Building Confidence In Yourself and Your Ideas

One trait that many great founders share is conviction. In this episode of Dalton & Michael, we’ll talk about finding confidence in what you're building, the dangers of inaccurate assumptions, and a question founders need to ask themselves before they start trying to sell to anyone else.
Apply to Y Combinator: yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: yc.link/DandM-jobs
Chapters (Powered by bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Coming Up
00:16 - Intro: How Fast Is Too Fast?
00:26 - Rigorous Thinking
02:10 - Superficial Validation
03:26 - Solving Problems
04:09 - High Quality Reps
05:52 - Best Qualities
06:57 - Conviction
08:26 - Fear
12:52 - YC Standard Deal
13:33 - "Pivotitis"
14:01 - Random Walk
16:11 - A Useless MVP
19:40 - Learn A Good Rep

[@chapterme]

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Coming Up 00:16 - Intro: How Fast Is Too Fast? 00:26 - Rigorous Thinking: Very Low Effort 02:10 - Superficial Validation: LinkedIn spam no one wants 02:52 - PM training for user research hinders sales success 03:26 - Coming from big company: You have never solved your problem 04:09 - People Pivot Quickly: Don't Build a Muscle of Building Conviction 05:52 - Founder Personality Traits: Conviction 06:57 - What Conviction Means? 07:40 - Investors Horrible Ideas ≠ Bad Startup Idea 08:26 - YC founders mistakes: Fear and fake information 10:03 - Fear: False Expectations 11:00 - Sales techniques learned in previous jobs 12:52 - New YC Standard Deal 13:33 - "Pivotitis": Bad Case 14:01 - Random Walk: Not getting anywhere 16:11 - A Useless MVP: Launch a product that help no one and then pivot 16:49 - Definition of MVP: Someone should use your MVP 17:36 - YC Application Tips for Developer Tools 18:20 - Earnest point: Using your own tool and making one customer happy 19:40 - Summary 20:56 - Outro

[@george_davituri]

ChapterMe is backed by YC ? 🆒⭐️

[@chapterme]

@@george_davituri Not yet! YC is one of our 2000+ customers 😀

[@chapterme]

@@george_davituri Not yet! YC is our customer 😎

[@george_davituri]

@@chapterme it's also progress - great achievement. 👍

[@TheUrbanFight]

I am a simple person. I see a Dalton+Micheal video, I click.

[@solomonbush331]

Putting people on pedestals is a confidence killer. Assume every one knows something you dont, and that you know something that no one else does.

[@mathewjohn5498]

Yaas👏

[@thepumpkin1979]

This is a great advice, do you have a source so I can read further?

[@solomonbush331]

@@thepumpkin1979 lol I don't have a source, it just came from my brain. :)

[@wandilekhumalo7062]

​@@solomonbush331 I thought the same thing, would love to read more from you😮

[@yamilletrivas8041]

Right now my biggest motivation to get into YC is just to meet these two. To say that I enjoy The Dalton and Michael show is an understatement! I love it! I learn things, I laugh a LOT and I apply some of the lessons to my current work at a Non-profit! This is a treasure.

[@donghokang3634]

That MVP definition part was a GOLD to me. Thanks. Serve 1 person.

[@IsaMutlib]

Michael's laugh in x1.5 is worth a listen haha

[@user-yq9ds1ff2t]

Give us the timestamp

[@circlejerkatz]

I think this is prob their best vid. At least of the ones I've seen. It's pretty insightful just how relatable the SV bros are in building their startups vs everyone else. They might have more backing and better advisors, but they really are the same as the rest of us.

[@ambimake]

Just want to say, all of these videos offer so much valuable information. Truly one of the best resources out there! They usually give me a good laugh as well. Cheers Dalton and Michael!

[@Greenmanjim]

Described me 100%. Spinning wheels instead of improving the product. On another note, this is like Weekend Update for YC. Love it.

[@grammar_shark]

I love this episode of Dalton & Michael. Packed full of powerful insights, applicable not just to software focused start-ups, but innovative businesses of all kinds. Thanks so much for continuing to put out this amazing content.

