Words of Wisdom from Geoff Ralston

by Scott Edward Walker on September 13th, 2020

To Our Clients & Friends: Welcome to our series “Helping Entrepreneurs Succeed.”  Every few weeks we share a favorite video of a successful entrepreneur, investor or business leader on a variety of topics.  This week, we present Geoff Ralston, the President of Y Combinator and a very solid former entrepreneur.  

In this brief speech to the 2019 Startup School, Geoff shares some words of wisdom to founders, including the following:

• “There is no one path.” (at 0:42)
• “Make something people want.” (at 3:54)
• “Startups are hard.” (at 4:25)
• “The most important quality in a startup founder is determination.” (at 8:23 via Paul Graham)
• “Default to action – [e.g.,] Write code. Talk to users.” (at 10:44)
• “One of the main reasons that [startups] fail is because co-founder relationships breakdown…” (at 12:41)
• “Create the kind of company that you would like to work at.” (at 14:45)

I hope you enjoy it.  Cheers, Scott