- Adora, a partner at Y Combinator, discusses essential start-up advice with Raham from AppDeco, Alana from Bulletin, and Tiffany from the Human Utility.
- The common advice of "make something people want" is discussed and how it applies to each of their startups.
- Raham started AppDeco out of frustration with selling furniture on Craigslist and created a one-stop solution for buying and selling furniture.
- Alana initially started Bulletin as an Etsy competitor but pivoted to creating physical retail stores for direct-to-consumer brands after realizing what people actually wanted.
- Tiffany founded the Human Utility to pay water bills for those who can't afford them after reading about the water crisis in Detroit.
- The advice of "do things that don't scale" is discussed, with Raham mentioning how they listed furniture for users on Craigslist and Alana describing how they tested their retail space concept through outdoor flea markets.
- Tiffany talks about how they sent postcards to reach people who needed help with their water bills, as they weren't active on social media.
- The advice of finding 10 to 100 customers who love the product is discussed, with Raham and Alana mentioning how referrals played a significant role in growing their customer base.

- The speaker discusses how their startup gained attention through social media and news coverage, leading to an influx of donors and people seeking help.
- They emphasize the importance of ignoring competitors and focusing on delighting customers and creating a product people want.
- In the non-profit sector, competition exists and effective communication and storytelling are key to success.
- The speaker shares their experience of facing challenges with cities and other organizations, but their success and impact ultimately spoke for itself.
- The importance of finding product-market fit is highlighted, with examples of when hiring key personnel helped achieve this fit.
- The importance of self-care and maintaining sanity while running a startup is discussed, with suggestions such as exercise, therapy, and coaching.

- The speaker works with an executive coach and uses acupuncture to stay organized and manage energy.
- The importance of founder relationships is discussed, with the speaker highlighting the complementary skill sets and personalities of their co-founders.
- Delineation of roles and decision-making processes are important for effective collaboration.
- Conflict is seen as normal, but it is important to manage it in a healthy way.
- The speaker mentions the importance of having a mix of different personality types and soft skill sets in a co-founder.
- The speaker also mentions the value of having dedicated donors and advisors within the organization.
- The customer service person hired is praised for their ability to handle people and finesse situations.

- Adora, a partner at Y Combinator, discusses start-up advice with Raham, Alana, and Tiffany.
- Raham created AppDeco to solve the frustration of selling furniture on Craigslist.
- Alana pivoted Bulletin from an Etsy competitor to physical retail stores for direct-to-consumer brands.
- Tiffany founded the Human Utility to pay water bills for those in need.
- Advice on doing things that don't scale, finding loyal customers, and gaining attention through social media is shared.
- Ignoring competitors and focusing on customer satisfaction is emphasized.
- Effective communication and storytelling are key in the non-profit sector.
- Challenges with cities and organizations are overcome through success and impact.
- Hiring key personnel helps achieve product-market fit.
- Self-care and maintaining sanity are important for founders.
- Founder relationships, delineation of roles, and managing conflict are discussed.
- Having a mix of personality types and dedicated donors/advisors is valuable.
- The importance of a skilled customer service person is praised.

Recorded live at our Female Founders Conference in New York, Adora Cheung discusses essential startup advice with Reham Fagiri, Tiffani Ashley Bell, and Alana Branston.

Adora Cheung is a Partner at YC - https://twitter.com/nolimits

Reham Fagiri is a Founder of AptDeco - https://twitter.com/rfagiri

Tiffani Ashley Bell is the Founder of The Human Utility - https://twitter.com/tiffani

Alana Branston is a Founder of Bulletin - https://twitter.com/alanabranston

Read the transcript here: https://blog.ycombinator.com/essential-startup-advice-with-adora-chung-reham-fagiri-tiffani-ashley-bell-and-alana-branston

If you’d like to learn more about the Female Founders Conference, head over to https://femalefoundersconference.org

I have Raham from AppDevCo, Alana from Bulletin, and Tiffany from the Human Utility.

Today we're going to talk about our discussion will be around essential start-up advice.

I think there is a lot of actually good advice in books, articles, and even on Twitter sometimes.

But they tend to be, I think, very generic and abstract, in an attempt to try to make it apply to everybody as much as possible.

