Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan’s advice for startups: “When you’re small, act small”

A lot of founders try to emulate large companies, and will do things like use the same terminology as Microsoft to describe their products. But Garry argues this is a mistake:

“When you’re starting something new, the whole advantage is that you’re a real human being. We are so starved for real, authentic connection that if you can talk to people and say ‘Hey, I’m the CEO. What do you need?’ That’s the most powerful thing.”

Being small lets you offer fanatical customer support. Not only will this win customer trust, but it’ll help you find product/market fit. If you listen to customers, they will tell you what they want.

“The reason why people don’t do this is they think starting a startup is building this incredibly complex machinery… But I encourage you to think about it in a different way. It’s more like throwing a really, really amazing party… You go there, you see a friend, they say ‘Welcome! Let me take your coat. Let me introduce you to your friends.’”

For his first startup, Posterous, Garry and his team aimed to reply to every single customer support email within ten minutes. And if there was a bug, they fixed it on the spot.

Human connection with your customers is really important. Garry cites a study on Usenet that found retention increased from 16% to 26% if someone received a reply to their post on the forum.

As Garry explains:

“A 10% difference in retention is actually the difference between a startup that’s flatlining and one that’s working. The compounding of this is really, really massive… Be small. Be human.”

Full video: Stanford eCorner “Unconventional Advice for Founders [Entire Talk] - Garry Tan (Y Combinator)“