Press cycles about million-dollar fund-raises and billion-dollar valuations are short-lived and targeted at aspiring entrepreneurs, not people like your customers. Building your audience that way doesn’t work, because a months-old startup has nothing to say, besides that a few rich people gave them some money. Trust me, I know.

Airbnb’s problem wasn’t the founders’ idea (there was a market for this service); it was their execution. The problem was twofold: First, many people who were listing their homes were posting crappy pictures, which made the homes look ugly, if not also a little sketchy. Second, renters were uncomfortable paying listers in cash when they arrived to

... See more

The ambition to be global from day one was very rare before Uber. This ambition requires a blitz-scaling mentality

That, not exploiting people, is the defining quality of people who become billionaires from starting companies. So that's what YC looks for in founders: authenticity. 

As Paul Graham said in his essay “Do Things That Don’t Scale”: A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don’t. You build something, make it available, and if you’ve made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don’t, in which case the market must not exist. Actually startups take off becau... See more