Entrepreneurial godfather Paul Greheum to Xiao Bai's business proposal

One of the benefits of raising a child is that when you have to give advice, you can ask yourself: "What do I say to my child?" "My kids are small, but I can imagine how I would talk to them about entrepreneurship when they go to college," he said. So, here's what I'm going to tell them.

Often, startups are counterintuitive. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's just that knowledge about entrepreneurship is not in our culture. Whatever the reason, in short, starting a company is something you can never trust your intuition.

It's like skiing. When you first ski, you want to be able to reduce the speed, you instinctively want to lean back. But if you rush down the hill and lean back, you're going to lose control. So part of learning skiing is learning how to suppress instinct. In the end, you will learn new habits, but first you have to pay a cognitive effort. When you start to fall from the top of the mountain, you are afraid to make a long list of what you need to remember.

Entrepreneurship, like skiing, is not natural, so there is a similar list for startups. Next, I'll give you the first part of the list.

Counter-intuitive

The first of the list is the fact that I am always mentioning: entrepreneurship is quite bizarre, and if you trust your intuition, you will make a lot of mistakes. You only know this, you will make a lot less mistakes.

I've joked that YC's one function is to tell entrepreneurs something they don't care about. That's true. YC Partners always warn a group of entrepreneurs about some of the mistakes they make, but the latter always disagree, until a year later they come back and say, "It would be nice to hear those words." ”

Why do entrepreneurs ignore their partners ' opinions? Well, this is about "counter-intuitive": these opinions contradict your intuition and they look wrong. So your first impulse is to ignore them. As a matter of fact, my description of YC joking is part of the reason for its existence. If the founders ' instincts have given them the right answer, they don't need us. The only thing you need is someone who can surprise you. That's why there are so many ski coaches and not so many running coaches.

But then again, on the person, you can trust your intuition. In fact, one of the most common mistakes that young founders make is not enough at this point. They make people who look impressive but at the same time give them a little bit of doubt to join the team. When things went wrong, they said, "I actually knew he was wrong, but because he looked so impressive, I ignored the ' wrong '." ”

If you're thinking about making someone your co-founder, employee, investor, or buyer, and you have some doubts about them, trust your instincts. If anyone looks a bit sly, hypocritical or eccentric, don't overlook these little feelings.

This is an exaggerated reminder: work with someone you really like.

Expertise

The 2nd thing about counter-intuitive is that the knowledge of entrepreneurship is no big deal. The way to win is not to become an expert on entrepreneurship, but to become an expert on your users and solve their problems. Mark Zuckerberg is not successful because he is a pioneering expert, in fact, although he is a novice, he also succeeded, because he really very good understanding of his users.

If you don't know anything like how to melt angel money, don't worry about it at all. These are things you can forget when you need something you can learn and then finish.

In fact, learning and delving into entrepreneurial technology is not only unnecessary, but may be dangerous in a sense. If I meet a college dropout who knows all sorts of things about convertible bills, employee agreements and FF stocks, I certainly don't think he's an outstanding person, but I think it's a warning. Because the other mistake that young entrepreneurs often make is to be careful.