Airbnb & DoorDash First Principles Thinking (3 steps to break out of the box)
What society imposes on us is the wrong kind of thinking: one that is based on analogy and credentialism instead of first principles thinking. But how do we break free? Here are 3 ways to do it.
The third one is the most surprising! What does serenity have to do with building a billion dollar startup? In DoorDash's case: EVERYTHING.
If you like lifelong learning, try one of our startups we funded called Knowable. They're the best app for audio courses. https://knowable.fyi, 25% off discount code GARRY
Ooshma Garg went from spending more than a million dollars a month to putting nearly that much into her bank account every month. How? She chose to go profitable. Learn about how she found product market fit, how she coped with the implosion of Blue Apron in the public markets, and why Gobble is poised to be the best food technology startup growing profitably and independently today.
Want to try Gobble? Use my referral code for $50 in free Gobble credit — https://www.gobble.com/garry50
00:00 Intro
01:35 How Gobble got started in 2011
02:04 First idea: peer to peer lasagna
03:08 The breakthrough
03:40 Food tech must nail the food too
05:13 The secret of long term retention for food IP
07:50 Easier and tastier = best lifetime value
08:33 Gobble's 1000 days to innovation: How they got product market fit
08:50 $6M ARR overnight
09:47 What to do when a worse competitor raises more money
11:44 Markets are voting machines early and weighing machines later
12:15 On burning $1M/mo to earning nearly that much
13:54 When you can't raise, get profitable
14:57 Digital ad buying lessons: ROI and market depth
17:12 You don't know if you can be profitable until you try
18:36 Default alive gives you control
20:49 The future of Gobble after profitability: re-investment
22:56 Great food businesses generate cash
24:37 Ooshma's hardest lessons she wishes she knew when she was 22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96HCCnhbKYM
What makes you new, different, and unique in the world will often be the exact thing that makes you succeed. Embrace your differences, and you’ll find something amazing in there. Learn how founders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Ryan Petersen of Flexport, and Jack Conte of Patreon did exactly that: learn things from unique personal experiences that put them on the right path.
And if you can do that, you avoid infinite competition. You can make something truly awesome.
00:00 Intro
01:52 Steve Jobs on Unique Experiences
03:04 How Ryan Petersen's experiences led him to make Flexport
04:26 How Jack Conte's experiences led him to make Patreon
05:24 You don't have to be novel
06:01 Great startups start as toys
06:43 Paul Graham on startup ideas
Read How to get Startup Ideas by Paul Graham — http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
Beats by Homage Beats - 5am https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on4gBvEyfCg&ab_channel=HomageBeats
I’m Garry Tan, venture capitalist and founder at Initialized Capital. We were earliest investors in billion dollar startups like Coinbase and Instacart, and I’m a Forbes Midas List Top 100 venture capitalist in the world. We want these videos to be about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people. Our startups have gone on to create more than $40 billion in market value so far, and Initialized has over $770M in assets under management. I’m doing my own one man YouTube channel with no staff or crew — we're going for raw and unfiltered, not perfect.
Please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this!
Find me on Instagram where I can answer your startup advice questions by DM - https://instagram.com/garrytan
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YKNr-LiblI
Well you know what? Sometimes when you hit a bamboo ceiling, the best thing to do is to find new ground, pour a new foundation, and build a new building yourself.
The Gervais Principle: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
Today we're gonna talk about the bamboo ceiling, the things I screwed up on, and the things you can do to smash the ceiling or build your own skyscraper.
0:00 Why I ragequit
2:12 Work and Credit
4:46 Sociopaths, Clueless and Losers
9:38 Opting out of the Bamboo Ceiling
100% of the revenue from this channel is donated to https://www.code2040.org - thank you for helping me help the engineers of tomorrow.
I’m Garry Tan, venture capitalist and founder at Initialized Capital. We were earliest investors in billion dollar startups like Coinbase and Instacart, and I’m a Forbes Midas List Top 100 venture capitalist in the world. We want these videos to be about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people. Our startups have gone on to create more than $100 billion in market value so far, and Initialized has over $1B in assets under management.
Please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this!
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram so you'll never miss my videos and ideas—
https://instagram.com/garrytan
https://twitter.com/garrytan
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7aJ70Wyebw
I was 23 and didn’t know anything about startups. Peter Thiel offered me a big equity stake and a full year’s salary to quit my stable job at Microsoft and join a startup he was starting. It wasn’t even a risky decision. I still said no, and it cost me $200M.
When opportunity knocks, you should think about taking the risk. If you’re good, it’s often the only way you can actually get a larger piece of the kind of value you can create when making software. There are lots of good reasons to work at a big tech giant, but there are also downsides. We talk through those things.
Don’t make my mistake. Make all new mistakes.
EDIT NOTE: Google actually makes $1.6M annualized net revenue per employee per year, not profit. Apologies for the imprecision.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtnG0ELjvcM
Today we're sitting down with Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis, cofounders of AptDeco, the next great marketplace startup.
Everyone's got some furniture that doesn't quite fit their room. You bought it, you thought it would work, but it's not quite right. What if I told you there's a managed marketplace now that will let you get a lot of your money back, and then find your next piece, all at once?
It's here and it's called AptDeco. They're a managed marketplace that is expanding the market for used furniture. It's my favorite way software can create new behaviors in the same way Instacart let you get your groceries or Uber made it easier to get around. And it's in a $14billion market that can only get bigger, because this is supply and demand that didn't exist before.
This team is a case study in being data driven, doing unscalable things, and then scaling them in one of the world's biggest possible markets.
