The Student's Guide To Becoming A Successful Startup Founder

Your job is to be an optimist. Your job is to believe amazing things about what you can do with your life and what you do in the world when you're young. That's the point. That's the point. That's why the world needs young people.

[Music]

This is Michael Seibel with Dalton Caldwell, and today we're going to talk about our advice for our high schoolers. Uh-oh, it's been a little while. It's been a little while, so maybe the place to start, because I think that oftentimes young people are in a rush, maybe we can just start by saying the startup game isn't going away. That's true! You've got time.

And look, I think, to set this up, we know a lot of young people watch these videos. Yes, we know they like startup content. We know they may even anonymously be involved in startups on Discords and stuff; like, it's crazy. For the folks that apply to YC, a lot of them are literally in high school, and so we understand who you are if you're watching this or if you know someone like this. You can forward them the video. Yes, but we want to speak directly to you high school students who are, yes, who are trying to figure out, who are ambitious and want to be a part of what's happening in the tech world, in the startup world, and aren't really sure where to begin.

Yes, maybe the first analogy I give you—and this will immediately age me, so I apologize—I was a big Final Fantasy 7 player. Do you play Final Fantasy 7? A little bit? Worse. All right. The basic thing I learned in Final Fantasy VII was that you can fight the boss at a certain level and get your ass kicked, or you can grind for like, you know, 10 more hours and fight the boss and actually kick their ass.

And I think that this analogy applies to a lot of things in the real world and specifically in the startup world, where like investing and leveling yourself up can produce a lot of benefits later on. Like deferring a little bit of that satisfaction of getting started right now so you can upskill makes you 10 times more powerful later. But let's be clear: you have to be upskilling. Dude, the grind has to happen.

Exactly! If I just stood there and didn't grind, my character got no better! And it was cool. In a video game, you see grinding; it's a lot. You can see the character leveling up. Exactly! Learning new spells, really. Exactly.

But in the real world, let's talk a little bit about grinding. What's the kind of grinding? What's the kind of upskilling that you would advise high schoolers to do?

Well, the most obvious and straightforward one is learn how to code. Obvious! Like, it's pretty tricky. Even if you think, "Hey, I'm not going to be..." A lot of people say to me, the younger folks, "Oh, I don't want to be a coder my whole life. I want to be a Founder. I want to be a product person." Well, you should still learn how to code. Like, there's—it’s really hard to make an argument, yes, if you're a young person why you shouldn't have that skill in your skill tree.

Can you make a case? Why do you make no case? I was the business guy; I didn't know how to code, and literally I would say there are many moments in the early stage of a company where I felt borderline useless. And certainly, I didn't have the power to impact the product anywhere near as much as my other three co-founders who were software engineers. So, like, this is such an obvious one.

Yeah, and you've got time. Yes, this is a great thing. AP Computer Science. Yes, you can take Replit. There's all these YC companies that help you learn how to code. Codecademy, there's so many! So even if you have some complicated relationship with maybe, "I don't want to be a programmer," that's fine; learn the skill. Yes, this is like learning how to cast spells or something.

Well, I'll push even harder. Like, get this complicated view of "I don't want to be a coder" out of your head. Like, the coders are the most powerful people inside of software companies. Like, that's the hint! The people who code are the most powerful. They're the most highly compensated, they're the hardest to replace, they often have the best ideas and the easiest path to implementing their ideas by far. They're the power center.

The talkers? Not as much. Sometimes people on this coding thing, they're like, "Well, I didn't grow up coding, or I wasn't like a 13-year-old whiz kid." Like, people I know in high school? It doesn't matter! I'm just trying to argue you don't need to be that. No! If you have the right ambition and grind mentality, to be willing to learn, of course, you can do it. Yes, even if you're 19 or 20. Yes, it's never too late to learn this stuff. Never too!

Number two, um, we talked about this a little bit. Design! Learning how to use basic design software.

Yeah, this is one that kind of blows my mind because when I think back to my startups, I had to power up, you know, Photoshop. We used this thing called RAMP back in the day. Like, basically, if a button needs to be made and we didn't have a designer, yes, make the button! You know, like, you didn't even have to look that good.