So today I want to go over some of that common advice you probably see and dive 1 level deeper into how it applies to these 3 folks and their startups and go from there.

So The most common advice I hear all the time, and I give all the time, is make something people want.

It's so common that it's almost the motto of Y Combinator.

So maybe you guys can start off with introducing yourselves and what's the one-liner for what you're building.

And how did you know, or why did you think it was something people wanted?

I'm Raham Fagheri, co-founder and CEO of AppDeco.

We are a marketplace for buying and selling furniture based here in New York City.

So if you're selling furniture, definitely check out AppDeco.

So the reason why I started AppDeck, I was actually out of my own frustration trying to sell furniture on Craigslist, had a really bad experience, realised that there are something has to be done to make it better and more efficient.

So we are a one-stop solution, we take care of the pickup and delivery, we handle payments online, we verify everything before pickup and that was the reason why we started it is because out of my own frustration.

Hi guys, I'm Alana Branston, co-founder and CEO of Bulletin.

So we build physical retail stores where direct-to-consumer brands can sell their products for a monthly membership fee.

The stores are actually filled with all female-led brands.

So yeah, it's completely for women by women and yeah, when we started the business, we actually did not build something that people wanted at all.

We started off with, it was basically like an Etsy competitor.

It was like a cool curated Etsy was the idea.

We like literally didn't sell anything, it didn't work.

And then we started talking to those users and basically asked them, okay, like, what can we do that is helpful, because this clearly is not and figured out that they wanted access to retail space and how hard it was for them to get into stores.

So yeah, we eventually built something people wanted.

I am the founder and executive director of a not-for-profit organization called the Human Utility, where we essentially pay water bills for people that can't afford their own.

We've done that for like 1,000 families in Detroit and Baltimore and a bunch of surrounding cities since.

It's Not really we either, it's all you guys have donated.

But we've done that for a thousand families since we started in July 2014.

And it was more of make something people need.

So we essentially crowdfund the money to help people.

And I just read 1 day, I'm not from Detroit or anything like that, I just read about what was happening in Detroit, because I was actually working in City Hall in Atlanta, and I was just thinking to myself, like what kinds of failures had to happen in City Hall where somebody just decided that if you're poor, we'll turn your water off?

So friends and I got together and just decided to like, you know, we'll throw away 100 bucks in a weekend on some shirt we don't need in a bad restaurant, so why not give that to people to help with their water bills?

But it turned into like the whole internet wanting to do that.

Okay, so another piece of advice is do things that don't scale.

So give us 1 example of something that you did that wasn't really scalable, but you had to do it anyway.

And maybe it's related to how you got your first user.

But so when we first started, I don't know how many people are doing marketplaces but the big problem with marketplaces, they call it the chicken-and-egg problem, is you need to get you know content and also buyers And so how do we convince people to actually transact on our platform?

So how do I get furniture on the platform when nobody will trust that I actually am a real legitimate business was the question that we were trying to tackle.

The reason why I actually built the platform was because of Craigslist.

But we were going on Craigslist just telling people, hey, you should try AppDeco.

We are going to take care of delivery, et cetera, et cetera.

Some people were convinced enough to list.

But the part that actually came out of 1 of my partner meetings at YC was, instead of having people, you email them and have them go list on your website, why don't you just list it for them and so that was like, oh wow, is that even kosher?

I mean I don't think it is but so we just started just going on Craigslist and literally just copying content from Craigslist to our site and then there's a whole other story of like once something's sold, how did we get it to the customer?

Yeah for us, we basically when we were pivoting from this like Etsy competitor idea to the retail space idea, we really didn't have any money.

I think we had 20k that we had gotten from YC Fellowship.

And we're like, okay, how are we gonna test like a retail space concept?

And so my co-founder and I it was just the 2 of us at the time Started doing these like outdoor weekend flea markets as a way to test the concept So we literally rented out this overgrown, vacant parking lot in Williamsburg.

We'd have like 40 brands come every weekend and they would come and set up their product and sell.

And it actually went really well where they were making a lot of money, we were making money finally, and we used that to basically prove that like, okay, brands will show up and pay for space, and like there's definitely better ways to do this, and yeah, it was completely unscalable, but it did prove our point, which is good.