00:00 Intro
00:51 Meet Reham and Kalam
02:07 AptDeco is the next great managed marketplace
04:38 Sustainability: AptDeco saves 9M pounds of CO2
05:24 How they solved demand
06:51 Key learning: Do your ad buys in-house
07:43 Key learning: Do your logistics in-house
09:55 Best software-based logistics = no warehousing
12:16 Product market fit = supply constrained, unlimited demand
13:13 Diversity and inclusion in Tech
17:28 Lessons from Reham and Kalam wish they knew when they started
19:40 Lesson: Do the unscalable and scale them
24:06 AptDeco is live now for NYC
24:52 AptDeco is hiring remotely for engineers and product
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pzphszE704
Imagine a blockchain that actually lets people control who has access to what data. This is what enables many business situations that existing blockchains just fail at: a public blockchain that has flexible privacy. All of this is enabled by Chain Trees, which move real data into the wallet out of the public blockchain.
Learn more about Tupelo at Tupelo.org— this technology is usable today.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZhyDDMpxBs
Van Neistat and his brother Casey Neistat showed us what the early days of internet video were all about with. Now he's showing us there won't be a mainstream path for video creators anymore -- the power to reach audiences is back in your hands.
Subscribe to Van: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5mPJA4y5G8Z6aNkY6AxgAw
Check out Van's Spirited Man merchandise! https://spiritedman.com
"Get Them Out!" by Van: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6xzjWdfSs4
"Hello, World: Shenzhen" by Ashlee Vance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taZJblMAuko
0:00 Thank you!
0:54 The iMac that started it all
3:40 Early work and life lessons
10:02 Van's channel growth and the what the future holds
12:03 Creators can monetize more directly now
16:25 Using Influencers power for political good
18:03 Creating for cinema vs Youtube
19:45 Opening up on Youtube
21:28 How to keep the train going
29:42 How anyone can find their niche with Patreon
100% of the revenue from this channel is donated to https://www.code2040.org - thank you for helping me help the engineers of tomorrow.
I’m Garry Tan, venture capitalist and founder at Initialized Capital. We were earliest investors in billion dollar startups like Coinbase and Instacart, and I’m a Forbes Midas List Top 100 venture capitalist in the world. We want these videos to be about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people. Our startups have gone on to create more than $100 billion in market value so far, and Initialized has over $1B in assets under management.
Please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this!
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram so you'll never miss my videos and ideas—
https://instagram.com/garrytan
https://twitter.com/garrytan
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gHUFhKSwl4
Not knowing how to code is no longer a limitation on building the perfect software for your company. Today I'm introducing you to Michael Skelly, co founder of Stacker. With Stacker, you can easily get software built with no technical knowledge required. It’s a game changer, and over 500 companies already utilize it to dramatically optimize their workflows and unlock new capabilities in software they never thought possible.
Also... Stacker is hiring!
https://www.stackerhq.com/jobs
Learn more:
https://www.stackerhq.com
1:11 What is Stacker?
3:07 Who’s using it now? 500 teams!
3:44 Stacker’s origin story: Scratch your own itch
7:41 Solving problems at marketplace startups
10:09 True no-code: non-technical teams don’t have to wait for engineering!
10:55 Stacker was not built for prototyping!
12:00 Stacker is multi user
12:45 Example customer: Project N95
14:36 Any process that a person is doing can be replaced
16:41 Stacker enables Kaizen
18:14 What does Michael wish he knew when he started in tech?
20:34 Advice: Use the minimum amount of tech possible to solve a problem
21:08 Stacker is hiring - stackerhq.com/jobs
21:52 Use Stacker now for all of your projects!
I’m Garry Tan, venture capitalist and founder at Initialized Capital. We were earliest investors in billion dollar startups like Coinbase and Instacart, and I’m a Forbes Midas List Top 100 venture capitalist in the world. We want these videos to be about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people. Our startups have gone on to create more than $40 billion in market value so far, and Initialized has over $770M in assets under management.
Please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this!
Find me on Instagram where I can answer your startup advice questions by DM -
https://instagram.com/garrytan
https://twitter.com/garrytan
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y29ZlhuEIyc
Today, I’m excited to sit down with Harj Taggar, Group Partner at Y Combinator and an old friend that gave me my first job as designer-in-residence with him at YC. We talk about Y Combinator, Startups, and his $500 million mistake saying no to Facebook.
Watch my $200M mistake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtnG0ELjvcM
Harj Taggar on Twitter: https://twitter.com/harjtaggar?lang=en
00:00 Harj's $500M mistake
4:34 What founders can learn from 9-digit mistakes
5:49 How to tell the difference between a Theranos and a Facebook
8:21 How Harj became a great investor
9:58 Startup quality is up a lot
13:47 How open web form changed how startups are funded
16:12 First time founders need a community to win
19:21 One year of working with a YC batch = a lifetime in VC
100% of the revenue from this channel is donated to https://www.code2040.org - thank you for helping me help the engineers of tomorrow.
I’m Garry Tan, venture capitalist and founder at Initialized Capital. We were earliest investors in billion dollar startups like Coinbase and Instacart, and I’m a Forbes Midas List Top 100 venture capitalist in the world. We want these videos to be about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people. Our startups have gone on to create more than $200 billion in market value so far, and Initialized has over $3.2B in assets under management.
Please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more videos like this!
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram so you'll never miss my videos and ideas—
https://instagram.com/garrytan
https://twitter.com/garrytan
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WJjSvI8_E0