Um, and so this is a skill that anyone can grasp for, and like, there are examples of good design and bad design all over the internet, right? So you can easily copy. I think the third one is launching products. Like, man, if you could get a product out, it doesn't have to be used. Band people—it doesn't have to—just like actually going through the full motion of coming up with an idea for a little side project and releasing it and handing it to someone because you're doing reps.

Like, one of the things I noticed at YC is a lot of the folks that later on become great Founders, they worked on projects in high school that may not be commercially like venture-funded companies, but they were like pretty cool.

Yeah, and so one of the examples I always think of was, um, back in the 90s, there was a computer program called Winamp. And that's how you would listen to the MP3s you downloaded from Napster. And some high school kids, Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Daniel, I believe, built a music recommendation plug-in for Winamp. It was quite popular! I think it's called like "The Brain" or something like that.

Yeah, and so it was just like a free plug-in, and it was quite popular, and they made it when they were in high school. And I don't think it had anything to do with what they did later on in life, but they knew how to write code, they knew how to make something they themselves wanted, which was music recommendation for Winamp, and they released it. I think it got like millions of downloads. It was pretty popular! They went through all the motions a startup founder has to, but in this kind of like no stakes.

Yeah, they were trying to—it wasn't a business, at least to my understanding; maybe they thought it was, but it was more of making something cool. Yes! And this sort of story comes up a lot in some of the founders that we fund is that they do stuff like this.

Yeah! And you ask them, "Well, why? Why were you doing that?" And they almost don't understand the question. It's their nature to build things and release them. So again, the advice part is find low-stakes things you can work on, give them to the world. And again, I think there's a lot of the advice, if you want to be in the music industry, if you want to be a writer, a lot of the advice, if you listen to the greats, to young people, is do it. Do the reps. And even if you write the poem and don't show it to anyone, yeah, or even if you are in a bunch of bands that don't make it and break up, you got the reps in! You're learning!

When you were young, the next one that comes up a lot, if you're going to be a startup founder one day, you've got to learn how to talk to people. You've got to learn how to make friends. Yep! And needless to say, I think that this is a skill that people kind of assume you can't learn. Like, assume like, "Oh, some people are just really social and other people are just shy, and like I can't change that." But I know you and I have seen this with YC Founders, like, massively changed. You know, absolutely. This is 100% a learnable skill.

And anyone who says otherwise is really doing you a disservice. I think what's so interesting about this one is just like the previous examples, the way you get better at it is you suck at it first! Yeah! And you have to be willing to be uncomfortable.

Again, I think my high school mentality—I don't know if you feel the same way—is you believe too much that your identity, then, like, that's a nerd, that's a jock, that's a—like, it was like you would put people and sort people into buckets like they were permanent. Yes! And that's fake. Yes. That is not permanent! Everyone could be anything! Yes! Yes! If they choose to. Yes!

And so you can make a choice. If you're like, "Well, I'm not really, you know, a people person," or like, "I'm not the kind of person that would go and talk to everyone at a party," or whatever, like, yeah, you could do that. Totally do that!

And it's so weird to me because looking back to high school, it was such a sandbox. Like, it was such an environment where my interactions with people didn't matter really, right? Like, I'm not—how many high school people are you still really close with? Right? Not a ton! Right? So like, one, that reputation's not going to follow you in the real world, and two, you can experiment! Like, you can play! Like, it could be whoever you want to be.

Yeah! Yeah! If you make a fool of yourself, you go to college, you're going to see those people ever again. I think it's totally fine! Totally fine!

And I think that the other thing that I learned about this is that everyone else feels shy too! Even the people who you think don't feel shy. Even the people who you think, "Oh, they make a bunch of friends." Everyone has that thing inside of them that they're a little bit shy.

And I think when you're older, you get that! Yes, you get it! But man, you don't get that! You don't get that! The popular kids are, like, have their own thing they're working on! Exactly! That they're struggling with! Exactly! The person that you're afraid to go talk to is the same person who would probably like someone to come talk to them.

