How to Start a Startup

Sam Altman introduces the class and drills into 4 key areas needed for a successful startup: ideas, products, teams, and execution. Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz follows this up with his reasons to start a startup.

In part two of this lecture, Sam Altman talks about the importance of 2 of the 4 key areas: team and execution. Topics covered in this lecture include hiring the best, setting an operating rhythm, and handling sales and marketing.

Paul Graham delivers an informative (and highly amusing) talk, addressing counterintuitive parts of startups, in lecture 3 of "How to Start a Startup."

How do you go from zero users to many users? Adora Cheung, founder of Homejoy, covers 3 topics: building product, talking to users, and growing, in lecture 4 of "How to Start a Startup."

Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal and Palantir, discusses business strategy and monopoly theory in "Competition is For Losers".

Alex Schultz gives an overview of growth for startups, speaking from a position of authority as the VP of Growth at Facebook.

Kevin Hale, founder of Wufoo and partner at Y Combinator, explains how to build products that create a passionate user base invested in your startup's success.

Lecture 8 features 3 speakers: Stanley Tang, founder of Doordash, covers "How to Get Started." Walker Williams, founder of Teespring, covers "Doing things that Don't Scale," and Justin Kan, founder of TwitchTV and partner at Y Combinator, covers the topic of dealing with the press.

Sam leads a panel Q&A on fundraising in this lecture with Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz; Ron Conway, founder of SV Angel; and Parker Conrad, founder of Zenefits.

Brian Chesky, Founder of Airbnb, and Alfred Lin, Former COO of Zappos and Partner at Sequoia Capital, discuss how to build a great company culture.

Stripe and Pinterest are two companies well-known for their strong cultures. The founders - John Collison, Patrick Collison, and Ben Silberman - take Q&A from Sam in part 2 of Hiring and Culture.

In this lecture, Aaron Levie (founder of Box, enterprise master, Twitter comedic genius) will convince you to build for the enterprise.

So you've learned how to get started, how to raise money, how to build products, and how to grow. Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock Ventures, addresses many of the questions and confusions that you may have about how to be a great founder.

What should the CEO be doing on a day to day basis? How do you make sure the company is moving in the right direction? Keith Rabois, Partner at Khosla Ventures and former COO of Square, tackles the nitty gritty in this lecture.

You are not the only one whom your decisions impact. Ben Horowitz, founder of Andreessen Horowitz and Opsware, discusses this important management perspective that founders miss, with, of course, the gratuitous rap lyric or two sprinkled in.

Building product and talking to users: in the early stages of your startup, those are the two things you should focus on. In this lecture, Emmett Shear, Founder and CEO of Justin.tv and Twitch, covers the latter. What can you learn by talking to users that you can't learn by looking at data?

Hosain Rahman, CEO and Founder of Jawbone, covers the design process for building hardware products users love.

There's a lot that goes behind the scenes in running a startup. Getting the legal, finance (equity allocation, vesting), accounting, and other overhead right will save you a lot of pain in the long run. Kirsty Nathoo, CFO at Y Combinator, and Carolynn Levy, General Counsel at Y Combinator, cover these very important topics in this lecture.

There are three segments in this lecture: Tyler Bosmeny, founder and CEO of Clever, starts off today's lecture with an overview of the Sales Funnel and how to get to your first $1 million. Michael Seibel, founder of Justin.tv and Socialcam and Partner at Y Combinator, then goes over how to talk to investors - the pitch.

Sam caps off the "How to Start a Startup" series with things you should ignore when you start, but become important a year in.