Startup School by Y Combinator

YC Partners Adora Cheung and Kevin Hale reflect on Startup School 2019 and share some of our learnings from this year's program.

To succeed in building a big company in the long-term, founders must become good at leading, motivating, and retaining great people. Ali Rowghani, YC Partner and CEO of the YC Continuity Fund, takes from his experience working with great leaders to share his three observations on leadership. 

YC Partner Jared Friedman covers hard-tech companies and why founders should consider starting one. He also covers a couple of the most common problems hard-tech companies face and how to solve them, with examples from seven YC companies.

YC Partner and GC Carolynn Levy details the basics of startup financing and how modern early stage rounds of financing are done using convertible securities, like the SAFE.

In this lecture, YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over how to package up your idea and communicate it to an investor. He shares his tips on how to craft your pitch in a clear and concise way that effectively grabs your audience's attention.

YC Partner Adora Cheung shares her framework for how founders can efficiently make use of their time. She covers ways to identify and prioritize tasks, in addition to how you can measure their impact on your company.

YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over the fundamentals of pricing and monetization, how it affects your customer acquisition strategy, and how to optimize it through a few rules of thumb.

YC Partner Kevin Hale covers the first principles of conversion, one of the main drivers of growth for your startup, and how you can improve it starting with your landing page.

YC Partner and Head of Admissions Dalton Caldwell talks about pivoting for startups and shares his advice on when and how founders should consider it for their companies.

YC Partner Tim Brady covers the importance of building a strong and coherent culture early and shares six things that you can do now to help you create a solid foundation for your startup.

YC Partner Kevin Hale talks about the importance of building a successful working relationship with your cofounders, and setting up processes to optimize for the strengths of your team.

YC Partner and CFO Kirsty Nathoo shares the most common mistakes startups make with their finances and how they can prevent them.

YC Partner and growth expert Gustaf Alstromer talks about how to measure product market fit, how to decide on a growth channel, metrics that lie about PMF and other mechanics of growth for startups.

YC Partner Kat Manalac presents on how startups should think about launching and why you should do it repeatedly.

YC Partners Anu Hariharan and Adora Cheung answer questions from Startup School founders on how investors measure startups.

YC Continuity Partner Anu Hariharan breaks down the important metrics we look for when we’re evaluating a startup’s business model and common mistakes to avoid when measuring them.

Ilya Volodarsky, co-founder of Segment, presents his tactics for setting up analytics to build your MVP and measure your metrics.

YC Partner Adora Cheung covers the importance of defining and tracking KPIs to understand how effectively your startup is reaching your goals.

YC CEO and Partner Michael Seibel shares his approach to building an MVP and getting your first users as a pre-launch startup.