Startup Lessons Learned: Paul Graham at ST@B Mixer

Hi all,

I wanted to post a quick write-up from today's ST@B event: ST@B Mixer with Paul Graham. 

To those of you that don't know what ST@B is, it's short for Startup @ Berkeley, an organization that I co-founded with a few other students during our time at UC Berkeley. The purpose of ST@B was to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem on UC Berkeley and within the area, which had not existed in the past. As the first of it's kind, ST@B helped pioneer the development of regular events like mixers, Startup Wednesdays, and the Hackathon that has been sponsored several times by Zynga and other organizations. We've been honored to have the likes of Dustin Moskovitz of Facebook, Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress, Mark Pincus of Zynga, and James Hong of HotorNot, to name a few. Ok, enough of the name dropping.

Since then, I've become an Alumni Advisor for the organization and help coordinate events and contribute my input for new segments like the ST@B Dialogues with Ben Parr, Co-Editor of Mashable. 

On to the juicy stuff, here's some of the main arguments I got from Paul Graham in his experiences as an angel and running Y Combinator:

• Winners will win and losers will lose

• on differentiating the promise of a great team with a hyped product vs. a weak team with a stellar product

It's more about the team than it is about the idea

• on establishing a solid team with a history of collaboration
• more on that, if you have a great team with no idea or an idea with no business plan, you should talk to Paul, serious

Determination is just as important as intelligence if not more

• on vetting people for YC for persistance through the standard startup struggle

Launch as soon as you have a quantum of utility

• on launching a product and MVP

Building a great product rests on a great user experience, you want your users to love you

Get a co-founder, it's easier to bear the work and it's discouraged by YC

• on vetting teams for YC

Well that's all for now. I'm glad we had a chance to pitch GetContact.Info to Paul and get some honest feedback from him.

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