Startup lectures can be a goldmine of insights—packed with stories, hard-won lessons, and advice you won’t always find in books or blog posts. But they’re also long, meandering, and not everyone has the time to sit through hours of talks.
That’s where this series comes in. I’ve watched the lectures for you, pulled out the key concepts, and organised them into clear, structured notes. This first installment distills the How to Start a Startup course taught at Stanford in 2014 by Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz (Co-founder of Facebook and Asana), making the ideas easier to digest and apply.
You can view the original lectures (on which these notes are based) here:
(P.S. Be sure to also check out Sam Altman’s legendary Startup Playbook—many of its core ideas overlap with the Stanford lectures, but the lectures also dive into plenty of material the Playbook doesn’t cover and vice versa).
Table of Contents
0. Should You Start a Startup? 🤔
The decision to start a startup shouldn’t be taken lightly. It is an incredibly difficult and painful endeavour. Hence, you should ask yourself whether you’re in it for the right reason.
0.1. Reasons Not to Start
It Looks Trendy
Avoid starting a startup simply for the sake of doing so, or because it seems trendy. The journey is demanding, filled with setbacks, uncertainty, and sacrifice. Without a strong, intrinsic reason, the challenges are likely to overwhelm you.
Be Your Own Boss
Per Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote:
“When you’re the CEO of a start-up, everybody else is your boss… all of your employees, customers, partners, users, media are your boss. I’ve never had more bosses and needed to account for more people today. The life of most CEOs is reporting to everyone else”
More Flexibility
Again, from Phil Libin:
“You do get more flexible time as an entrepreneur. You get to work any 20 hours a day that you want!”
Maximize Impact
Rather than through a startup, it’s actually easier to make a big impact by building a late-stage feature for an established company. An established company has a force multiplier due to already having a massive user base, existing infrastructure and top talent.
e.g., Brett Taylor created Google Maps as employee #~1500 of Google
0.2. The Best Reason to Start
The ideal reason to start a startup is when you feel that
You can’t not do it.
The motivation should be strong enough that creating a company feels like the best or only way to address the problem.
In short, it’s about your passion for the idea and aptitude for building it:
Passion— You need to feel that you must pursue this idea. Passion is essential to endure the struggles of building a startup and to inspire others to join you.
Aptitude— Success should come from your ability to execute the idea effectively, not from simply out-competing more qualified teams.
Summary (Should You Start a Startup?) 🤔
Only start a startup when your passion and aptitude converge on a problem that you cannot ignore. This alignment is what drives enduring commitment, attracts top talent, and gives you the best chance of long-term success.
1. Idea 💡
The first pillar of building a great startup is the idea. While many claim that the idea doesn’t matter compared to execution, this is only partly true. Execution is certainly more critical, but flawless execution on a bad idea leads nowhere.