So we have kind of a two-sided thing, where we have donors and then the people that actually need the help.

And so if you follow me on Twitter, I'm sorry, but that's like the way that we got the initial donors.

But we had all this money that kind of piled up as far as pledges go, and since we'd done everything on social media, we didn't know how to access or get to the people that needed the actual money.

But what ended up happening is just like, we got really low tech, and we just designed some postcards and sent them to people.

The USPS has a way where you can just target certain blocks and just kind of say you want to send 500 postcards to this street, and it's like kind of gerrymandered the way it looks like.

But we ended up just kind of doing that, and just kind of going from our database, and just saying we have a lot of people from Detroit in this zip code that are applying, so why not just target that entire zip code?

And we just started doing that kind of thing.

So these people were not on social media so we couldn't just keep tweeting for them.

And actually maybe I'll talk about it later, but the city wasn't helping us either because they were kind of like, who the hell are you?

So we kind of had to just hack it in that way.

And it turned out to be a really interesting sort of thing to send out postcards.

So the next 1 is, find 10 to 100 customers that really love your product.

So how did you determine that people were loving your product?

Like, how did you define that, either qualitative or quantitatively?

So I'll continue along the same story, so for us once we started you know listing these products from Craigslist and trying to, we got our first sale and we're like, wow, okay, what are we going to do to actually fulfill this sale because these sellers don't even know that we've listed their product on our platform.

So we were trying to figure out how to fulfill that order, So the first time I tried, I'd email, hi I'm the CEO of AppDeco, we sold your product on AppDeco and we're gonna pay you and it just didn't work.

So then we just realised, hey why don't we just actually just pretend like we're a Craigslist shopper.

Go on their platform, go and just email them, like hey, I'm gonna buy it and we just pay them in cash.

The most amazing thing that happened out of that is because we were actually visiting every person's home, we were talking to our customers and we realized once we told them why we started the business, because once we got to their home, we would tell them, hey, this is, by the way, AppDecker, and this is what we do, et cetera.

They actually started telling all their friends.

So every time we went and we were doing something very unscalable, 5-10 people signed up as a result of it.

So that was the genesis of sort of getting from 10 to 100 customers.

And yeah, I feel like we have a pretty similar experience where once we started getting referrals from brands we felt like, okay, we're doing something good enough that people are recommending their friends.

I think we got lucky because our users, they're in this tight-knit community of brands and so they all would talk to each other and if someone sold in our store for a few months and they were making good money like they're gonna tell someone else in their community and yeah I think it was like when we opened the third store and we just were able to like book it out immediately and we like couldn't believe that people were paying pretty healthy rates to sell in the store.

It was just finally getting to a point where we were doing something right for the users.

I mean, so the first, again, from donors versus people that were helping.

So the donor side was again just social media and it turned into like the news finding out about us and then people signing up from there.

And that became like me getting stuck in my apartment for like 2 weeks talking to press over and over again about what we were doing.

Because it was kind of weird if you think about it to pay somebody else's water bill.

So people were kind of fascinated with that aspect.

But then as far as the people we helped, again, it was the postcards, but then Facebook groups and stuff like that.

So let's talk a little bit about competitors.

Your startups are gonna die because of suicide, not murder.

So how do you guys think about competitors?

It's definitely, it's easier said than done to ignore them for sure, but I've learned through time now, where this is our fifth year in businesses, that is really the best advice is to try to ignore them and what I've learned over time is, just focus on the things you can control and you can control delighting your customers, you can control making a product that people want and things like that nature.

We've had competitors that have raised tons more money than we have to date even and they've shut down.

So it doesn't really matter at the end, it's all about the execution and just focus on the things that will make you compete in the market.

Yeah I think we try and ignore them as much as possible also.

I definitely have like my Google Alert set to say like if when they announce certain things and I think you know we'll look to see how they're positioning their product in the market or when they're raising money.

But yeah, I think the more you can just keep your blinders on and look at your metrics and look at your milestones and keep your team looking at that and not be like, oh my god, they just raised $23 million, what are we gonna do?

It's distracting and it doesn't really help you in any way.

Yeah, so the not-for-profit sector's a little different.

Because there's still totally competition, like it's not just this like, oh, everybody's trying to help the world or whatever.

