The Ledger
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Alströmer: Pre-PMF startups only need founders, computers, and one engineer
“When startups get funded, every single dollar, every single energy effort should go towards trying to find product market fit, which usually is The two founders or the three founders, their computers, their apartment, and maybe one more engineer who's also pro…”
Alströmer: Post-2020 easy capital killed startups that otherwise would have succeeded
“It's very clear that, that what happened in those two years after summer, 20, 20 hurt companies. Like, it was much worse than just, like, more of the same. It hurt companies that otherwise would have been successful, because they would have had a level of disc…”
Alströmer: Most major companies scale using only one or two channels
“Most really big companies didn't use all of those channels. They use one or two channels.”
Startup marketing VPs churn frequently because founders misunderstand the role
“VP of marketing is like notoriously high churn job because, and it's not because the VP of marketing folks aren't good. It's because the founders have the wrong expectations of what those people do, and they haven't been curious enough to learn about that job.”
Alströmer: Early chiefs of staff and offices worsen startup outcomes
“It just feels natural that I should have an office manager, or I should have a really nice big office, or maybe two offices, or maybe a chief of staff, and there's, like, all of the things that, that just, like, you can look at other companies that are success…”
Alströmer: Fast hiring at seed stage usually means hiring the wrong people
“Like, maybe if I know you, I know you're a great founder, I would want to work for you, but like, for most people, this is not interesting to work for, which means the time it takes to hire will be very long, and if it goes really fast, you probably hire the w…”
Alströmer: Sales is probably the easiest role for startup founders to learn
“If you don't know how to sell, don't worry. You can learn. It's probably the easiest job to learn in startup.”
Alströmer: B2B Startups Should Offer Money-Back Guarantees Over Free Trials
“But you should not offer free trials and B to B sales. Go for a money back guarantee and go for the ability to opt out instead.”
Alströmer: Startups Should Raise Prices Until Customers Complain But Still Pay
“Increasing your price until your customers are complaining, but still paying is the right way to go.”
Alströmer: Startups cannot easily learn from users acquired via Google and Facebook
“You can't learn from users if the first thousand or first hundred customers are brought in through Google and Facebook. Those people are not the kind of people that you can easily get on a 30 minute phone call with.”
Top products like the iPhone often have bad Net Promoter Scores
“Well, you can just Google the best products and best companies in the world. They all have bad net promoter score. Like the iPhone, Apple, all of them have bad net promoter scores. Like it doesn't necessarily correlate with good products. Correlates with perce…”
Alströmer: General viral channels are saturated and no longer viable for startups
“The general viral channels have been in many cases saturated and not It's not a good way for startups to grow anymore.”
Alströmer: Ad-driven monetization inherently misaligns growth optimization against users
“I think there is a fundamental problem sort of like with the driving the attention and then sort of like having advertising as a monetization engine. If you change that, and you say, actually, I am the, I'm the customer, I'm paying for the product, then you ge…”
Alströmer: Most companies achieve massive scale by mastering just one platform
“Most companies that go really, really large, they do it on figuring out one platform. So they are really good at online marketing, they're really good at SEO, they're really good at reality, or the Facebook platform, or something like that. It's rare that you …”
Alströmer: Only 5 to 10 countries are dramatically different from the US
“There are not that many countries in my experience that are dramatically different. There are maybe five or 10 that are quite different than the US, but most countries are not that different.”
Alströmer: Websites Should Never Automatically Log Users Out For Better Growth
“If you have a website, and you have people come to your website, and you have accounts, don't log them out. Just like, keep people logging for as long as you can. There's really no benefit in automatically logging people out after, after a couple of months, af…”
Series A investors prioritize automation rate trajectory over overall revenue
“And if I was to say a CSA investor, and that would mean one of these companies, I actually care more about the trajectory of the automation rate than the overall revenue.”
Finding an empowered buyer matters more than market segmentation in sales
“A lot of founders try to think of, like, segment before qualification, and I think sometimes Just the right person is more important as long as they are empowered.”
Pivoting startups should explore multiple ideas simultaneously to avoid demoralization
“It's much better when you're pivoting to have a range of different ideas exploring. So, sort of like, you can find conviction around something and be fine with throwing out a few of them.”
Founders with truly great startup ideas rarely brag about having them
“Like, I have a great idea is not something that founders would have great ideas say generally.”
If founders have free time to contemplate hiring, it is too early
“If you have a lot of time to think about this question, it's probably too early. If this is something that comes to mind every day for you, it's probably too early because It's the right time to hire when, like, things are so busy that you can't even find a sl…”
Hiring is an anti-failure measure rather than a startup success metric
“Hiring is not a success metric at all. It's sort of like a way to not go under or have a functioning company fail.”
Multiple Y Combinator startups aim for billion-dollar valuations with ten employees
“We have multiple Weiss companies who say we want to be a billion dollar, 10 person company, and we have six slots left.”
