It's the YC mantra John says reworked his mind: "the best thing is just always to launch, put yourself out there, see, sell before you build, see who's actually like interested in your product before you just waste time building out a whole pitch deck trying to raise money, like building out a perfect MVP."
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John calls it the number one thing YC reworked in him. The point is to launch first and see who's actually interested before wasting time on "a whole pitch deck trying to raise money" or "a perfect MVP." College, he says, taught the opposite — it tries to make you think about "what's your business model" or "what's your 7 slide deck of like your business idea," which matter when you're fundraising but not when you're truly launching a startup. The real job is to "figure out the pain point you're actually solving." If someone doesn't get into YC, John's biggest takeaway is to "really think about like selling before you build, like really take that to heart" — "it blows my mind how simple the idea is, but like it works."