[@TheRonellCross]

I wish I could've gotten this advice years ago. Thanks for sharing this content. The world needs more of this.

[@devangsinghi7828]

This is the best video that I've seen till now. This is what I needed right now. Thanks for making this!

[@karenperezchatu8990]

Sometimes all the information can be overwhelming, it was nice to hear those two brilliant people talking about confidence in yourself. It keeps me going!.

[@ifoundaim]

Awesome video guys. My understanding deepens all the time when I watch your content. I'm taking the principles you teach & applying them wholeheartedly.

[@sharath_9246]

Dalton & Michael Really Shows The Direction To Travel For Aspiring Founders By sharing Their Experience!

[@jaa928]

Thanks for the great discussion. The point about "using your own dev tool" is very straightforward and actionable.

[@ghulamurtaza_]

Dalton & Michael Videos make me wonder how useful YC must be. Because literally everyone else will tell you opposite of what they're sating and so if you're not in that environment it's so easy to get off course. Hope we make it to YC for summer24.

[@jks9x]

Refreshing and well timed perspective. One of your best

[@carlatashkadeh5890]

Thank you Dalton & Michael!

[@thatryanp]

This was SPOT ON. Low conviction, to cool for school, can't see the user's reality through my own desire to build a business. Can I get a witness? ✋

[@tarek7451]

I exactly needed this. Thank you guys!

[@lucasm5377]

I feel like this conflicts with their previous advice to validate an idea before building

[@YELuckyPictures]

I have listened to many of their chats it's always full of contradictions. Which leaves aspiring entrepreneurs who hangon to every words YC saysin more of a limbo that find any clarity.

[@Tor1smo]

Hm, they criticize the approach but offer no practical next steps either. Say if you're doing B2B, you're basically limited to cold emailing, paid ads, content marketing, and social media. So you try these things and they don't work. What do you do?

[@dontich]

Their answer in the example is they don’t have the solution - the job of the founder is to think of things that would potentially work to sell to people like them. Tons of other options - email saying you are from a YC company offering cheap demo can work, finding a friend of a friend to vouch for you can work, talking to former colleagues about it can work, industry conferences can work. All just require effort and a significant amount of work.

[@austin4855]

It doesn't. They have advised in the past to validate your idea and given many examples of what that means. Their advice in this video can be distilled to making sure you have validated an idea deeply enough before moving on, to examine criticism critically, and that if you have reasons to believe an idea will work and no proof that it won't other than the pessimism of those with clean hands, to try at least building a minimum VIABLE product.

[@mohammadsultan935]

Not really, the point is you should be more actively validating the idea rather than testing it with a small sample of 25 people and giving up. You should be testing and experimenting with different markets, demographics, channels, business models, price points etc... and if nothing is working, then pivot. You need a high-quality, well-executed validation campaign, but that doesn't mean take 6 months to build a product without talking to a single user.

[@bxny_]

Mad sauce appreciate y’all💯

[@reindertvetter]

This is the best Y Combinator video!

[@ordinarygg]

17:52 is do you use it yourself, 50% of startups failing miserably)) videos are brilliant, I really don't know why all of this is free, thank you guys! After 10 years on this market almost everything 99% is true and when you look at CEOs, C-level executives it's sometimes so funny that you want cry next)

[@jamespeter1244]

This is really amazing to watch

[@marionogueiraramos9488]

it's been while since the last actually useful video before this one

[@ericspecullaas2841]

I did the "random walk" but not on pivoting. I did that on working with my mvp. I would go from mvp to pitch deck to financial planning to figuring out what my product needs. But since I'm 1 person doing it all it kinda has to be that way. When you work for yourself you have to be able to bounce back and forth all the time I know this from experience working at my dad's business.