I think another one here is like how to help people. I think that what's tricky about being a startup founder is you have to be empathetic. Like, you actually have to care about your customers. You have to care about your users. And I think this is something you can start practicing early.

And you know, I remember doing this, and it was this really weird story. I remember tutoring some kid in high school, and I'll tell you, I'll be honest, right? I was doing it to check the box on the like National Merit Scholarship or whatever the contest—and I remember, you know, I was maybe in 11th grade, and I was tutoring this ninth grader, and I remember the parents on the second or third time I came just looking at me and smiling and being like—and I realized, "Oh my God!" Like, they really, really want their kid to learn, and they are so happy that I'm taking time, and they're paying me, and they're still so happy that I'm taking time out of my schedule to help this kid!

And I was like, "Oh my God!" Like, that's when it kind of clicked a little bit where I was like, if you help someone, they'll really appreciate! Like, if you actually help them, right? If you care. And I actually took it more seriously.

Um, and it was funny because I remember there was one time where I screwed up, and I couldn't make it, and I was like, "Oh my God, they're gonna, they're gonna fire me! Like I was supposed to be there!" And they were like, "Totally fine. Just come back next week. It's totally fine."

And I think you might find that with your customers and even if you screw up, like, if you really care and you're really helping them, they're not gonna fire you! It's so rare to find products or people who actually care! Yeah, that's a rare thing, especially from young people! Again, like, people are really impressed when young people care.

Give a—like, teachers notice! Like, people notice! Yeah, I don't know! It's a way to stand out! Yeah, it's a very easy way!

Now, here's another one that's a little controversial, right? Like, how to play the credential game. This one's tricky because I'd like to say we live in a world where credentials don't matter. Yeah! But we don't live in that world, right?

So how would you tell a high schooler to think about this game? There's the people that like love the system and embrace the system, like the teacher's pets. Yes! And then there's the people that see the system for what it is, and they want to rage against the machine and destroy the system. Yes!

And you know, I was a little bit more or less—God yes! The Stanford kid! Yeah, exactly! But the key thing is I'm telling you, I'm talking to high schoolers, I'm just trying to say like when you see, yes, you're like, "Man, this is like not ideal."

Yeah, I think it's one way to say it. Yes, a little up, and to the extent you can learn to work to understand the rules of the game and play the game with credentials and realize that leveling up on the credential game will help you with your long-term goals.

Yeah, I think that's much better than like rejecting the system out of hand. It's basically like either extreme is bad. Rejecting that, like fundamentally you understand the system is somewhat arbitrary, right? If you're smart enough, you understand that, right?

Yes! And with that understanding, you can reject the system, and then like—because you don't have the right credentials, it'll hold you back. You can somehow not understand the initial point, think the system is the filter for merit completely, and then get very disappointed later in life when you realize that all these credentials don't mean you as far as personal room!

Or you can try to get the system to work for you! Yeah, that's a great way to put it. It's a centrist philosophy, which is you acknowledge some of the—yeah! But also if you opt out of it completely, you're kind of just hosing yourself!

And I think that like this mentality is really important because I think that a lot of people feel like the system's operating on them, but I think what they should feel is the system is a tool they can use. If you understand it, you can use it! And you can use it to accomplish whatever goal you want to.

And so this idea that it's operating on you, I think we're trying to break—like, you can use this! Like, you can use the system!

All right, let's talk about fads! Yeah! There have been a lot of fads!

Yeah, well, I think it's easy, especially when you're young, to just get caught up in stuff, whatever the thing is. And some of the things are pretty cool. Again, I was really into the internet! Yep! Yep! When that was a new thing, I was really, really, really into it! And obviously, that stuck around!

Certainly, there's a lot of young people that got super into crypto. There's young people that got really into stock trading recently with Wall Street Bets and Reddit. Like, you'll see people get really into stuff! Yeah! And so it's actually great! Fun! In the Zuckerberg case, building a Winamp plug-in, that was part of the Napster thing! Yeah! So he was really into that!

