Startup insights from Sam Altman, Keith Rabois, Spencer Rascoff, Reed Hastings, and Steve Huffman

Every Sunday, we send out 1 free insight + 4 new bonus insights for premium subscribers (upgrade to Premium for $5/mo here).

Today’s insights:

1. Sam Altman on the importance of surrounding yourself with people who don’t shoot down your ideas

2. Keith Rabois on how to manage interest from multiple investors when fundraising for your startup

3. Spencer Rascoff explains how he came up with the idea for Zillow

4. Netflix founder Reed Hastings on the strategy of economies of scale vs network effects

5. Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman explains why redesigning your product is usually a bad idea

Sam Altman on the importance of surrounding yourself with people who don’t shoot down your ideas

“Good ideas are not a solo endeavor. You want to find a group of smart people that you can start bouncing things off of… You don’t just sit in a room and write on the window with the whiteboard pen and have the good ideas come to you. Good ideas come because you talk to people.”

But Sam stresses that this comes with an important caveat: surround yourself with people who build on your ideas rather than shoot them down:

“Ideas are very fragile. So when you find this set of people to start talking about ideas with, you want people who don’t immediately shoot down a bad, half-baked idea… You want people who will say, ‘Well, that sounds crazy unlikely to work, but think how big it could be if it did work.’.. And then you can figure out how to make it work if you want.”

Full video: Stanford Online “How and Why to Start A Startup - Sam Altman & Dustin Moskovitz - Stanford CS183F: Startup School“ (Apr 2017)

Keith Rabois on how to manage interest from multiple investors when fundraising for your startup

Keith’s first piece of advice is don’t lie:

“I would never tell another investor that so and so is interested unless they’ve at least verbally offered you money. The investor world is very insular… Almost every single person I compete with for a deal is a good friend of mine. If it’s not true, you’re just ruining the chance of raising money from basically anybody.”