ABOUT THIS EPISODE

143 – Startup School Week 2 Recap: Michael Seibel, Adora Cheung, and Ilya Volodarsky

We’ve cut down the second week of lectures to be even shorter and combined them into one podcast.

First, a lecture from Michael Seibel. Michael is CEO and a partner at YC. His lecture is about How to Plan an MVP.

Then, a lecture from Adora Cheung. Adora is a YC partner and a cofounder of Homejoy. Her lecture is about How to Set KPIs and Goals.

Last, a lecture from Ilya Volodarsky. Ilya is a cofounder of Segment. His lecture is about Analytics for Startups.

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

Topics

00:00 – Intro

00:43 – Michael Seibel – How to Plan an MVP

1:25 – The goal of a pre-launch startup

3:10 – Iterating vs pivoting

3:59 – Lean MVP

5:06 – Heavy MVP

6:19 – Launching

7:35 – Learning is easier with an MVP

8:07 – How to build an MVP quickly

10:17 – Adora Cheung – How to Set KPIs and Goals

11:51 – What are the right KPIs to set?

15:50 – Revenue or active users

16:28 – Why choose active users?

18:55 – Biotech or hardtech KPIs

20:25 – Secondary metric

21:25 – What if you haven’t launched?

22:20 – Setting goals

23:47 – How fast should you grow?

25:13 – Defining your own goals

28:40 – Tracking progress

30:27 – Ilya Volodarsky – Analytics for Startups

30:46 – Why analytics?

31:36 – Funnel

32:51 – Collecting data, analytics, and data flow

34:16 – Metric – Signups per week

35:28 – Metric – Retention cohorts

36:30 – Which metric to pick?

36:57 – Have I reached product market fit?

37:27 – Metric – Revenue

37:51 – Dashboards

38:35 – Advisor updates

39:01 – The startup stack

42:13 – Recommendations for the MVP process

Y Combinator : #143 – Startup School Week 2 Recap: Michael Seibel, Adora Cheung, and Ilya Volodarsky