It's actually surprisingly cutthroat, which I learned on the job.

Maybe if you pull me afterwards, I'll tell you about certain mafia-esque phone calls I got from other organizations.

For us, it's been learning how to communicate the work that we're doing really well.

And also just kind of pulling at people's heart strings and like learning how to do the storytelling.

You mentioned you butted heads with the cities a little bit.

No, so I think when we launched we embarrassed Detroit, which wasn't the goal.

And so they didn't, I mean it's true, it's true.

So they told people not to come to us for help because they're like, well, you know, if you need help, come to us.

They were turning off cancer patients, for crying out loud, and this is the kind of stuff that was going on.

But we got a call from a certain very big non-profit, it's a national organization, and they saw us as competition, which was funny because I was still operating this out of my bedroom, basically, as a fundraising thing.

But it's just the principle that we got more press, people were, what we were doing was resonating with people more, and we could show actual success stories, and we weren't building 6 houses with hundreds of millions of dollars, and that kind of thing.

So I think that's, the non-profit sector has competition still, but I think if you show that you operate better, you're actually using the money for what you say you are, and you're putting those success stories out, and then you're talking about the systemic change that you're trying to actually kick off that actually resonates with people.

That's the question I get all the time too, like how are you gonna do this?

And for us it's actually not to keep raising money, but it's actually to like have laws passed around water affordability.

And just kind of use like a lot of startup-esque principles to do that.

So it's often said that you shouldn't start scaling, as in hiring lots of people until you find product-market fit.

So maybe, we kind of went over, we talked about referrals and stuff like that, but maybe you can go over, when did you know you should hire your first person?

Who was your first important hire and why did you hire that person?

Product market fit for us was when we decided to take on delivery and make it in-house.

So when we started the business, we did not want to touch the furniture, we just wanted to provide the platform.

A year and so into it, we were working with third-party moving companies, we realised that it's just the quality of service was not up to par and they were just cancelling jobs on us last minute.

So we hired some guys off of Gratzis again and rented as a van and that day we had incredible feedback from customers.

Fast forward, now we have over 10 trucks in the city and what we saw was as soon as we brought delivery in house, we talked about referral but really it skyrocketed.

The type of referrals, the quality of service as well, the branding, also our metrics.

We now understand our metrics very well and that was really the basis for it.

I mean, our first hire was customer service because it was all about delighting customers and what I learned over time is, your needs as a business change over time, so our first hire was customer service and that was at the time the most important hire.

We fast-forward a couple of years later, our head of operations and obviously our engineers, etc.

Yeah for us it took us about a year and a half before we got to product market fit.

Like we pivoted so many times and just kept taking like the little things we learn and use it for the next version of the company we'd run.

But yeah, it literally wasn't a year and a half until we got to a point where we were opening retail stores, they were working, the brands were happy.

And then to answer your question about the hiring, I think our first important hire is really what got us to like full product market fit in my mind There was basically a point where we were treating the stores as like the store stores as a service like any brand can come and sell Their product and so we ended up with this like crazy store where there is like Fitbit competitors next to blankets and it just didn't make sense, obviously.

And so we hired our director of product, Maggie Brain.

She came from J.Crew who just totally transformed the business.

She's a merchandiser and so she was able to really pick the right brands, pick the right products and price point.

And I mean, the stores just took off after that, but it was like that final key hire before we were like, okay, like we can scale this, we're good.

Yeah, for us, product market fit is just like having people continue to support us basically.

So we've been trying to build a stronger recurring giving program.

So that's still kind of in the works actually because like I had never run a non-profit before so I didn't know like what we should actually be doing and like what that looks like as far as success besides like changing laws.

But as far as the first hire we had, it was also customer service because we had all these people that were applying for help that I couldn't talk to them all on my own.

I was turning into kind of like a social worker slash therapist by like talking to everybody who, like seriously, like who, everybody who applied I talked to them on the phone for at least 30 minutes, which was good in the beginning because like people were feeling heard for once because when you deal with a lot of people that are in poverty, the thing that's common amongst all of them is they get overlooked and ignored.

So we just kind of, I just listen to people more.

