Office Hours with Daniel Gross

Daniel Gross and Craig Cannon go through questions submitted on Hacker News.

To submit a question for Office Hours, send an email to Macro@YCombinator.com with a few sentences of context and your question.

0:57 – Is it more valuable to build a startup community or join an existing one?

2:02 – How to get students to use your app?

3:06 – What are the most common methods to overcome the chicken/egg problem in a marketplace app?

3:57 – Should you raise money before building a product?

4:25 – How important is it to talk about the tools (e.g. AI/machine learning) that you use to build a product?

5:29 – Is there a point at which you should switch to machine learning?

6:47 – How important is it to raise money?

8:14 – How worried should startups be about people copying them?

10:00 – Should I focus on something I’m passionate about or a startup idea that I think could work but I’m not passionate about?

11:48 – How can a young person without a degree get a job at a startup?

13:44 – Should I launch without a technical cofounder?

15:55 – How much equity should you give to early hires?

16:15 – How can you be someone that lives on the bleeding edge of technology?

18:14 – What should I do to prepare to be a founder?

20:00 – We feel pressured to get into machine learning, should we?

21:19 – How feasible is it to fly to Silicon Valley to raise money?

22:41- What are the most common mistakes first time founders make?

23:43 – Does YC accept founders under 18?