[@Eltonlin1998]

I wish they were more explicit on what a good rep is, rather than define what a bad rep is. But I’ll try to be specific so you guys can correct me: - A MVP that actually delivers an overall positive value (even if only in a small way), sanity check is you use it yourself - goal of MVP is it let’s you talk to a non-zero number of potential customers rather than talk to nobody - A sales effort that is high quality (heuristic: it’d work on you, the leads are decently qualified but diversified, volume is high (100+ views at minimum, 10000 views not ridiculous for internet/email launched, 1-10 is maybe enough to iterate at least if you already got qualified leads willing to talk to you) - if pivoting, having concrete invalidation facts (sometimes customer will literally explain why they don’t want it), or actual thesis and articulated theory of why people don’t want it (you observe their actions in unique scenarios due to your launches and conversations) - judgment not affected by irrelevant experts e.g investors who don’t engage, peers who don’t engage, anyone who doesn’t care about the details of the market

[@nahiyrrumangg]

always love these videos

[@dwrtz]

i feel called out! love this series

[@gorangagrawal]

My definition of MVP - Something that fulfils the NEED of a solution for today's problem

[@JetSoftProHQ]

Your definition of MVP aligns well with the core concept. It indeed should fulfill the immediate need for a solution to today's problem. It's about delivering a functional solution that addresses the essential requirements, allowing for real-world testing and validation.

[@yashS4201]

takeaway from this video "Believe in yourself and your idea until the rational decision is to pivot"

[@codisfy]

Summary Engaging in thorough thinking and effort. For example, speaking to 25 startups and getting rejected might make you think your idea is bad, or sending 1,000 emails without a response might lead you to the same conclusion. If you come from a large company, you might not have solved your own problems but rather those of others. Ask yourself if you are doing high-quality repetitions. Are you putting in the right effort in the correct amount? You need to convince yourself that it is a worthwhile problem to solve. If you have low conviction, you are likely not going to succeed. People who are "too cool for school" might just pivot until they run out of momentum. Fear can hold back people who are analytical and good thinkers in their jobs but not in their startups. "Pivotitis": pivoting without gaining knowledge, essentially doing a "Random Walk." Some would pivot only after launching a useless MVP that no one wants and doesn't work for even one person. Avoid having expectations that lead you astray.

[@Friday4]

Thanks for these videos

[@MichaelChenAdventures]

super useful love this duo

[@monzermasri4490]

love to listen to those two smart people.

[@a__f]

Liron Shapira has a great blog post about the "help at least one customer" idea!

[@sylarfx]

nice recap! I went through all of the things mentioned here :D

[@Hastingsnow]

Thank you for sharing

[@captainmichaelj2321]

Love this episode

[@HAHA-ix9vx]

Wow!!! Good topic!!!

[@officialrpsgame]

These videos are so helpful believe it or not thanks

[@zidane3599]

Thanks bro

[@vaibhavgeek]

This is the best video.

[@Marko-qy5eg]

In my experience having conviction is a bit of a curse. I wanted to innovate in transportation. I knew when I started it was going to be a 10 year journey. Trouble is that investors don’t want risk locked into long term investment. I can’t give up on my idea because the numbers are too good. Ever since I’ve done a random walk to get something on the scoreboard. It’s really hard to do anything that’s not software without $250k in capital. It all comes back to getting over that hurdle.

[@vlogmoinc5597]

i agree with the conviction part

[@me.account9690]

How do we secure fund, especially for a pre-seed and seed? Because some investor they are preferring investing on startup 1) with revenue 2) absolute market transformer 3) a product sample Etc

[@moji962]

You’re good teachers, one day I will sit in your class.

[@davidbellamy3522]

So how does one know for sure when they have Pivotitis? What if the ideas they have worked on turned out to be genuinely bad (e.g. can’t make a product much better than the incumbent). What if this happens several times in a row. Is that still Pivotitis or is that just failing fast? If one feels like they’ve understood why an idea is bad, then pivots, is that a bad rep or does that count as gaining knowledge and therefore is a good rep?

[@ithinkwong]

Maybe the focus is too much into the product rather than the customer. If you built a product that doesn't solve the customer problem that doesn't mean the customer problem still doesn't exist.

