The Best Way To Launch Your Startup with Kat Mañalac | Startup School

**Kat Mañalac** (0:09)
Hey everyone, I'm Kat Manalac, Head of Outreach at Y Combinator. So I've been at YC for about nine years now, and that means I've seen over 3,500 companies go through the program and launch. At YC, one of the things my team does is help companies with their first launches. And today, I want to change the way you think about launching.
Most founders overthink their first launch. They think they have just one shot at launching their product publicly, and that the messaging has to be perfect or that no one will ever buy or use or invest in their product.
I talk to founders constantly who lovingly prepare their launch for months. But if you're like most startups, you'll launch something and no one will care. And if it takes you six months to get the first version of your product in front of anyone, your startup may be dead before you get another chance to launch. So in the same spirit of always be shipping, I want you to think about launching as something that you do continually. So here's what we're gonna talk about today. First, we'll talk about when to launch and why. Second, we'll walk through some strong one-line company descriptions, including some that I pulled from the Startup School community. And third, we'll talk about the types of launches you can do during Startup School. So first, a lot of people ask, when should I launch?
And the answer is ASAP, it's probably right now, why? So founders are really good at lying to themselves. A lot of you have really strong convictions about what you're building, and that's good. Founders need that conviction, but many of you have strong, but theoretical notions of how you're going to solve a problem and how people are going to interact with what you're building. So putting your product out there, even in its earliest state, will help you determine whether you're solving a big enough problem that someone is willing to pay for you or use you, even in the product's really unpolished state. So if you launch too early, what's the worst case scenario? What's the worst thing that can happen? People might think the product is ugly or it sucks. Investors might hear about the product before it's ready. You know, competitors might see it.
Or worse, no one will see it or no one will care. And that's fine, just launch again. Airbnb launched three times before they really started to get users. Launching and having no one care, that feels terrible. But it's not a reason to give up. It's a reason to iterate and launch again. Launch and iterate, launch and iterate until you have a core of users who really love you. Paul Buchheit, he's the creator of Gmail and a longtime YC group partner. He has said, it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy.
So early on, as long as you've made something that a few users absolutely love, you are on the right track. It'll be good for your morale to have even a handful of users who really love what you're doing.
And it'll help you figure out what to focus on.
What is it about your product that they love and how can you do more of that?
Where can you find more users who love that sort of thing that you're doing? If you have a core of users, even 10 users who really love you, all you have to do is expand that number and it might take a while. But if you keep going, cockroach style, you can win in the end. So now that we've determined you should all launch, let's talk about something every one of you needs before you launch. To create a strong one sentence pitch, you need clarity of vision.
We believe that people who have thought deeply about an idea can explain it clearly and succinctly. They use less words. They can explain complex concepts in a way that a five-year-old can understand. And having a clear idea is important because a clear idea is the best foundation for growth. The best companies and movements grow organically by word of mouth. And that's good news because word of mouth growth is the cheapest way to grow. And if you think back to the first time you heard about something like say TikTok or Slack, there's a good chance you heard about it through a friend or a coworker. Talking about what you do clearly and succinctly is going to be one of your most important jobs as a founder. It's a skill that you'll need to convince potential co-founders, investors, users, employees, and eventually, hopefully shareholders to believe in you.