{"id":47758,"date":"2023-10-20T15:54:59","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/former-y-combinator-partner-garry-tan-on-toxic-tech-culture-and-the-dangers-of-playing-startup-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:54:59","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:54:59","slug":"former-y-combinator-partner-garry-tan-on-toxic-tech-culture-and-the-dangers-of-playing-startup-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/former-y-combinator-partner-garry-tan-on-toxic-tech-culture-and-the-dangers-of-playing-startup-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Y Combinator partner Garry Tan on toxic tech culture and the dangers of \u201cplaying startup\u201d – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Too many founders choose to \u201cplay startup\u201d rather than actually build a sustainable and successful company, Posthaven founder and former Y Combinator partner Garry Tan says.<\/p>\n

In a Q&A session on Product Hunt, Tan discussed \u201ctoxic\u201d startup culture and the mistakes that he regularly sees entrepreneurs make, often due to them trying to follow a perceived Silicon Valley stereotype.<\/p>\n

He says the want to \u201cplay startup\u201d and the perks that go along with that too often trumps actually building a good product.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe perfect is the enemy of the good,\u201d Tan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people are really afraid to release software because that\u2019s the moment at which you are face-to-face with failure. If you release it and nobody likes it you\u2019ve failed. But if you are \u2018still working on it\u2019 then you are just \u2018in progress\u2019 and you can still go to startup events and \u2018play startups\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s really why startups as a lifestyle are so toxic. It becomes a place where people can go play house and basically waste their own time and effort. It\u2019s not a scene and it really shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

\u201cFocus on shipping and then making it better, don\u2019t play startup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tan says that founders can also often \u201cplay startup\u201d when looking to expand their team.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t hire until you need to \u2013 hiring prematurely is another form of playing startup,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll notice startups that play startup always talk about number of employees and how much they\u2019ve raised. Those are cost centres.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always impressed when founders talk about their customers and what they\u2019ve done for them and how they\u2019ve been growing revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Q&A session Tan also passed on a number of useful and insightful takeaways for startup founders and entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

What makes a great founder<\/h3>\n

Tan says it\u2019s crucial for a founder to be able to cover all facets of a business, especially in the early days.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t box yourself into just one thing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should probably be really, really good at one particular thing but you shouldn\u2019t be afraid to get your hands dirty on everything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone wants to jump on board with something that is going to take off without them but nobody wants to join a thing that will fail if they don\u2019t join.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the more you can do, the less you need others to get it done and the more likely you will actually manifest it. I wish there was another way but that\u2019s a fundamental truth when it comes to creating new things.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be a magnet for everything and that\u2019s what a great founder does: attract people, capital and customers to foment this incredible chemical reaction that goes and goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best question to ask founders<\/h3>\n

Tan says there\u2019s one question that he always asks a startup founder: Why are you working on this?<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has some story and truly new things usually come from some sort of insight that nobody else has,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest part about the startup world is that it has become a lifestyle, where it\u2019s just a thing you do and then you cast about for present-to-hand problems like \u2018oh, I don\u2019t travel enough or I wish I could share pet photos easier\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are just the first order problems and there are so many people who try them already that it\u2019s almost safe to say \u2018nah, if it was going to work someone would have already done it\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

You need more than a good team<\/h3>\n

Investors often say that a startup\u2019s team is far more important than its business idea, but Tan says having a good team by itself isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first started investing I was almost entirely focused on team \u2013 product, design, engineering \u2013 that\u2019s what mattered,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat idea would come and go but the team would be the primary reason why a product or service would live or die.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen too many really, really talented, brilliant teams march off in the wrong direction and never switch direction that now I do believe it takes both a fantastically talented, hard-working team that has a true north \u2013 an internal product compass that allows them to build and ship product and then be right.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing right is important. Too many great teams march off saying, \u2018if we build it they will come\u2019 and then never are able to change the idea towards something that people really want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter,LinkedIn and SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too many founders choose to \u201cplay startup\u201d rather than actually build a sustainable and successful company, Posthaven founder and former<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}