[@jasoncheung8407]

One way to know if your product is on the right track is to have solved the problem you’re trying to solve and then have been able to replicate that same outcome for someone else using the methods you used to solve your chosen problem. Keep repeating this replication process and you’ll have scaled a solution (perhaps without code but by teaching your users how to solve their problem), which can then help you understand how to build the right product.

[@phasematerialsresearch9319]

Working on my form!

[@harrison6082]

5:53 17:50 I agree. Good point

[@gsuuon3388]

Where's the line between conviction and stubbornness? Great talk!

[@thatryanp]

Believing you are capable of finding and solving a market problem is not the same as developing conviction around a market oppty. I walked into the gym without knowing how lifting actually worked (despite watching nearly every YC vid), and seriously injured my confidence I could ever build a business. This work is HARD. Use your brain 🧠 before starting is all I can say

[@hustlin_heev]

I always wondered why the term pivot is used to switch to something completely different. IMO "a pivot" is trying something new in the same space/domain, or relaunching your MVP to solve a different problem for the same customer... Going from one thing to something completely and utterly different is just a "new idea"

[@deoarlo]

15:00, dont confuse movement with progress

[@niccolosenni1110]

what software do they use to show the chapters of the video on the side?

[@lauram14]

I really love how these two make fun of founders 😂😂 I can feel their frustrations 😂😂😂

[@biccsdev]

00:06 i felt personally attacked 🤣

[@nilankar3873]

All i need is one 🤗

[@bobseger-uj1qt]

I have a query: How to start a company where I sell ideas, my "PRODUCT" is my "IDEA/SOLUTION." Now how to start a company like this, and how to make a clientele. Any tutorial videos on this would immensely help.

[@visheshgupta4990]

Even honestly bro I want to start a company like that I have alot of ideas , pretty good one , I can bring innovative solutions to the problems .... I also want to know if we can do something like that .... I think we can open a consultation services specialized in idea suggesting ...

[@NilsWestgardh]

Fear is the mind killer.

[@doodlebroSH]

Impressive, let’s see Dan Gackle’s ideas.

[@okol5211]

Every time I watch these two gentlemen , I know why yc get bombard 100k applications every batch , they make applying to yc sounds like applying for a job in McDonald’s , rest assured if the application review is done manually they are killing as many hopes too. Because most definitely good application will get buried under a pile of rubbish ideas or scam applications. They should raise the bar a bit. So they get more genuine applicants

[@Kevin509wisdom]

What does it mean in 'high quality reps'?

[@saulescala]

help one person first, even if its yourself

[@tompuijpeNL]

7:38 you have to have with or without you energy!

[@purvishkumarpatel5]

Can somebody let me know, what do they mean when they say "rep"? What is rep?

[@alimammadli6915]

Wow 🤯

[@Maverick11555]

Everything you say its true. but these lessons people should get when they were child. its too late for people to change at this point. someone who think 25 its the dead end for them, he is not going to be able to tackle more complicated issues in the future

[@Ollerismo]

Some of the timestamps seem to be generated by random walk. They dont provide any Value relative to the conversation. I think you guys can improve on this.

[@phillipchien]

I have plenty of new ideas to implement but I need a technical founder that can actually create the product. Let me know if you're interested and we can start communicating soon. If not interested, then have a wonderful rest of your day!

[@AbhishekPatel-si7uq]

🔥

[@infrawiki]

fear is the mind-killer

[@startup_talks_de]

Even though I appreciate the wisdom in these videos that give you some high level advice, they are not tangible or specific enough to get some conclusion. For eg. They told about people giving up after a mass LinkedIn outreach and laughed(common practice done by many founders) But they never gave a specific example of someone who did that > failed > talked to these guys > took YC advice > did something different > succeeded. Like that is what the viewers really need. Not the laughs.

[@TheBoysies]

Yes I agree 100% with this. I wonder if they need to really hone in on this. Like who are they aiming these videos at?

