- Ron Conway is a highly respected investor in the startup world
- He believes that entrepreneurs are born with certain traits, such as a strong work ethic, ambition, and toughness
- However, other skills like management and recruiting can be learned through education and resources
- Ron has invested in over 750 companies and looked at around 21,000 potential investments
- The SV Angel team, led by Ron, is focused on generational planning and believes that young people are the best pickers in the venture business.

- The speaker discusses the importance of personal experiences and needs in starting a successful startup.
- They emphasize the significance of finding product-market fit and creating a market for the product.
- The speaker believes that compelling and personal stories behind the founding of a company are important.
- The compatibility and collaboration between co-founders are crucial for success.
- Single founder companies are less likely to be accepted by Y Combinator.
- The speaker advises sharing and evangelizing the idea to find like-minded individuals who are excited about it.
- They acknowledge that the potential success or failure of an idea is difficult to predict, and persistence and conviction are important.

- The focus on the product is a key trait that successful founders possess, even to the point of being rude or arrogant.
- Companies like Airbnb and Dropbox initially faced skepticism but succeeded because of their focus on the product.
- SV Angel invests in great founders rather than just ideas, and their success is a byproduct of working hard.
- Being a founder himself helps the investor recognize kindred spirits and pick successful founders.
- The focus on the product is crucial, and young founders should not lie to themselves if their product is not working.

- It is important for founders to admit when their product is not working and take action to make it successful.
- Denial is a common problem among founders, but being honest with oneself and the team is crucial.
- Admitting failure can actually improve team morale and lead to finding solutions together.
- Firing someone or laying off employees can also increase morale among the remaining team members.
- Facing financial challenges and making tough decisions is necessary for the survival of the company.

- Ron Conway, a respected investor, believes that entrepreneurs are born with certain traits but can learn other skills.
- Ron has invested in over 750 companies and believes young people are the best pickers in the venture business.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of personal experiences, finding product-market fit, and creating a market for the product.
- Compatibility and collaboration between co-founders are crucial for success.
- Sharing and evangelizing the idea is advised to find like-minded individuals.
- Persistence, conviction, and focus on the product are important for success.
- SV Angel invests in great founders and their success is a result of hard work.
- Recognizing kindred spirits and picking successful founders is easier for a founder himself.
- Founders should be honest about their product's success and take action to make it successful.
- Admitting failure can improve team morale and lead to finding solutions together.
- Making tough decisions, such as firing or laying off employees, is necessary for the survival of the company.

Ron Conway at Startup School Silicon Valley 2014

View the annotated transcript, and add annotations of your own, on Genius: http://tech.genius.com/Ron-conway-ron-conway-at-startup-school-sv-2014-annotated

Okay, so I interviewed Ron on this stage, or on stage at startup school in 2012.

And Ron told a lot of the good stories then.

So I'm not going to ask him about that stuff.

But Ron has an infinite supply of stories.

For anybody, if there's anybody out there who doesn't know who Ron Conway is, basically just remember this sentence.

Not in the sense of like working for the man.

The other man He is like the investor I tell YC startups just this blanket advice if Ron Conway wants to invest in you take his money So That's all you have to remember about Ron Conway.

So, Ron is famous for investing in founders.

And so I wanted to ask you, when you say you invest in founders, what that means is you invest in people with certain traits.

Or is it just the case that some people have it and some people don't?

Because these people all are interested in starting startups, right?

So I'm going to try and get this stuff out of your brain and blow it out onto the audience that

Well, I have said before, entrepreneurs are born to be entrepreneurs.

And once you're an entrepreneur, you're a serial entrepreneur, you're probably going to start companies for the rest of your life.

Or if you're like Zuck or Larry Page, it might be the only company you start, but you are an entrepreneur for life.

And I think most entrepreneurs do correctly self-select.

And I think that entrepreneurs are born, have to be born with some of the basics.

So which traits have to be inborn and which can be learned?

So the the basics I think would be you have to have a hell of a work ethic You talked about it at your Stanford class.

You have to be aggressive and you have to be tough because starting a company is the hardest thing on earth to do.

And I don't think people realize that until they do it.

Since I've watched thousands of entrepreneurs do it, I know how hard it is.

Plus, I started my own company, Alto's Computer, in the 70s, so I know from personal knowledge how hard it is, and I started another couple of companies as well.

