In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.

The biggest PR hack you can do, is not hire a PR firm.

If you're not in college and you don't know a cofounder, the next best thing I think is to go work at an interesting company.

It's better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it.

You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.

Really dig into projects people have worked on and call references; that is another thing that first time founders like to skip.

One of the pieces of advice that we give at YC is: try to work together on a project rather than just doing an interview.