Romeo Bellon

OpenAI Sam Altman declares ‘code red’ after rivals make advances - A reminder that, no matter the speed you travel at, innovative incumbents can always catch up. 💡 Speed is not necessarily a long term advantage ( as much as many VCs will try convince you of the opposite 😊) Read more on the Financial Times 👉 https://lnkd.in/dHr-7iDS via @FT²

9

2 Comments

YC’s best advice is “default alive” - have enough cash to survive without the next raise. Great advice… nobody f*cking does it. Paul Graham (the founder of YC) once said he’d raise $500K, get ramen profitable, and probably never raise again. The guy who’s seen more VC deployed than ANY human alive basically says he wouldn’t use it more than he absolutely has to. But the reason no one listens to this advice is because founders are delusional about their own companies. We think what we have is better than what it actually is, and we can’t help ourselves. Our startups are our babies. We have a totally unrealistic and out-of-touch view of them. It’s way too easy when you have a little bit of traction to go out there and raise way too much money. Then you’re set on a path to burn forever. “Default alive” is a great concept. Maybe 1/100 YC companies actually do this. YC knows it, and they fund them anyway.

140

50 Comments

YC-Market Fit Everyone loves to talk about product market fit, especially YC founders. They rush to show quick jumps in revenue, get internal YC hype, and call it PMF. In most cases, it is only an illusion. The YC network is powerful. Hundreds of alumni buy from each other, promote each other’s products, and sometimes even acquire one another. This creates a loop of fake traction. A few big logos, a short burst of usage, and some friendly contracts do not mean you have truly solved a market problem. Real product market fit is not about early growth spikes. It is about fixing a pain so deep that users keep coming back, even when the hype is gone. Most YC startups still announce PMF after only a few weeks because it helps with fundraising and visibility. Investors love it, founders feel validated, and everyone claps. Meanwhile churn is ignored, retention is weak, and true product obsession is missing. PMF was never meant to be a marketing slogan. It should be a signal from users, not a headline in a pitch deck. Ask yourself: if you stopped pushing your product today, would users even notice? Would they beg you to return? If the answer is no, you might have YC market fit, not product market fit. 🤔

53

4 Comments

How do you win in the AI era? Speed? That seems to be what YC, VCs, and everyone else are preaching: launch faster, iterate faster, use the latest tools, move faster than everyone around you. Speed is supposed to be the only moat left. That might be true if you were only racing against other humans. But now you are racing against machines too — and against giant companies with massive distribution, capital, and model access. So maybe “speed as a moat” does not really mean you are building something durable. Maybe it just means you are buying yourself a small window of time — enough time to get traction, raise money, or land an exit before the wave catches up. That is what a lot of AI startups feel like today: not companies being built to last, but companies being built to be acquired. Run fast enough to make some money. Miss the window, and die on the road. So the real question is: can we still build something that lasts in the AI era? Or was that always a fairy tale from a different time? The same shift is happening with talent. Loyalty is fading. Everything feels more transactional, more short-term, more optimized for immediate upside. Get rich faster. Capture value now. Silicon Valley feels less like Silicon Valley and more like Wall Street with better branding. What has not changed is human nature. - Greed. Vanity. Status. The tools changed. The incentives did not.

2

1 Comment