. But it really is this kind of personality trait. The spirit is the most important factor, Altman thinks, in successful founders. #2 Focus, self-belief, personal connections If you are a startup founder, you have to ask yourself these questions : - Do I have a relentless focus? - Do I actually believe that this is possible?  - Am I able to recruit and retain a world-class team?  - Will I be able to raise money? The ability to form these personal connections is super important. #3 Clear vision, thought, and communication The best startup founders are able to very concisely and clearly communicate what they are doing in ~25 words. For example, we built the Timepass app to have 100+ one touch and addictive games in one platform so that our users can blow off some quick steam.   This is important because you should be able to communicate your brand’s message to users, investors and your audience. #4 Ability to attract people to work on the company Your company is nothing without its people. You need an exciting vision and you need to be good at communication and personal relationships. #5 Ability to get a huge amount of work done themselves The best founders just get a huge amount of work done themselves. So in the early days especially, you kind of have to do everything and there’s a lot to do. And so having focus and maniacal productivity is really important. Hope this helps you out 😊

Y Combinator's standard advice is to start with technical founders. This makes sense for them: YC's model works best with engineer-led startups that can iterate quickly. But it's not the only path, and for many startups, it may be the wrong one. The conventional wisdom says you need engineers to build a product. But what if you build the wrong product? This happens more often than not. Number one reason startups fail is "no market need". A better approach would be to focus on the market first, product second. Hire marketers (or become one yourself) before you hire engineers. A good marketer can help you find product-market fit without writing a line of code. They can run landing page tests, conduct user interviews, and analyse competitors. This data is invaluable for determining what to build. Engineers, paradoxically, can slow this process down. They're trained to build, and they'll want to start coding immediately. This can lead to premature scaling of product — another top reason startups fail. Of course, you'll need engineers eventually. But you might not need them as soon as you think. Many successful startups started with no-code tools or outsourced development until they found product-market fit. The numbers back this up. A study by the Startup Genome Project found that startups that pivot once or twice raise 2.5x more money and have 3.6x better user growth than startups that pivot more or never pivot. Pivots are much easier — and cheaper — before you've built a full product. This approach isn't for everyone. Think and tread!

🌟 Big Announcement: My next venture - building the AI Workforce of the future! 🌟 After years of helping businesses optimise their operations, I'm thrilled to launch a new venture that builds AI agents designed to streamline and automate workflows—driving efficiency and accelerating growth across sales, marketing, and operations. 📈 Why it matters: Many businesses are overwhelmed by repetitive tasks that hinder growth and profitability. Our AI Workforce will unlock new revenue streams, eliminate bottlenecks, and empower teams to focus on what truly matters. 🚀 Our approach: For the past two years, we've collaborated with clients to develop custom AI agents tailored to their needs. Now, we’re going further—designing AI agents for specific industries and functions, available as AI-as-a-Service. But we want to get it right. Over the next month, we’ll be doing extensive customer discovery, mapping the most impactful use cases, and refining our MVP roadmap. 🔍 Here’s how you can get involved: - Investors & partners: While we’re well-positioned to bootstrap and are investing internally, we’d love to bring on investors and partners to help us scale faster. If you’re keen to join us, reach out or tag someone who should see this! - Early adopters & industry experts: Got a specific problem? Drop it in the comments, or let’s chat about getting first access to our AI agents. - Stay tuned: I’ll be recording and sharing this journey step-by-step, from the raw challenges to breakthrough moments. If you’d like a behind-the-scenes look at building a tech startup from scratch, drop an "F" in the comments! With a decade of experience in digital product development and a strong track record advising 67 startups, I’m excited to scale this venture to global impact.

Calling all Operators: We have a few seats remaining for our annual Startup Operator Day on Tuesday, June 10! With the wave of AI taking the startup world by storm, it's more important than ever for operators to understand the state of the market and how to thrive in it. How is AI impacting specific industries and changing the strategy of tech startups? What can startup operators do to navigate these major changes and leverage them in their current roles and future careers? Apply to join us for a day of industry spotlights and tactical career talks for top operators and founders: https://lu.ma/operatorday

Voice AI trends. (Stay ahead by watching these.) I spoke with startups across verticals and regions. And discovered two trends: ↳ Startups are racing to leave Twilio ↳ And working to future-proof their systems Common traits among these startups: 1. VC backed 2. Born just before the pandemic 3. Experiencing rapid growth Startups are looking to the future.  They want systems that can 𝗮𝗱𝗮𝗽𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄. Which means: ↳ Using bi-directional streams as the foundation ↳ Keeping things LLM-independent ↳ Embracing open-source Interesting part? 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸 to migrate within months. What are some trends you are seeing? ▶ Fonoster is inviting founders to join the beta program. Please send me a DM for details!

