Kevin Hale
30 statements across 4 episodes · 8 bullish · 6 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Feb 15, 2019 by Ryan Hoover · said 18 times in 13 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Kevin Hale's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Ryan Hoover (4), Courtland Allen (3), Paul Buchheit (2), Kalam Dennis (2), Alexandria Lafci (2), Mathilde Collin (1), Kat Manalac (1), David Hua (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2018 7 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- 3D Home Printing for the Developing World – Alexandria Lafci and Brett Hagler of New Story Charity · Y Combinator
- Starting a Startup After Business School - Reham Fagiri and Kalam Dennis of AptDeco · Y Combinator
- After PMF: People, Customers, Sales by Mathilde Collin · Y Combinator
- The Path to $100B by Paul Buchheit · Y Combinator
- Cannabis Startup Founders David Hua and Vincent Ning on Legalization, Banking, and Industry Trends · Y Combinator
- Paul Buchheit - Startup Investor School Day 2 · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Your Whole Goal Is to Not Quit - Courtland Allen of Indie Hackers · Y Combinator
- Communicate with Users, Build Something They Want - Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt · Y Combinator
- Building a Startup is About Solving a Problem - Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
Everything said about Kevin Hale, oldest first
Feb 15, 2019 positive
Hoover: Pumping your chest before pitching boosts confidence and calms nerves
“Someone gave me this advice actually during YC is before you do anything like that, before you do a pitch, pump your chest physically. It might've been Kevin Hale that said this. Yeah, I could be wrong. So sorry, Kevin, if I'm putting words in your mouth, but …”
Mar 6, 2019 neutral
Jul 3, 2019 negative
Jul 3, 2019 positive
Hale: Having Builders Do Customer Support Creates Direct Incentive to Fix Issues
“One is that the people building the product, like, got all this awesome feedback on, like, how to improve it. You also have the right sort of feedback loop where it's just like, oh, I'm tired of getting this question. Yeah, exactly. I have to do something abou…”
Jul 3, 2019 positive
Hale: Narrative and storytelling are the most critical early startup tasks
“It's what we mostly do in YC is fixing your narrative and storytelling because people come in and they're so bad at talking about what they're doing. And because it's not clear, people can't understand. If they can't understand, they can't get excited. And if …”
Jul 3, 2019 neutral
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019 positive
Hale: Intentionally ugly UI defaults force users to learn software settings
“There's an affordance of something really ugly, especially in a design app or a photography app like Adobe Photoshop. And so when you put a border on something, the default was like this three pixel dark red line. And the affordance of that is like designers w…”
Jul 3, 2019 positive
Hale: Great technical teams face far less competition in unsexy markets than consumer software
“If you were a really great product technical team, and you're entering an unsexy space that's good, because you're entering a space with like less competitors. Those who are like great product teams, but entering in like Consumer spaces. It's like, my God, tha…”
Jul 3, 2019 positive
Hale: 2018 Startup School produced over 60 accepted YC companies
“So, last year we had over 15,000 people register and participate in startup school, and we had about 5000 graduate. From that graduating class we had about 391 of them. End up getting interviewed for the last batch, and then we accepted over 60 companies. It r…”
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019 neutral
Hale: UX features and customer support improve retention, not conversion
“Customer support is actually a good one for improving retention. And it's something I also tell People about in terms of, like, that's a great, like, user experience, and most user experience features, like, a lot of people like to be forward on them, especial…”
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 3, 2019
Jul 25, 2019
Kevin Hale: A startup idea is a hypothesis about rapid growth
“A startup idea is basically a hypothesis, and this is the way you should think about it. It's a hypothesis about why a company could grow quickly, and your job is to figure out how to construct your hypothesis, basically the pitch to the investor, so they unde…”
Jul 25, 2019 negative
Hale: Most Startups Struggle with Retention by Not Sending Enough Triggers
“And oftentimes most companies don't send enough, for example, email notifications, or triggers, or reminders, or figure out ways to come back into the app, or figure out ways to be back in front of the user at the right time.”
Jul 25, 2019 negative
Jul 25, 2019
Jul 25, 2019 negative
Hale: Big Tech Experience Does Not Give Founders an Unfair Advantage
“And so if you think it's like, well, I'm a product manager at Google. There's a lot of product managers at Google. If you say you're an engineer at Microsoft, there's a lot of engineers at Microsoft. It's like, great, but it's not one that will make me think, …”
Jul 25, 2019 neutral
Jul 25, 2019 bullish
Jul 25, 2019 negative
Hale: Sole reliance on paid acquisition fails as scale attracts competitors
“If paid acquisition is the only way that you are able to grow your company, then I'm gonna discount that channel of growth greatly. That is because if you actually get really popular, you can actually start being someone significant, Let's say becoming a hundr…”
Jul 25, 2019
Hale: Startup ideas consist of a problem, solution, and insight
“So startup ideas composed of three parts. The first part is a problem, and it's basically the initial conditions. You have to explain to me, like, what is the setting for this company, ah, that allows it to be able to grow quickly. The second is the solution. …”
Jul 25, 2019 bearish
Jul 25, 2019
Jul 25, 2019 positive
Jul 25, 2019
Kevin Hale: Enterprise startup success is determined by sales ability, not engineering
“So if you are heavy engineering team or doing a BDB or enterprise startup, again, the default is you have to build it. So if you can't even build it, then it's not even gonna work. So I don't spend actually a lot of time looking at that. For me, I'm trying to …”