The Qualities We Want To Find From Entrepreneurs

This article is Y Combinator founder Paul Graham (Paul Graham) for Forbes.

In 2007, Paul Graham founded Y Combinator investment company to help young entrepreneurs realize their dream of starting an undertaking.

1, determination

This is ultimately the most important quality for founders of start-up companies.

When we founded Y Combinator, we once thought that the most important quality of entrepreneurs is intelligence, in other words, intelligence.

But this is only the myth of Silicon Valley.

Of course, you certainly don't want the founder to be stupid.

But as long as the intellectual level of the entrepreneur crosses a specific threshold, the most important thing remains to be determined.

You will encounter countless obstacles.

You can't be the kind of person who can easily be discouraged.

WePay's Bill Gray grasses (Bill Clerico) and Rich Aberman (Rich Aberman) are a good example.

2, flexible

In any case, you would not want to be like the phrase "never give up your dream" implied by the determination.

The world of start-up companies is very uncertain. You need to fly your dreams while you fly.

With regard to your determination and flexible combination, I think "U-turn" in football is a good metaphor.

He must be determined to go direct (downfield), but at any given time, he may need sideway or even backward to arrive.

The holder of the current company's flexibility record should be Greplin Daniel (Daniel Gross).

When he applied for YC, he still had some bad ideas about e-commerce.

We told him that unless he could do something else, we would vote for him.

He thought for a few seconds, then said OK.

Then he passed two other ideas and finally arrived at Greplin.

Before making Demo for investors, he spent only a few days studying this idea, but he

3, imagination

Intelligence is, of course, a very important aspect, but imagination may be more important.

Compared to solving a pre-defined problem quickly, it may be better to jump out of the box and come up with some new ideas that will suddenly enlighten people.

In the world of startups, many good ideas seem bad at first.

Because if it is obviously very good, someone else has already done it.

So you need to have the intelligence that produces a seemingly stupid idea.

Airbnb is such an idea.

In fact, when we invested in Airbnb, we thought it was too crazy.

We can't believe there are so many people who want to stay in other people's houses.

We invest in it simply because we like his founder too much.

When we heard that they were able to feed themselves by selling Obama and Mccain's breakfast cereal, they were in our consideration.

And in the end, it turns out that they are just a little bit crazy.

4, naughty

Although the most successful entrepreneurs are usually good people, their eyes seem to be sparkling with piracy.

They are not the kind of hypocrisy.

Morally, they care about doing the right thing in a big way, but not the compliance section.

That's why I use "naughty" rather than "evil".

They will feel happy because they break the rules, but they are not very important rules.

The quality of naughty looks somewhat redundant, but it implies imagination.

Sam Altman, founder of Loopt (Sam Altman) is the most successful example.

So we asked him what problems we could put in the application of Y Combinator to help us find people like him.

He told us, "when did you finish a dominant hacker act"? This meant that the system was completely defeated, not just breaking into the computer.

This sentence has finally become the most concerned problem when we judge the application.

5, friendship

Empirically speaking, companies with only one founder are often very difficult.

Most Dacheng companies have two or three founders at first.

And the relationship between founders must be very iron.

They must genuinely love each other and work together effectively.

The friendship between founders and founders is like dogs and socks: if they can be separated, they will become.

Justin.tv's Amit Sher (Emmett Shear) and Justin (Justin Kan) are examples of very good friends starting a business together.