I’ve always found Vinod Khosla’s commentary on technology and startups very compelling. He’s an outspoken tech visionary, has a knack for articulating his thoughts clearly & impactfully for others to learn. This interview with YCombinator is a true gem – I jotted down its key takeaways for reflecting internally… and then decided to share it on the blog for public reading. Here are some hardest hitting startup #lifelessons from the conversation –

Culture & People

• “A company becomes the people it hires, not the plan it makes”
• The best people you’ll hire will take significant time to join you, since they will always something great to walk away from
• “If you are reasonable, you can’t do unreasonable things”
• “Hiring the early team is like engineering the gene pool of a company”
• Doers v/s Talkers: at a startup, surround yourself with doers who have “skin in the game”

Strategy

• For a startup, the end goal is like Mount Everest, but they don’t climb it in a straight line. They first get to basecamp 1, then to basecamp 2 and so on
• Startup business plans (or pitch decks) aren’t important for knowing what founders will do, but for knowing how they have thought through and analyzed the problem

Investors / Advisors

• “90% investors add no value, 70% add negative value to startups”
• “Single hardest decision for startups – whose advice to listen for which topic”
• How founders should think of investors: “they are employees you can’t fire”

Equity

• Be generous with equity; use it strategically to hire people who are magnets for other good people
• “If you are maximizing the size of the pie, it doesn’t matter what % you own”

Overall I think the interview is very insightful. Its like what is said about classics (books) – “every time you read it, you learn something new”.