www.techsylvania.com

3. Launched August 2018 with co-founder Daniel Gross
Almost always pre-incorporation & pre-fundraising
Founders get...
$20k investment
2-month accelerator program
1 month in SF with fellow founders
Mentorship, credits, etc.
Funded 250+ founders from 50+ countries, majority technical
Nearly $200M in follow-ons from Sequoia, a16z, Y Combinator, Khosla, etc.

11. UnlikeElon, you probably won't beright at predicting your idea's path to success.
But you can figureit out sooner by making better decisions & moving faster.

14. Youneed to showyouhave areasonable shot at finding product-
market fit,based on:
Founder backgrounds
Problem /market
Traction
Derivative

15. The best evidence for that is:
Revenue
1.
Active users
2.

16. Focus on:
Talking to users
1.
Building product
2.
Completing the founding team
3.
Polishing the idea
4.

19. "We were all-in on Intercom, and had gotten space in an incubator office in San
Francisco. I had been there a couple of weeks, and really noticed the difference at that
time in how ambitious Americans were, and how vocal they were, and how they voiced
their ambitions. I really liked that, and found it kind of intoxicating."
- Ciaran

20. "I remember saying to Eoghan, 'Dude, if we nail this, this could be a 10 million dollar
company'."
- Ciaran

21. Thebest environment will beenergizing, raiseyour ambitions, and makeyou
moresuccessful
Surround yourself with great founders (IRL#1)
Onlinecommunities: Twitter, Pioneer
Physical communities: Universities, cities (SF, London, Singapore)
Experiment with what they do
Send updateemails to mentors, investors, friends, etc.
Reach out to founders you'reinspired by

23. Focus on problems,not solutions
Keep iterating
Put yourself in the right environment
Evaluate ideas based on...
Founder-market fit
Howbig it could be
Howpainful the problem is
What makes your angle unique

24. Product/technologyin search of ause case
Excellent for research;bad for finding abig idea
Examples:blockchain,AR
Difficult markets
Non-technical constraints (e.g.healthcare)
Hard to capture value (e.g.education)
Lowmargins (e.g.insurance)

25. Polish can be dangerous,but there's one place it reallymatters:
your idea(Intercom,Slack,even Pioneer)
Polish your ideabytalking to users
Depending on your strengths & personality,this might be hard

27. Characteristics of all great founding teams
Execute quickly(and correctly)
Understand their users
Attract talented teammates
Company-specificskills
B2Bsales?
Product design?

28. Personal needs
Motivation
Accountability
Creativity

31. Extremely productive (especiallyin the earlydays)
Make quickdecisions
Excellent technical & non-technical communicators

36. The keyto project management for technical founders is front-loading
project planning as much as possible.
Context switching becomes easier when projects are well-defined &
tasks are clearlybroken down.

37. Spec:Goal,MVP,P2s,metrics,timeline,etc.
1.
Workwith adesigner.
2.
Start building.
3.

38. Spec:Goal,MVP,P2s,metrics,timeline,etc.
1.
Workwith adesigner.
2.
Start building...
3.
Howdo we deploythe MLmodel we're using to generate
recommendations?
1.
What sources should we collect our content from?
2.
What analytics should we trackto figure out if this is working?
3.

39. Spec:Goal,MVP,P2s,metrics,timeline,etc.
1.
Workwith adesigner.
2.
Break downthe tasks as specifically as possible,including
DRIs & openquestions.
3.
Start building.
4.

40. The last keyto productivityis making quickdecisions.
Teams that appear to move quicklyusuallymake quickdecisions &
have an incrediblystrong bias to action;theydon't necessarily
implementparticularlyquickly.

43. Should we give users points for giving good feedback?
Should we host alive event for giving project feedback?
Should we change up our interviewscript?

44. Should we give users points for giving good feedback?RTE!
Should we host alive event for giving project feedback?RTE!
Should we change up our interviewscript?RTE!

45. If an experiment is lowcost with minimal downside risk& potentially
significant upside,just do it.

47. The best progress updates involve talking to users & building product,
with the goal of getting users/revenue,or polishing your idea.

48. Building too manyfeatures
Perfecting features
Focusing too much on technologyimprovements
Bug fixes

49. Whatwould we do ifwe couldn'tcode?

51. "What if we just send advisors an email with afewGoogle Doclinks
with project backgrounds,questions from founders,and askthem if
theyhave anyfeedback?" - myco-founder

52. Recognize where you aren't strong, and trust in your ability to fill the gaps
by learning yourself or leaning on others.
Be careful about using examples (landing pages, business models, growth
channels, etc.).

57. Great technical founders are stellar communicators to both technical
& non-technical audiences.
Theybuild amodel of who they're speaking with,and use language
accordingly.

60. Become aPioneer:https://pioneer.app
We're hiring:https://pioneer.app/jobs (datascience,venture)
Email:rishi@pioneer.app (or team@pioneer.app)
Twitter: @narang_rishi