The most memorable quotes from Startup Grind 2016

Photo credit: businessweek.com

I was given the opportunity to attend the Startup Grind 2016 conference during my scholarship, and one of the terms is to write about it. To be honest, this felt very much like another obligation I had to fulfil.

As I stepped into the main hall of the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, California, that illusionary obligation turned into an internal motivation to share what was spoken in the conference.

I’d love to share it through conversations or notes taken, but I figured that to capture the essence of the conference, no message could be more powerful than the exact words spoken.

On building startups

“Life happens in parallel, not a series.” — Guy Kawasaki, Canva

Many think that we should strategize in series — build A, acquire X amount of customers, invest Y amount in customer service, etc. In reality, Kawasaki says a real startup scenario would be one that requires one to handle it all at once, which then leads to the chicken and egg question.

“Focus on one thing you need to get done.” — Max Mullen, Instacart

The topic was on how Instacart handles the problem of building a community of shoppers by investing in customer service representatives, or to build a good system for great customer experience.

“To do scalable things, start with doing unscalable things.” — Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor

Ironically, the process of finding product market fit requires tactics that would not scale, ie mechanical turks. Tolia thinks that if a startup abandons all non-scalable processes, a lot of good ideas will be ignored or thrown away.

He used an example from Nextdoor to validate the point: to build a community in the neighborhood, Tolia and his team basically asked users to look at maps, choose the houses they want to invite, and mechanically deliver postcards to these places – with the purpose of building data points of interactions within the neighborhood. “It was basically growth-hacking with USPS,” he joked.

On deciding to pivot

“It is like asking myself the question, “Is this woman I am dating going to be my wife?” If you reach a point when it becomes obvious after systematic experiments, you know if you do not pivot, it will be a failure.” — Nirav Tolia, Nextdoor

On building a team

“You need two women to overcome the stupidity of a white man.” — Guy Kawasaki, Canva

“Culture fit is a luxury. You need to find someone who falls in love with your idea. You need similarly passionate people.” — Marco Zappacosta, Thumbtack

On deciding whether entrepreneurship is for you

“Half of them came from dysfunctional families — emotionally, physically. It seems like that may be the cruelest but most effective ground to be effective. It makes a person shut out everything except to focus on what is important.” — Steve Blank, Startup Owner’s Manual

I can somehow relate this to a personal experience. I know someone who was emotionally affected by his family, and that influenced how he handled his own finances. He eventually started a business for the purpose of making ends meet, and it eventually gave a better return than he thought it would. Looking at his qualities, I could tell that he lives in a different world from the rest of us in school – his personality, priorities and perhaps, philosophies – are indeed aligned with what Silicon Valley describes as ‘an entrepreneur’.

Some may be able to relate to this. Be proud of yourself.

“Working in a consulting firm is the world’s best job ever. Building a startup is the world’s best calling ever.” — Steve Blank, Startup Owner’s Manual

Blank told a story of a student from Berkeley who approached him for career advice. He told the student, “Believe me, building a startup is the worst kind of career one can have. It has to be a calling, not a career.”

“There was practically no manual for me to start a business” — Gurjeet Singh, Ayasdi

A Master’s degree holder from Stanford, Gurjeet admitted that he felt lost when he first started Ayasdi, which is now backed by prominent VCs like Citi Ventures.

“I am not surprised by how hard the journey is; I am surprised by how emotional the journey is.” — Marco Zappacosta, Thumbtack

The small scale of a startup makes it such that its data points are almost insignificant compared to dominating market players. The performance of your startup can be very, very volatile. The challenge is not just about facing those difficulties, but dealing with your emotions, which can be very much aligned with the results.

Most importantly, you have to embrace the emotional journey as a team. The topic of Fireside chat with Zappacosta is ‘Thumbtack’s Obsession: 6 years and 42 rejections on the road to solving one big problem.’ He said, “I stopped counting after a while.”

On re-thinking personal achievements

“The more credentials (entrepreneurs) have, the more assumptions they make, the less critical they are about themselves, and the more likely they will fail.” — Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures

Tough as the grind may be, do not forget to rest

“The genesis of having a work life balance is managing your energy and taking time to reground, to operate optimally.” — Dustin Moskovitz, Asana