And So you think the driven part has to be inborn?

You can't learn to be ambitious and be driven.

Obviously you have to be curious, you have to be intelligent.

I think being a founder is like, it's like a vocation.

But if you have those basic skills, where you're determined, you're tough, you have a huge work ethic, you're completely rifle-focused, then there's other things that you have to learn.

You have to learn to hire a management team.

These things, you have to want success so badly that you learn how to manage, you learn how to find a management team, you learn how to recruit people, and then spread your vision and motivate them to be just like you and be fanatical about your business.

How can these people, you know, it would save them a lot of trouble if you could tell them now whether they're gonna succeed in starting a startup.

How can they tell if they're driven enough?

The word moonlighting is not even in their vocabulary.

I mean, if they're dating somebody or they're married, they warn their spouse that they're not first in line, that this company dream is first in line, and that you have this vocation.

You know, it's like being a priest or a nun, that your duty is to your company.

And if you look at all the successful entrepreneurs, they are that committed about it.

But once you're willing to make that commitment, you know, then, you know, that solves the work ethic checkoff.

If you have that commitment, then your passion is probably infectious.

It probably means you can, in fact, find other people and make them as excited about your idea as you do.

You got to be able to excite other people.

For the management part, you can use a trick of leading by example.

Right, you don't have to use leadership techniques, you just say, I'm gonna go do this, and everybody goes and does it with you.

Correct, but for management and recruiting, you do have to educate yourself.

Now there's many, many books and blogs about how to do that.

So if you have the desire, you can DIY, you can do it yourself because there's lots of resources out there for you to educate yourself on these skills that you have to acquire, that you're not born with them.

They don't have to worry about managing people yet though.

You can afford to hire people that you then have to manage.

Yeah, the first thing you gotta do is your idea has to be infectious enough that you have to find a co-founder.

Since most companies start with at least 2 people.

And they usually start with 2 people who know each other.

And so they're able to feed on each other's excitement and then go from there.

So when you're when you're deciding who to invest in, this is not just a way to get Ron's money.

It's also heuristic for figuring out what works, because how many startups have you invested in now?

Since this is my 20th year of angel investing, so it's an anniversary just like it's the 10th startup school.

And in the 20 years we've invested in over 750 companies.

But in investing in 750 companies, each of which has a founder's team, we have talked to thousands of companies about potentially investing.

Because for every company we invest in, we look at 30.

Do you realize you have looked at 21,000 companies?

Now, I didn't look at them all because SV Angel has 13 people now.

Funny enough, I don't do any due diligence anymore.

I just help portfolio companies with hard, unique problems.

But the SV team's completely built out now, and they do all the diligence.

How does the SV team, how does the SV Angel team work?

If you look at me, you could call me the grandfather, Because David Lee and Brian Picorni, aka Coach, they're becoming the wise old men.

I mean, they've been around me now for close to 10 years each.

And so they have the pattern recognition.

They're now solving all the problems I used to solve 5 years ago.

And then you have Kevin Carter and Topher, my son, who are also becoming wise old men because they've been around SV Angel for 5 years.

But we are rifle-focused on generational planning.

I believe this industry belongs to young people.

And So, you know, Topher and Kevin are getting close to 30 and we've actually said, hey, when you're 30, you know, you better make sure you have, we have 4 or 5 people at SBAngel in their 20s because the people in their 20s are the good pickers.

And then as you get wiser and older, you're more better advice givers to the founder.

So there's, that's interesting that in the venture business, picking and giving advice are different or skills that peak at different ages.

So I'm an age bigot, and I keep telling our team, make sure we hire and bring in really smart 20-year-olds because in 30 years, I hope they're Ron Conway and they're being interviewed by Sam.

You need investors who actually use instant messaging apps that make the photo disappear and stuff like

Yeah, Kevin Carter on our team, 24 at the time, he picked that company.

He tapped me on the shoulder and he goes, that's important.

By the way, if you want a list of the companies Ron has invested in, it would be shorter to give a list of the ones he hasn't invested in.

Just like assume that if you've heard of some big famous startup, Ron is an investor, And you'll pretty much be right.

I was just talking about this, what people should do in college if they want to start a startup later.

What do you think people should do before starting a startup?

