I prefer to invest in a company that's going after a small but rapidly growing market than a big but slow growing one.

It's difficult to get large groups of people, to the extreme levels of focus and productivity that you need, for a startup to be successful.

The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.

Losing focus is another way that founders get off track.

Great execution is at least 10 times more important and a 100 times harder than a good idea.

You want an idea that not many other people are working on, and it's okay if it doesn't sound big at first.

We've seen a lot of data at YC now, and the most successful companies and the ones where the investors do the best... end up giving a lot of stock out to employees- year after year after year.