The best people know that they should join a rocketship.

If you ever take your foot off the gas pedal, things will spiral out of control, snowball downwards.

The role of the board is advice and consent. If the CEO does not lay out a clear strategy and tries to get the board to set one, it will usually end in disaster.

If someone is difficult to talk to, if someone cannot communicate clearly, it's a real problem in terms of their likelihood to work out.

AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.

Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.

If you can just learn to think about the market first, you will have a big leg up on most people starting startups.