Early stage founders often waste money on hiring top talent from big companies who demand high salaries and equity. This is known as Sebastianism, where startups believe that hiring these individuals will solve all their problems.

We're going to talk about the top things early stage founders waste money on.

I know that I was super tempted by this when I tell everyone that I hire this like Google engineer.

The only catch is they're making like a million dollars a year between like salary and equity at Google.

There's a Portuguese myth that the King Sebastian will return after being lost in battle hundreds of years ago to save and solve all the problems in the country.

And this is the same thinking that startups have.


Speaker 0: We're going to talk about the top things early stage founders waste money on. I'll start with 1. I know that I was super tempted by this when I tell everyone that I hire this like Google engineer. The only catch is they're making like a million dollars a year between like salary and equity at Google. And so they kind of need close to that.

And that's just always a mistake. There's actually a name for this. It's called Sebastianism. There's a Portuguese myth that the King Sebastian will return after being lost in battle hundreds of years ago to save and solve all the problems in the country. And this is the same thinking that startups have.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Hiring a FAANG engineer won’t miraculously save your startup