You know, whether or not they're in college, for me, really doesn't matter, because There are founders who didn't go to college at all.

There are founders who went to some of college and dropped out.

And then there's some that went all the way through college, Larry and Sergey went all the way through college and dropped out of the PhD program at Stanford.

So I don't think it's about where you're at.

I think it's about when the idea comes in your mind, that compelling idea, that aha moment that says, this is it, this is a company.

And it's usually based around a personal experience where you have that aha moment and you're so motivated by it and taken by it that if you're not in school or if you're in school, it doesn't matter.

You stop what you're doing and go pursue that idea.

So what you wanna do is you wanna set yourself up so you have these aha moments, these personal experiences.

And you can almost be anywhere for that to happen.

For Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, they were at a dinner party, took a video and found out that there was no easy way to upload that video and just share it with the other guests.

With Zuck, it was like, I don't want to go through the physical hard copy Facebook at Harvard.

And then 10 years later, why can't that be on my phone?

So, you know, Sean Fanning, his roommate, wanted to share songs with other people in his dorm.

So Sean Fanning hacks together a music sharing app.

In all of the cases you mentioned, the need was the founder's own need.

All the biggest companies are based on a founder who had a need, hacked it together, and then said, hey, wait a minute, other people probably want this.

And then they start to grow on their own.

Notice what you said, the realization that other people might want it comes afterwards.

So it really, it's not even supposed to be for other people in the beginning.

But once the serendipity phase gets over, then you need to start thinking about product market fit.

It's all about users, which is why YC is so successful, is once you come up with the idea, then YC's mantra is, well, how do you find users who also want this product?

Because unless you create a market, there's no need for the product.

When you look at startups and you're thinking of investing in them, do you care a lot about the story about how they started working on the idea?

I mean, the more compelling and personal the story is, the more excited I get about the company early on, even though I don't know whether or not it's gonna be a huge, huge company.

But I've said it probably to a lot of people in this room, 1 of the first questions I ask is, what inspired you to start the company?

When it goes into your head, you are inspired by it, and then you are driven by it.

So do you also care a lot about the story about how the founding team met?

Yes, very important to understand how, as I said before, most companies have a couple of founders, and it's very important to know how those 2 founders met, how they interact with each other.

Remember, when we first meet them, it's usually 2 or 3 people.

And I'm always watching how they interact.

If 1 person starts answering the other person's question and interrupts them a lot, you know, ding, ding, ding, warning signal.

Those 2 founders probably aren't going to get along forever.

And they're probably right now fighting about who's going to be the CEO.

When in the early days, it doesn't matter who the CEO is, it matters if you can find users and you have a compelling product.

So how can these people, they're interested in starting startups, how can they find potential co-founders when they have someone they're thinking of starting a company with, what sort of filters should they apply?

How can they tell if this person would make a good co-founder?

Well, most co-founders that, you know, when I think about this, most co-founders are collaborating and end up coming up with the idea together.

If you look at Facebook, Pinterest, Google, there are 2 founders for all…two or 3, there's 2 founders for all these companies and they actually come up with the idea together.

Yes, 1 of them is the 1 that says, I feel the need.

But the co-founder ends up being a friend of theirs or a colleague who says, wow, I agree with you and I want to work on that.

Not wow, I think that's goofy and I don't want any part of it.

But the co-founder is usually somebody who shares like 99% of the excitement and inspiration of the person who came up with the idea.

You don't just want to work on interesting problems.

You want to work on interesting problems with other people.

Absolutely, it's a collaborative process.

How excited are you gonna get or accomplish something if it's just you?

I mean, There are single founder companies out there, but very few.

Because I can tell you, from looking at Y Combinator applications, a huge number of single founders applying to YC, maybe half the applications are single founders.

Yeah, well, no, but they're disproportionately unlikely to get accepted.

Yeah, so so There you go there you know You heard it here if you apply to YC there should be 2 of you but But not if that means like putting something on a Craigslist

So If you get this idea in your head, think about Mark Zuckerberg or Ben Silverman.

Ben Silverman's idea when he started Pinterest was really obtuse, where he said, I think people should be using the internet to discover things.

And people look at him like, wow, what's that about?

Well, you know, I used to collect things when I was a kid.

If you put those collections on the internet and enough people put on their collections, people start discovering things that they're interested in.