But Kate, who used to direct nonprofits at YC, She kept telling me, like, you need to hire somebody because you're looking worse and worse every time I see you, and you can't, like, you know, you can't do this on your own, and then, like, whatnot.

So I actually, the spring of 2016, I'm an engineer, by the way, too, so, like, I took, like, a month off from everything else and just built out what became our case management system.

And then that allowed me to actually hire the customer service person because they would have had the no Rails otherwise because all we had was the Rails console.

But that was our first customer, I mean that was our first hire.

Semi-related to that is when founders come into YC, we say, please, please, remember to get some sleep and some exercise.

So how do you guys stay sane while running a startup?

Yeah, so this year at least I'm trying to make it to the gym more and travel.

It's still a work in progress but definitely it's very, very important and what I learned over time is you know it's not about the number of hours, it's more about how productive you are.

You can work 6 hours and be more productive than working 15 hours in a day.

So I'm trying to still implement that but it's yeah, it's very, very important.

Yeah, I think for us, I mean, it's something where it ebbs and flows.

Like there's weeks where things are just completely insane and we're opening a new store, and I just feel like very unhealthy and not okay.

I think the whole team gets that way sometimes.

But yeah, I mean, I think when we do have like kind of a down moment like trying just to really take advantage of it and just you know not go into the office on the weekend.

I know like a lot of people hate running.

I used to but for like just my mental state like running has done wonders for me.

So yeah, I know people hate it, but maybe try it.

I mean, so this is actually the end of my vacation this week, literally, I was on vacation this entire week, which never happens.

But the 3 things that I've been doing more is going to therapy.

I work with an executive coach that helps me stay organized and prioritize and things like that.

And then something I started in the last couple months is acupuncture, because it's helped with energy issues and actually getting me to sit down somewhere during the business day.

I know we're over time, but I apologize, but I want to add in 1 more question, because I think it's so important, and that is, the advice is founder relationships matter more than you think.

So can you talk about your relationship with your co-founder, and how do you guys stay sane with each other and balance things?

So for us, I have a co-founder and so my background an engineer and he came from marketing and sales so early on we tried to create delineation of roles and you know We buttheads still all the time but at the end of the day, someone has to make the final decision because it's always democracy and we both have to come consensus, we're just never going to move quickly.

So what we do is, any product-related things, I essentially have the final say.

Any marketing-related things, he has the final say.

For example, we were on Subway campaigns.

I really did not want to spend the money and he was like, well we're gonna do it and we did and actually worked out to be very well but you know I think this is the important thing is creating that sort of making sure that you have a structure where you're able to make decisions fast and quickly.

And conflict's okay, but you have to figure out a healthy way to manage it as well.

Yeah, I feel like I just got so lucky with my co-founder, Allie.

We have very complimentary and different skill sets and personalities.

I'm more introverted, I like to kind of manage things from behind the scenes.

She's highly extroverted, amazing salesperson, amazing press person.

And I think even from the very beginning, when it was just the 2 of us working in my apartment, we just could kind of stay in our own lanes.

I just knew what I was good at and what she was good at.

And yeah, we worked really well together.

And so yeah, I think when you're looking for your co-founder, even if it's not like, she's the technical 1, I'm the non-technical 1, I don't think it needs to be like that.

But looking at different personality types and even soft skill sets, it really helps to have a little bit of a mix there, I think.

So my original co-founder couldn't go through YC with me, but she's like a very dedicated donor and advisor of the organization.

But the next person I think of that has been around just as long technically is the customer service person I hired, Marie.

I'm the fundraiser and the person that does all the technical stuff, but she does the customer service, which again, I burnt out on.

But another thing that she's really good with is people.

Like I still labor under the belief that this is ridiculous, I have to do this as an organization, but she is just kind of like, okay, I'll call the city people and talk to them free, because I'm on the phone like, why the hell can't you do this or whatever?

And she's patient enough to be like, you know, I will talk to them, I will make this work for us or whatnot.

And she's way better at that stuff than I am, because I'm just like, to me, common sense, this shouldn't have to be a thing.

But she's able to talk to people and kind of finesse them and whatnot.

So I really appreciate that aspect of the work that she does.

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Essential Startup Advice with Adora Chung, Reham Fagiri, Tiffani Ashley Bell, and Alana Branston