YES!!!! This is exactly the kind of innovation we need. Great work! Let us know if we can help. We are at very beginning stages of supporting people that are re-entering and getting folks lined up with jobs in a safe and supportive way is a big part of that. Again, hats off!
PB was the first investor in 7 Cups. I'm thankful for all of the ways that he helped us. He is very good at motivating founders. I can't all the way understand how he does it, but it is remarkable. I think a big part of it is helping people face reality directly. i.e., he alludes to this in the interview when he says most people are good at finding obstacles (i.e., excuses) and that he doesn't fund them. He is good at keeping you honest so that you do not delude yourself into making fake progress or going down wrong turns. Another way of saying this is that he helps you minimize denial. Quick story:
I had been working on 7 Cups for about a month prior to getting to YC. I had a home page up, which I was pretty excited about. The core idea of the chat/voice support wasn't yet live. I showed him the website and wanted to show him some of the segments we wanted to focus on (parents of children with disabilities, veterans etc.). He quickly asked - have you got the actual product in front of users yet? I tried to dodge the question, talk more about the site etc. He repeated the question. I had to honestly answer that no we hadn't yet released it. He was like, okay go do that and report back next week. I was stalling because, on some level, I was afraid that it wouldn't work as well as I hoped. We pushed through, launched it, and learned a ton in that next week. For example, we learned that voice was too intimate and people preferred messaging.
And that basic cycle happened over and over again. Like there might be things that sound right or are even partially right, but if they are not the most direct thing that is going to help you learn and make a product people want, then it is probably not a good use of your time.
Just want to chime in here and share that I'm a very happy customer. Ryan, Dillon, and Chad are some super smart guys who deeply understand SEO. I use RankScience for 7 Cups and Edvance360 and I've seen a huge ROI. They always find time to meet with me and my other team members. The advice and feedback they provide is worth the cost of the service alone. Highly, highly, highly recommended!
Just a quick note to say congrats to Garry and Alexis. Garry helped us out a ton at 7 cups. He said a startup is like a magnet. The more users you attract, the more powerful your magnet becomes. Alexis has also always been very encouraging and helpful in figuring out things that are not obvious. I highly recommend Initialized!
network effects. If you are a marketplace or service you need both sides ramping up fast- the more users you get the more valuable it becomes and easier to attract more and so on.
One talk I like to give at college campuses is such: A startup is like the obscure 1990's Playstation game Katamari Damacy. You start off with a small magic ball about the size of a pencil eraser. You can pick up anything smaller than you, but if you try to pick up something too big, you bounce off and get smaller. You start picking up paperclips and chess pieces, and then by the end of the game (spoiler alert) you end up picking up skyscrapers and continents and such.
It's like that. You start with bringing your cofounders together. Then you add your first customers. Then maybe you raise a little bit of friends and family money, and that lets you put more money into customer acquisition, which gets you more cofounders, which lets you get more revenue to hire a few more people, and raise more money, and so on.
So startups are like katamari damacy, and if you win, you end up picking up an entire industry.
Startups can be super challenging for all of the reasons outlined in that article. We put together this guide to help explain some of the mechanics that make startups so stressful. It is primarily based on Jerry Colonna's work. He is a really good guy who has done some of the deepest thinking in this space. I highly recommend his work. You can find it here: https://www.reboot.io
