Peter Reinhardt, co-founder of Segment, discusses how early startup founders navigate failure and rapid iteration, citing Y Combinator batchmate Codecademy as an example.
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“They started and killed, like, 12 ideas over the course of Y Combinator, and then three days before Demo Day launched Codecademy, and got to 300 and something thousand signups in the 72 hours before they presented at Demo Day.”
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