No, I know, but all those ideas sound so lame.

Everyone he talked to, starting with his mother, who I think is the biggest pinner on earth, he evangelized his product and talked to anyone he could find and said, what do you think of this?

And then you find someone who says, Jesus, I think that is awesome.

You have somebody as excited as you are about this brand new neophyte idea.

All right, so If you have actually built the thing with another person, that's a good sign that they would make a good co-founder, because they have the same credulity as you.

So how do people know when their idea that they're so excited about is actually bad?

How can they tell if a lame sounding idea is actually lame?

Or if it's just 1 of these ideas that sounds lame in the beginning because it's such an outlier?

Well, I mean, you have to be careful about that because a lot of ideas that seem like they're bad end up being huge.

So I think it's about persistence and conviction about your idea.

Because you see these companies at the stage where the idea still seems like.

Okay, As an investor, I cannot tell that.

So, we don't even know, we cannot predict the success or failure, and 40% of our investments fail.

We think that failure rate's lower than most of the industry, but we can't tell.

So we invest in the traits of the individual.

Okay, so let's talk about specific individuals.

Ben Silverman, for example, what traits did he have that made you invest?

Okay, for him it was his rifle focus on the product.

Now keep in mind, rifle focus on the product also applied to Larry, Zuck, Dropbox, Airbnb.

It applies to every successful founder, is they were rifle-focused about the product to the point of being rude.

And a lot of them get accused of being arrogant because they're so focused on the product.

Because other people will say, hey, will you come to this event or will you get interviewed by the New York Times?

And they're going, why would I ever want to do that when I can make my product better?

I went from 10,000 users last month to 25,000 users.

And in the next month, if I can get it to 50,000 or 100,000 users, why would I want anyone to distract me with anything else?

And that focus on the product is what builds huge companies.

And it's so contagious, other people want to come join your team and help you.

But some of the ones that were counterintuitive would be like an Airbnb.

Like, they want me to share a room in my house?

But the 2008 mortgage crisis in New York helped Airbnb because in New York in 2008, there were thousands of people, if they didn't rent out a room in their house they were gonna be foreclosed on and That was that was the mushrooming of Airbnb and then lo and behold they found out that every single Person on earth wants to do this.

Do you remember when you first met Drew Houston?

Well, shame on me, I didn't invest in Dropbox right away.

So I was, in that case, I saw a great entrepreneur and sometimes we do get over-opinionated about the idea.

Dropbox and Airbnb, we love the founders.

Our job is to invest in great, great founders.

I know this sounds like an insulting question, but it's really interesting.

There must be like this really powerful magnet like pulling you off to the side.

And since the beginning, you know, SV Angel kind of invented the portfolio approach to investing.

I always intuitively thought there's no way I'll ever make the right decision every time, so I'd rather make the right decision about a certain marketplace, and then go find the 20 best companies and hope that 1 of those wins.

And that strategy ends up, you know, it's a great strategy.

And when you started, you had this little niche marketplace called the internet.

Back in 1994 when he started, this was niche investing.

In 1994, Mark Andreessen had just graduated from the University of Illinois, had not started Netscape.

But in 1994, I had finished doing 3 startups and had dabbled in angel investing and said, I want to do this the rest of my life.

I teamed up with Ben Rosen, who was then the chairman of Compaq, and we both had plenty of gray hair at the time.

We said, okay, let's go angel invest together.

Because we weren't gonna invest in everything.

Yeah, for sure not hardware, I'd already done that.

And For sure not packaged software, because I had done that.

And we said, let's invest in this thing called the internet, because it's at 0, and we can watch it grow, and therefore it'll be interesting and exciting.

And 20 years later, that is all we're doing, Internet software.

So I noticed the words you're using here, you haven't mentioned anything about money.

I think that you mean making money or- Yeah,

because your investors, everybody thinks investors are in it for the money, right?

Well, my view, I'm in it because I love meeting great founders, helping them, and watching them be successful.

I get to meet these founders before they're famous.

And there is nothing more satisfying than giving advice to a Mark Zuckerberg, a Ben Silverman, a Larry Page in the first 2 years of their existence, and then watching them fly.

Just watch the rocket ship take off and say, wow, I was part of that.

I put the first gas in the gas tank of that company.

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Ron Conway at Startup School SV 2014