Geoff Ralston 

Hi,  Startup School  founders. I'm  Geoff Ralston ,  YC  's president, and I'm here to say so long, and to give a few words of parting advice. So after 10 extraordinary weeks of  Startup School , we here at  YC  are about to focus on our winter  2020  batch. And you all will be off working on your  startups , hopefully, we'll see many of you at interviews for winter  2020 . And no matter what, you'll all continue working on your  startups  regardless of what happens with  YC . Here are a few things to think about as you enter this next phase of your company. It's so easy to be distracted by what's happening with other  startups . It's a great thing to be part of a  community  of  startups  but this is the one thing you have to be careful about and to remember is that every  startup , every single one has a different path, every founder has a different path. 

YC  President  Geoff Ralston  concludes  Startup School  this year with some parting advice, as founders continue on their journey to make something people want. 

#Y Combinator   #Startup School   #Geoff Ralston   #Growth

A few words on  fundraising  (A Guide to Seed  Fundraising    https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/how-to-raise-a-se...  by  Geoff Ralston ). The first, best bit of advice is to raise  money  as quickly as possible and then get back to  work . It is often easy to actually see when a company is  fundraising  by looking at their  growth  curve and when it flattens out they are raising  money . Equally important is to understand that valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success ( Fundraising  Rounds are not Milestones  https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/fundraising-round...  by  Michael Seibel ). Some of Y Combinator’s very best companies raised on tiny initial valuations ( Airbnb ,  Dropbox ,  Twitch , are all good examples). By the way, it is vital to remember that the  money  you raise IS NOT your  money . You have a fiduciary and ethical/moral duty to spend the  money  only to improve the prospects of your company. 

Startup  founders’ intuition will always be to do more whereas usually the best strategy is almost always to do less, really well. For example, founders are frequently tempted to chase big deals with large companies which represent amazing, company validating  relationships . However, deals between large companies and tiny  startups  seldom end well for the  startup . They take too long, cost too much, and often fail completely. One of the hardest things about doing a  startup  is choosing what to do, since you will always have an infinite list of things that could be done ( Startup  Priorities by  Geoff Ralston    http://blog.geoffralston.com/startup-priorities).  It is vital that very early a  startup  choose the one or two key  metrics  it will use to measure success, then founders should choose what to do based nearly exclusively on how the task will impact those  metrics . When your  early stage   product  isn’t working it's often tempting to immediately build new features in order to solve every  problem  the customer seems to have instead of talking to the customer and focusing only on the most acute  problem  they have.