🚀AI Founders, elevate your venture at the next Venture Hours! 📅 Friday, March 8th at 12:00 - 12:45 PM 📍 Location: Virtual RSVP Here: https://lnkd.in/gUFG_zB2 This Venture Hours session is designed specially for AI startups gearing up for Seed or Series A funding rounds. Join us for an exclusive opportunity to connect with Irina Kukuyeva, Ph.D. (she/her), a titan in AI strategy and pitch deck optimization. Why This Session Is a Must-Attend: Sharpen Your AI Strategy: Get expert advice on refining your approach to stand out in the AI space. Perfect Your Pitch: Learn how to craft a pitch that resonates with investors, with tips directly from Dr. Kukuyeva. Expand Your Network: Connect with like-minded AI founders and immerse yourself in a community dedicated to innovation and success. Don’t Miss Out: This is your golden ticket to gain unparalleled insights, ask pressing questions, and receive personalized guidance tailored to your AI venture’s unique needs. RSVP Here: https://lnkd.in/gUFG_zB2

Can you imagine what the startup world would look like without Y Combinator? It’s been over 10 years since they starting posting their learnings for everyone on YouTube. Our AI auto-analyzed certain patterns from these videos that are helpful to look at so here’s the top 10. 👉 61% of founders talk about starting a company from problems they faced. Market gap comes in 2nd at 35%. 👉 59% of ideas talked about, were validated by iteration, so you don’t need a lot of professional experience to crack a market. 👉 Best way to acquire users is by picking a small niche and organically, directly selling to them. 👉 54% of companies talked about going through a strategy or idea pivot. Constant iteration is the way with highest probabilty to get to PMF and long term growth 👉 52% of founders talked about going through funding challenges. 👉 54% of founders talked about hiring 1st employees from personal network. 👉 Focussing on just 1 KPI is the single most imp thing you can do to convert metrics into decisions. 👉 Gut is good, but decision making should be grounded in real indicators 👉 There’s nothing like good ol practical execution 👉 Everything cofounder relationship boils down to trust building. Upfront hard conversations are the best way to do this. Equity split should be based on contribution All of this is drafted into a beautiful blog with links to verify at https://lnkd.in/gbZ6CkcZ. All this analysis was done using AI in a day over 300+ hrs of content so please point out any errors (would love to learn) You can use the tool for free at https://yc.recontact.world to ask any startup-related doubts. Shoutout to Nicolas Dessaigne Garry Tan Michael Seibel Dalton Caldwell Jared Friedman Harj Taggar Brad Flora Diana Hu Tyler Bosmeny Surbhi Sarna Kat Mañalac Gustaf Alströmer 🇺🇦 Tom Blomfield Pete Koomen David Lieb Ooshma Garg Craig Cannon Adora Cheung Geoff Ralston And thanks to Abhishek Gupta and Jayanth Krishnaprakash for helping build this #entrepreneurship #startup #ycombinator #ai #videointelligence

So… after you have the idea, what’s next? 🤔 The first thing I recommend is finding a team to carry the project forward. You can use platforms like Y Combinator 🚀 or matchmaking services 💼 to find team members. 👥 After finding team members, the issue of how to divide the equity might arise. But don’t worry about this right away! 🚫 If it’s an urgent necessity, I suggest using Founders.com 💡. This platform will tell you exactly how much equity to assign based on the tasks each person performs. 📊 Stay tuned for more tips on how to start a startup! ✨🌟🚀 Joy Bordini co- founder Go Healthy & co! #sturtup #psychlogy #AI #workhard #innovation

Here is the world of timely ideas for startups from Y Combinator. I see about 1000 deals per year and review around 200. Interestingly, many incoming pitches have nothing to do with the Cascade thesis, indicating a lack of research and preparation on behalf of the sender. It’s important to understand context and timing when starting and pitching a company. This list and the people articulating the need, provide interesting clues about the future.