Yeah! But how—you know, where could it go too far, Michael? Yeah, I think that, like, the tricky bit about fads is it's kind of like what we said before about understanding the credential system. The fads are just like another system, right?

And I think you kind of have to understand that some things stick because they create a lot of value and other things are just kind of passing with the time. And I think what's really important for young people to start to understand is like how to distinguish between the two, right? Like, fads stick when they really add value, and fads pass when they don't.

And if you can have a nose for when something is adding value, when it's actually helping people, if you can train yourself on that, then that's a really important skill! That's a great point!

Um, on the flip side, we see the opposite of this in the startup world all the time, where like COVID happens, everyone wants to have a Zoom startup. And it's like, yes! The Zoom guys thought people need a video—Gulf would say way before COVID, right?

And you know, you mentioned Robinhood—oh, now, you know, Wall Street Bets, bam! I need to make a Robinhood be better! That's like— even the Robinhood guys were before Wall Street Bets! It's like the fad is often hiding what's really going on!

And like, if you can kind of pierce through that, you can figure out real value, fake value, temporary value, long-term value. And I think that helps a lot! And you can probably, as a young person, look at what's going on in your life right now and try to figure out what's a fad and what's going to stick!

You know, next one: how to be excited about technology. We came up in this weird era. I guess I didn't think it was weird, but looking back, I guess it was weird where everyone thought technology was cool and making the world a better place!

Yeah! A lot of the way we understand the world is framed via journalism, yes! And one thing, again for young people, they don't have context on this, but it used to be journalists were all emphatically excited with no downsides. No reservations—No reservations—the internet is great! Yes!

And they would debate how great it was! The debate was like, "Yeah, yeah, we know it's great, but just how great?" Yes! And who's making it the best? Who's making it better the fastest? You know!

And so, it was hard to like see any problems with it! Yes! And, um, in this current universe we live in, it's the opposite! Yeah! It's this is bad, a lot of these people are bad! Every new technology, how is it going to try to screw us, exploit us? Yeah! You know, yada, yada!

And let's be clear, both extremes are incorrect! That's correct points! Yeah! It's a hundred percent! There are fair points! But I sometimes when I talk to young folks, they internalize too much of the current thing!

Yes! And I think I don't see how that helps you when you're young! Like, your job is to be an optimist! Your job is to believe amazing things about what you can do with your life and what you do in the world when you're young!

That's a point! That's the point! That's why the world needs young people—they need that optimism!

Yeah! So I think on this one, the real trick is, like, even when you're absorbing this bad news, like, remember, like, look around! See how technology is making the world a better place! Like, look at your phone and see the things you could do that you couldn't do before!

Go online! See the things, see the things you can learn that you couldn't learn before! See the ways you can work that you couldn't work before! Like, keep the core message in your head: technology is progress!

Even if the news isn't covering it that way! Let's talk about honesty!

Yep! This is a big one! This is a big one that I think people—in fact, you know, we talk about a lot of people who maybe didn't learn this lesson that honesty is important! And for a while, they do okay with it, but inevitably, they get caught!

So how do you think about learning to be honest if you're a high schooler? The best skill is to learn to be honest to yourself! Like, if your own relationship with yourself, yes, is—you can't be honest about things! What do you really feel? What do you really think? Who are you really? Yeah! It's going to be rough!

Yeah! And then at your core, if you're not honest with yourself, your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your friends, with institutions—yes—it's going to be tricky anyway.

We run across folks that seem like they've deferred a lot of this honesty! Yeah! I think that, um, the thing you should understand about the startup world is that a lot of it works because of honesty! A lot of the reasons why early adopting customers will use you is because like they think you're going to be honest!

A lot of reasons why investors might give you money, while your co-founders might work with you, employee might work with you—a lot of reasons why people make things happen in the startup world is because we're in a high trust environment!

Yeah! And this is one of those like negative things that people say about nerds is, "Oh, this person has no manners! They just say whatever they think!" Like, again, in polite society, yeah, you're supposed to lie all the time!

