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

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

You never want to be in a place where an employee has vested 3 out of the 4 years of stock and they start thinking about leaving.

The startups that do well are the ones that are working all the time.

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.

A single mediocre hire in the first five will often in fact kill a startup.

If you look at successful pivots, they almost always are a pivot into something that the founder wanted. Not a random made up idea.