The document discusses how startup entrepreneurs think and operate. Some key points include: startups often find ideas by solving problems or addressing shortages; entrepreneurs focus on customer benefit and eliminating waste; they iterate quickly and launch minimum viable products; and they embrace failure and pivoting to move fast. Speed is the number one competitive advantage as it allows building momentum and beating competition to market. Entrepreneurs challenge incumbents by reinventing models and are not afraid to break rules to disrupt industries.

1. How to think like a startup
Loic Le Meur

2. How do startup
entrepreneurs
find ideas?

3. “In the beginner’s mind there are many
possibilities, but in the expert’s mind
there are few”
- Shunryu Suzuki

4. Meditation and mindfulness is popular in
Silicon Valley and now in Davos

5. Provide benefit to the customer - anything else
is a waste
Learning to see waste and then systematically
eliminate it

6. “I am still learning.”
- Michelangelo, at age 87

7. Airbnb started because of a shortage of hotel rooms in San Francisco

8. Uber started because of a shortage of cabs in Paris

9. Ryan Hoover,
Product Hunt
Started just from an email list
Gathered a small community of
people addicted to new
products

10. Naval Ravikant,
Angel List
Weekly email of curated angel
investors

11. Craig Newmark,
Craigslist
Request and Gives from Craig’s
friends

12. Jamie Siminoff,
Ring
Tried 3 different ideas in his garage
Struggled to find initial funding
Now approaching 1,000 employees

13. The Ring founding story

14. Create an environment for creativity - Further future

15. Create an environment for creativity

16. Create an environment for creativity

17. Create an environment for creativity

18. Create an environment for creativity

19. Millennials don’t
want to own
anything and care
about improving
the world

20. Improve the world
“I just wanted
more electric cars
on the road”
- Elon Musk

21. “Make the world better”
“All business
should make the
world better”
- Leila Janah
LXMI

22. They don’t care about copying
...and making it better

23. Instagram stories
and Snapchat
stories

24. Snap's Spectacles are the beginning of
camera-first future

25. SV entrepreneurs surround themselves with
investors who provide more than $

26. Teams are remote, own the business and
don’t feel like employees
Mix of highly experimented professionals and very creative millennials
Matthew
Mansfield
Dami
Dina
Kevin
Wolf
Jean-Jacques
Borie
“We’re too slow and too old in this company”

27. SV entrepreneurs
launch their
product really
fast

28. "If you're not
embarrassed by
the first version
of your product,
you’ve launched
too late"
- Reid Hoffman

29. Entrepreneurs iterate quickly

30. Entrepreneurs
break the rules
Travis Kalanick and Uber got sued
non stop but kept going
Uber and Airbnb were illegal from
day one in many places but
kept operating

31. Entrepreneurs make everything transparent

32. Even your own company is rated

33. Entrepreneurs acknowledge issues and respond quickly

34. Elon Musk turns a tweet into a company wide change in 6 days

35. Elon Musk turns a tweet into a company wide change in 6 days

36. #1 Advantage
of a start up...
Speed

37. “We’re going in
full throttle. That
ought to keep
those fighters off
our back.”
- Luke Skywalker

38. Speed is the #1 competitive weapon
Rapid product beats competition
Rapid results builds team morale which leads to more success
Rapid results generate more interest
Rapid results increases valuation
(NFX Guild)

39. Always keep
momentum.

40. - Henry Ford
The competitor to be
feared is one who
never bothers about
you at all, but goes on
making his own
business better all the
time.

41. Set the time, not the output
What product can I build in:
3 months? (Directhit, Xfire)
8 days? (Hot or Not)
30 days? (Jiff)
1 month? (Meerkat)
(NFX Guild)

42. Twitter’s MVP

43. Linkedin’s MVP

44. Facebook’s MVP

45. Google’s MVP

46. How startups win
No QA
No Usability Studies
No Focus Groups
No Politics
No Endless Debates
No Board of Directors
No Bus Dev Deals
No PR
No Marketing Spend
No Budgeting Process
(NFX Guild)

47. “At Google X, we
embrace failure.”
- Astro Teller

48. Most Startups Fail

49. Entrepreneurs fail fast

50. And pivot

51. Startups ranked by number of years from founding to $1 billion valuation

52. Flickr should have built Instagram but they
did not move fast enough

53. Entrepreneurs work with an ecosystem of
developers

54. Twitter decided developers weren’t so
important anymore

55. Entrepreneurs
Embrace wikipedia
style volunteer
collaboration
Slush and their 2,200 volunteers

56. Entrepreneurs
challenge the
current players by
re-inventing the
model
Metromile charges insurance
protection per mile

57. Entrepreneurs
constantly reinvent
their business
Uber selling data
Tesla next?

58. Thanks!
Loic Le Meur
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