Top YC startups follow a secret playbook: hire former founders first
“It's sort of like a secret playbook that a lot of YC companies, some of the best ones are all following is that the first people you want to hire all former founders.”
Alströmer: Startups should test fundraising with 12 to 14 months runway left
“Normally I say people don't wait, like wait until you have like maybe 14 or 12 months left and do your first attempt at fundraising or like test the waters maybe. And if it doesn't go well, you have another two shots actually. And then you can change things an…”
Alströmer: Monthly investor updates force startup founders to be accountable
“One of them is to send an investor updates every month. Because accountability really matters. Having someone else looking, looking at this every month actually forces you to be more accountable.”
Alströmer: Founders should stash half their funding in a secondary account
“And the second thing is to have two bank accounts and you put half of the money in the other one, pretend like you don't have it. And then like you look at your bank account and be like, oh, I actually only have half the money that I raised.”
Alströmer: Startups Win by Providing Far Better Support Than Incumbents
“Companies win early stage by being much better at customer support than big companies. So you have to be much better at customer support than big companies.”
Alströmer: Post-Series B startup failures stem from misunderstanding revenue quality
“Once you hit Series B, the companies that don't make it are the ones that don't actually understand The quality of their revenue. And the people that have high quality revenue, they'll, they'll make it.”
Alströmer: Startup ad spend must be strictly experimental or ROI-positive
“All ad span is either one or two categories. It's either experimental and small, or it's ROI positive. And then it's a payback time in months, and you know exactly how many months you get the money back, and you know that every single month. Those are the only…”
Alströmer: Consumers do not care enough about bad launches to hold grudges
“Most people, when you see a new launch or a new thing, and it wasn't that great, just don't have time to care.”
Alströmer: Founders must not hire salespeople until selling the product themselves
“As a result, you should not hire a sales team until you know how to do sales yourself. Only then will you know what good looks like.”
Alströmer: Sales emails should be at most six to eight sentences
“It should be short, max six to eight sentences.”
Alströmer: Founders should write plain text sales emails without HTML
“Four, do not use any HTML formatting. Write your email in plain text only, like you would written it to a friend.”
Alströmer: Outsourcing prospecting works only if founders know exactly what to outsource
“And I've seen a lot of YC founders that when they are getting to a thousand of these, they're like, oh, this is a very simple task. I can actually outsource this. And I think that can work if you know exactly what it is you're outsourcing.”
Alströmer: Startups are the easiest initial customer segment for software companies
“Selling to startups is the easiest category. And I've learned this on and on again. With YC companies, specifically the ones that sell software, it just turns out that bigger companies have more bureaucracy, more processes. They even have a specific department…”
Alströmer: High outbound volume is necessary because most people are not early adopters
“Most people are not early adopters, and I keep saying this to the YC companies I work with all the time. The reason you have to sell, send hundreds of emails is not that Most of those people get really upset and be like, I can't believe you emailed me, like, I…”
Alströmer: Amplitude, Stripe, and Front Started With Founder-Led Outbound Emails
“Some of the early ones like Amplitude, Stripe, Front, they were doing up on sales emails, just like the one we described to get started. Those founders were doing those sales emails as they get started.”
Alströmer: Founders fail at sales by not working backwards from goals
“The biggest mistakes that most founders do is they don't do enough outreach because they don't work backwards from the goal.”
The best founders learn directly from users throughout the company's life
“Great founders talk to future customers before they even have a product. In fact, the very best founders in the world learn directly from their users throughout the life of their company.”
Paying customers are the only stakeholders who will keep founders honest
“Users and customers will keep you honest. They are the only stakeholders actually paying you anything. If anyone will tell you the truth, it will be them.”
A five-minute video interview beats thousands of written survey responses
“You can learn a lot more from a five minute video interview than 500 or 5000 survey responses.”
Users describe problems well, but founders must design the actual solutions
“Remember, their job is to tell you about the problem. Your job is to think about what features to solve that problem. So, ask, asking them about your job isn't really gonna help you.”
Interviewed users have no incentive to say no to proposed features
“Users don't have incentive to say no to really any additional features. If you ask for this feature or this feature, they'll probably say yes to everything, right?”
Selling software to contractors is notoriously harder than selling to startups
“For example, selling to plumbers or contractors is notoriously difficult compared to selling to startups.
The first two groups just don't change their tools or the software very often versus startups are open to trying new things all the time.”
Alströmer: Most startups lack product-market fit despite founder belief
“Most startups don't have product market fit. Founders tell themselves that they do, and they try to convince themselves that this is working. But the truth is, for most companies, it's not working.”
Alströmer: Early-stage founders must prioritize non-scalable tactics
“And if you went to school and you learned they should only work on things that really scale, you're gonna have to unlearn that skill. Because when you start your company, the most important thing is going to do things that don't scale.”