Something a nerd would do is be like, "Hey, um, our—that product sucks! Like, why are we shipping this product that no one wants?" Yeah! Like, it's like, "Hey, shut up man! Like, that’s like what a—" that's what a nerd would do! Yes!

You know, you're bad for telling the truth about something because it's impolite and you're hurting people's feelings! Yeah! And so there is part of the nerd culture in this that I think is good, which is essential—the person who would stand up and raise their hand and point out, you know, that the emperor is wearing no clothes!

Yeah, our thing is broken! Yeah, no, I totally agree! And so I love that because that's both the be honest to the stakeholders around you, but it's also that honesty to yourself!

Right! Like, if you know your product sucks, if you know you don't care about your user, you gotta acknowledge that! And then I think the last one is learn to love long games!

And this is kind of the theme that I brought in the beginning. These games are long! And I remember when I started my startup, I was 23 years old, and I had never done anything that took very long! When you really think about it, like, what do you do in school? What's the longest project you have in school? Like, maybe a senior thesis in college? Maybe!

And so I remember talking to our lawyer at the time, and he said, "Oh!" And he was 30, which in my mind was like impossibly old! I was like, "Well, obviously nothing, you know, is relevant to modern times!" And he said, "You know the average startup takes seven to ten years to exit or IPO or sell." And I just thought, "That couldn't be the case!"

Like, and what's funny is, like, he worked at a law firm! Like, he worked at a law firm that represented like maybe a quarter of all tech companies! He had the data! Like, this wasn't like a off-the-top-of-his-head thing!

And I just remember thinking, "This guy doesn't know what he's talking about!" And I remember when our company sold, took him out to dinner. It was seven years later! I was his age when he told me that—I was 30, he was 37—impossibly old! I remember thinking the guy was right! This is a long game!

And I think having ambition in your life involves playing the long game. Because to actually do something great, it doesn't happen overnight! Yes! And I don't know what your experience is, but we know a lot of people when they were very young!

Yes! And it's okay to have ambition! It's good to have ambition! Yes! And true ambition means being patient over many, many, many years! Yes!

And so to give you a completely non-startup example, my high school girlfriend, her thing was poetry! And she really liked poetry again—this is like high school! Yeah! Yeah! And so she like wrote all this poetry!

She—you know, that was like her thing! And you know, I kind of fell out of touch with her, but she's the, um, New York Times poetry critic now! Holy! And that—my high school girlfriend who loved poetry!

So she played the long game! And this is my point is that like, you know, probably not everyone that likes poetry when they're like a six-year-old is probably not gonna go there! But if you actually put in your whole life towards something and you have a dream!

Yeah! And you're not ashamed of the dream, and you keep the dream going into your third—the lot of people have dreams when they're young, and they lose their dreams and their jobs! They let the dreams go! Yes!

But if you keep your dream and put in the years of work, those are the people sitting at the top of the system! Yes! Like, the people that make it are people just like you and me! Yes! That had a dream, and they put in 17 years, 20 years of real hard work!

Yeah! Well, and then they get to reap the rewards! And I think that it's funny because as this goes, as you're describing this, like two things went through my head! One, I remember being in my 20s and being this like poor startup founder and seeing my friend in San Francisco, which isn't the most fun city, but it's another topic—

And seeing my friends in New York who were in banking and finance and stuff going out and having fun, and I remember thinking, "Why do they get to live this fun life, and I have to live this hard-working life?" And then I realized, like, this grind is going to benefit me! And like, the fun that a 25-year-old has in New York, to be honest, is pretty shitty!

A wealthy 30-year-old? Way more fun! So to wrap up, if you're a high schooler and you're thinking about this startup game, one, that's awesome, right? Like, we love that you're thinking about, "Hey, don't let it—never let anyone put you down!" Yeah!

Have a dream! We're telling—cool, be cool! Be yourself! Like, if that's your dream, we love it! Yes! Live your dream! Live your dream! The game will be here when you're ready to play, and you know we'll be here!

Now, all right, man! Enjoy! Chat! Thanks!

[Music] Thank you.