[@startup_talks_de]

@@TheBoysies I think they could give 1 example which will add so much value. I assume that is a conscious top-of-funnel content strategy and like they said in their previous videos, YC founders do have an edge with access to what worked for them in the past.

[@vouchandship]

I applied at YC and...

[@durgaprasad814]

Better title "Fear is the mind killer "

[@domthefounder]

This episode had me LMAOOO

[@valtersilva5386]

Guys, a small suggestion, instead of the timeline being vertical and taking a considerable portion of the screen, I would recommend making it horizontal, top right with the transparent background, showing the current topic being discussed and the next one. Great discussion by the way, love your synergy!

[@sabinkarki_com]

So basically pivot based on data, not anxiety.

[@Tor1smo]

Feels like you're just pulling stuff out of thin air now. The goal of an MVP is to test your key assumptions about the product. The product is viable if you think it will test your assumptions. You can have an MVP and not have anyone find it useful. That would still be a good lesson for a startup to learn quickly, hence it's a decent MVP. Also, understand that what Y Combinator talks about is aimed at a very specific kind of company where founders often get diluted a ton in the process. It's not necessarily good business advice. How come there's (generally) no mention of being more cut-throat, abusing loopholes, valuing your ownership, etc.? Reader, ask yourself if what you've seen so far in business and professionally aligns with the mellow idealistic stuff discussed here. I think most people should just read Lean Startup that popularized MVP, take in the immediately practical stuff, get an intuition for what an MVP is, and just start building. Out of everything I've read, this is the single highest bang for the buck you can get in terms of startup knowledge.

[@roblake602]

Not necessarily, I have a patent-published MVP that treats human aging Nobody seems to want to believe it.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

I think they mean ardvark. But maybe they are geniuses who know what an ardvar is when the rest of us don't.

[@Kevin509wisdom]

what's ardvark?

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

@@Kevin509wisdom It went thataway.

[@GabrielSestrem]

In summary: Have you or anyone of your team spent at least 100hours with VSCode open building software?

[@wittyroark]

Please don't take it the wrong way... your insights are always masterful. But your laughter seems less funny these days..and sounds more condescending.

[@theokrull1323]

Totally agree. Like tune down laughing at how some people make mistakes when founding a company.

[@theokrull1323]

I personally think a bit more humbleness and less making fun of how some people make mistakes would suit you very well. Just seems off and unprofessional.

[@noahkasakaitis7026]

I'd prefer it stays unprofessional. Plenty of professional advice out there already...

[@stupidgameprizes]

AnonymousAardvark42: Let me show you how to shitpost on X to 100 x your revenue..

[@mittalshyam07]

Anyone else found these laughs unnecessary and irritating?

[@circlejerkatz]

Where there is little laughter there is little success. - Andrew Carnegie

[@theokrull1323]

Also found it off

[@sauravfx]

Try to not laugh this much after every sentence. It's hard to take this seriously this way and follow

[@Oleg-rs4db]

This is the worst video I've ever seen. No information at all. "Don't send 25 emails and then pivot when no one replies" - what to do then? How to test properly? Guys are raising good question - "What constitutes a high quality rep?" and never answer it. Stupid nodding on useless metaphors and stupid jokes. What is high quality rep? What is high conviction? When to pivot and when stay focused? How many emails? 100? 1000? When change email text or try contacting via different source or change target people? Tired of listening what not to do supported by laughter of approvement. It almost sounds like nervous laugh and distraction for audience when you are not making good job but at least have to forcefully lift a mood of video. What a waste of time to find out that getting rid of fear helps building confidence. What a deep insight! I understand that no one has to answer anything, don't claim then that you bring any knowledge.

[@stojankukrika7242]

I am missing something... are those guys drugs? They smile like they are on some drug.

[@TheGroundskeeper]

I’m not a billionaire yet but I’m pretty sure that posting my company information here in the comments is a good start to getting YC‘a attention and make solid business relationships

[@roblake602]

That's so cool. I'm thinking of posting a link to my YC application...