Jared Friedman – Advice for Hard-tech and Biotech Founders

  • September 20, 2019
  • VIDEO
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YC Partner Jared Friedman covers hard-tech companies and why founders should consider starting one. He also covers a couple of the most common problems hard-tech companies face and how to solve them, with examples from seven YC companies.

You can find the lecture slides and transcript here: https://www.startupschool.org/videos/78

Find more Startup School and YC content at https://www.startupschool.org/library.

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) –
00:00 – Introduction
00:36 – Outline
00:56 – What is a Hard Tech Company?
01:35 – Market vs Technical risk
02:06 – Why start a hard-tech company?
02:42 – Story about Boom
05:38 – Hard-tech and Biotech – Big part of YC
06:04 – Startup School
06:20 – How much of YC’s advice applies to hard-tech founders?
07:05 – Two biggest problems specific to hard-tech
07:14 – Heavy MVP
07:58 – Boom – Do things that don’t cost money
08:46 – Solute
08:47 – Solugen – Start small
09:35 – AirX – Launch a simplified version
10:22 – Notable Labs – Bootstrap with a service
10:45 – Astranis – Start with a proof of concept
11:33 – Ginkgo Bioworks – Sell it before you make it
12:24 – How do you prove people will want your product if it is not built yet?
12:49 – Pre Sales
13:27 – Letter of Intent (LOI)
14:20 – Advice about LOIs
14:43 – Fundraising for Hard-tech and Biotech companies
15:38 – A better fundraising plan
17:26 – Q&A
17:40 – AI companies
19:36 – Hard to get LOIs
20:53 – How do you prove that your idea is going to work?
22:15 – Sales
23:24 – Find founder and early employees for Hard-tech companies

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