Advantages Of A First-Time Founder

**Harj Taggar** (0:00)
The first time founders can actually take more risk on the ideas that they pick, because they don't have other startup friends, or they don't care as much, they're just working on stuff they find interesting.

**Michael Seibel** (0:10)
I love that. They have nobody to impress.
Hello, this is Michael with Harj and Brad. Welcome to Inside the Group Partner Lounge.

**Harj Taggar** (0:25)
As YC Group Partners, we often find ourselves repeating the same advice over and over again to startup founders we work with.

**Brad Flora** (0:31)
Before COVID, we'd often gather together in the Group Partner Lounge at the YC office to try to figure out why this was the case and how we can help startups figure it out faster.

**Michael Seibel** (0:39)
Today, we're gonna talk about all of the advantages that first-time founders have over second-time founders. Brad and Harj, set this up.

**Brad Flora** (0:50)
So, we talked to a lot of founders where it's the first time they've ever started their business and some of you listening at home, this might be working on your first startup ever or you're thinking about working on your first startup.
And one thing we see is founders love to read all the tech news, they love to read VC Twitter, they're out there consuming all of this content information about the startup world. Oftentimes, they get pretty psyched out by the fact that a lot of the coverage is about repeat founders, people that have sold companies, they have IPO companies, they built huge companies, had huge successes, and now they are building some new company, maybe in the space that the founder is thinking about starting a business in, and it can be really discouraging. How the heck are you gonna compete with them considering all the success they've had?

**Michael Seibel** (1:35)
So Harj, one of the things that you mentioned before we started recording, is the idea that as a second time founder, you had access to a lot of expert opinions. Now on the surface, that would seem incredibly helpful when creating a company, but tell us why counter-intuitively, maybe that's not exactly what you want.

**Harj Taggar** (1:56)
Yeah, I think as a second time founder, you both have access to more people, like more smart people who know a lot about startups, and you've had a lot more of your own experiences. And so every time you have a decision to make, you just have a lot more data to check the decision against.
And I think that there are obvious reasons that's great, having had the experience of choosing a startup idea or running a startup idea by your smart startup friends or mentors has obvious advantages. But it can also just slow you down. I think this is something I felt myself, is that it took me much longer to pick the idea or commit to working on an idea for my second startup than the first startup. And I think it's because we had so many people we could run the idea by and get feedback and opinions from, and then digesting all of that feedback and thoughtful ideas can actually just mean you move slower.

**Brad Flora** (2:49)
And let's pick at what that means. Like when you're in that scenario, you're not talking to your potential customers and your users there, right? You're talking to all these other startup people that you've made friends with over the course of doing your first startup.
I remember I was at a Camp YC once and I had this idea and I pitched it to 10 people and they all told me it was terrible. So I didn't work on it, but had I gone and talked to actual customers for it, maybe they could have helped me find a better version of that idea that actually would have solved the real problem for them.

**Michael Seibel** (3:18)
I also think this concept of expert is a really interesting concept, right? Because I'm so happy you said this idea of separating the expert from the user, because there are so many people who are really smart about startups, but who don't really have the problem you're trying to solve and really can't give you great advice, to be honest, but they will give you advice that sounds very expert. And then there's other people who are users who might not be able to tell you whether this can be a billion dollar company, but they can easily tell you they have the problem.
And I think as a second time founder, it's just as hard to talk to your users, but it's 10 times easier to talk to experts. So almost by extension, it's like even harder to talk to your users. And it's a tricky thing. Another area that's interesting is this idea of picking your market, right?