Secrets You Can Learn From Your Customers

YC partners Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell discuss how spending real time with your users can unlock insights and growth.
Hear the stories of how Airbnb and Brex built billion-dollar companies by forging genuine connections with customers. Learn why having too much money and too many people can actually slow down learning. And discover how to accelerate insight into your product by making your users feel special.
Successful startups don’t just build technology - they solve human problems. The key is listening to the people who really matter: your customers.
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 - Intro
00:30 - Having a Plan
01:15 - How to Learn
01:39 - Empathy for Users
03:01 - The Gold Mine
04:29 - You Can't Fake It
05:18 - Brex Pivot
06:47 - The Edge Cases
07:33 - Caring More Than 0
08:18 - It's Complicated
09:17 - Turing It Around
09:55 - Starcraft
10:23 - Asking What They What
12:49 - It's Easy to Not Care
13:20 - Caring = Learning
14:17 - Takeaways

[@ycombinator]

What's something you've learned from a customer?

[@SushilSharma-vp8cx]

Be good

[@SalarymanNoMore]

That they are the true "product owners"! We're now at a point where our customers reaching a certain threshold of platform usage (and a few other milestones) have seamless democratic influence within our project management system.

[@WillReil]

That sometimes it is the small things that are the most appreciated by the customer.

[@MichaelBruunLarsen]

That not every e-commerce startup start out with fulfilment by amazon, or go international from start - Therefore, our initial plan of automating their work, turned into helping them internationalize and automate processes.

[@jeromeneareo4730]

As a startup in the B2B2C space, we've come to value end-users as if they were our paying customers. Their satisfaction is key to keeping our corporate clients happy. Our experience has been filled with small, yet impactful lessons learned from these end-users - like adding a handy button or tweaking a function. A pivotal learning experience was our integration of Stripe into our web apps. On our journey to find the right product/market fit, we experimented with different ideas both with and without Stripe payments. A particularly successful experiment was offering our payment apps for free to gauge user uptake. The insights from this test were invaluable in understanding the demand for certain products and identifying the types of businesses likely to face issues we could solve. It's through such user-focused insights that we've continued to evolve and grow.

[@tatumscott6170]

You can tell that final thought expressed by Micheal is woven from many threads of direct experience “If you really want to accelerate your learning~ care about your customers. Go talk to them, spend time with them 1 on 1 and you’ll be surprised how special that makes them feel. And~ when they feel special~ how much they can help you learn about your problems and how to solve them” Spun Gold!!

[@TravelingNomad488]

I always appreciate how these guys break the founder journey down into digestible steps and processes. It makes the grueling startup experience much more reasonable.

[@chapterme]

Chapters (Powered by ChapterMe) - 00:00 - Intro 00:14 - Secret for Learning from Early-Stage Customers 00:30 - Having a Plan 01:15 - How to Learn 01:39 - Example: AirBnB (Empathy for Users) 03:01 - The Gold Mine 04:29 - You Can't Fake It 05:18 - Brex Pivot 06:47 - Caring About the Edge Cases 07:33 - Competing With Nothing 08:18 - Justin TV and Twitch: The Complicated Relationship With Customers 09:17 - Turing It Around: Talking to Streamers 09:55 - Starcraft: What Do They Play? 10:23 - Asking What Users What 12:49 - It's Easy to Not Care 13:20 - Caring: Learning With Less Money 14:17 - Takeaways to Accelerate Your Learning

[@GabrielSestrem]

I’m a Brazilian tech guy and a founder. I am truly inspired by Henrique and Pedro from Brex.

[@GauravSharma-vm1yv]

This stuff is gold, thank you for sharing.

[@James-mk8jp]

Whoever set up this video frame did a great job. I've been in that room and it is much bigger than this shot makes it seem.

[@ChristianSoschner]

Excellent insight into Customer Acquisition. Thanks for sharing

[@Eltonlin1998]

"You guys have customers?!" - struggling founder with no customer love

[@javi_park]

incredible insights as always

[@minaraver]

Games Done Quick just raised ANOTHER $2M for charity in a speed running marathon streamed over Twitch. It's so cool to hear this is what made it possible.

[@iPadYh]

Love all the StarCraft references 😂

[@jessexing3456]

very appreciate of the sharing

[@ml-techn]

I am 39 year old, based in Europe with zero net worth. I really want to start a startup but as I am broke I don't know if I should get first a job, work for 4 years, save as much as possible and then start the startup. But, I feel I am already old and in 4 years, I will be around 45 yo and maybe too old! But, If I take a startup road, its a 10 years dedication and if it fails, I will be around 50 yo and broke. Literally, I am really lost!

[@hugoado]

Amazing episode.

[@ahmedmonis84]

Amazing insights!

[@sofianealloui]

Thanks a lot, Sirs ♥🙏

[@paulroque]

Thank you 🥳

[@krajonathan4325]

All my fellow Entrepreneurs, now this our side. Look and Listen and Learn.

[@sjfieksnd]

best video in youtube.

[@LUKEMELIKIAN]

Watched this while wearing my Twitch staff shirt

[@serkardis292]

It's interesting how when they are talking about twitch and bring up instances of what they definitely shouldn't do they almost perfectly describe current state of twitch.

[@Baethoven]

how so?

[@serkardis292]

@@Baethoven look up "Why I quit my job at Twitch" video. It's by YC founder and delves into many details of modern internal twitch culture.

[@kuzhalandurai713]

What is the software used here to get the chapters on the side of the video?

[@ycombinator]

Custom made .mogrt built with After Effects

[@brian_akhtar]

i think life and business these days has been completely overcomplicated in every facet, from organizational structure to the tech to organize the internals. Business is simple. Don’t over implicate just because enrole else is. Do the things and do them simply

[@ARTHURBARD1]

❤

[@BigDataLogin]

cool

[@UpperEchelonWorld]

❤🙏💯

[@machapuis]

Are there a lot of people trying to scam you? Do you have a lot of spam applications? Did you funded one by mistake?

[@rentalsetup-makearentalequ6427]

Am I the only one that doesn't prefer these video styles? I think I prefer the class settings where the guy is in front of a chalkboard/whiteboard. lecture settings from Y combinator. It's not the same.

[@joseandresruiz4360]

I like your video series but lately not appreciating the full 20 mins of sarcasm and condescendence with laughter.... It just doesn't teach or prove anything but the fact that you feel really smart about yourself.

[@thisislindoluthuli]

Hahaha... you guys literally laugh at how obvious some of this stuff is.😂💀

[@duongtt3]

Day 1 - Great start

[@BizLytInteractive]