you talked about it at your Stanford class you have to be ambitious you have to be aggressive and you have to be tough because starting a company is the hardest thing on earth to do and I don't think people realize that until they do it

you can't learn to be ambitious and be driven obviously you have to be curious you have to be intelligent I think being a founder is like it's like a vocation

are you willing to work 24/7 the really great entrepreneurs are 24/7 the word moonlighting is not even in their vocabulary I mean if they're dating somebody or they're married they warn their spouse that that they're not first in line that that this company dream is first in line and that that you have this vocation

if you look at all the successful entrepreneurs they are that committed about it

for management and recruiting you do have to educate yourself you have to get advice about that now there's many many books and blogs about how to do that so if you have the desire you can you can DIY

the first thing you got to do is your idea has to be infectious enough that you have to find a co-founder since most companies start with at least two people and they usually start with two people who know each other yeah and and so they're able to feed on each other's excitement

we have four or five people at SB angel in their 20s because the people in their 20s are the good Pickers and then as you get wiser and older you're more better advice givers to the founder

it's about when when the idea comes in your mind that compelling idea that aha moment that says this is it this is a company and it's usually based around a personal experience where where you have that aha moment and you're so motivated by it and taken by it

it's based around a need and an idea in all that creates the huge companies

once the serendipity phase gets over then you need to start thinking about product market fit you know who is the customer for this it's all about users

do you care a lot about the story about how they started working on the idea I absolutely do I mean I the more compelling and personal the story is the more excited I get about the company early on

one of the first questions I ask is what inspired you to start the company and it is an inspiration you know when it goes into your head you are inspired by it and then and then you are driven by it

in the early days it doesn't matter who the CEO is it matters if you can find users and you have a compelling product

most co-founders are collaborating and end up coming up with the idea together

it's the co-founders usually somebody who shares like 99% of the excitement and inspiration of the person who came up with the idea

a lot of ideas that seem like they're bad end up being huge so I think it's about persistence and conviction about your idea

we cannot predict the success or failure and 40% of our investments fail we think that failure rates lower than most of the industry but we can't tell so we invest in the traits of the individual

it applies to every successful founder is they were rifle focused about the product to the point of being rude and a lot of them get accused of being arrogant because they're so focused on the product

sometimes we do get over opinionated about the idea and that is always a mistake when we do Dropbox and Airbnb we love the founders geez that idea the idea is not our job in my opinion you know our job is to invest in great great founders

I love meeting great founders helping them and watching them be successful I get to meet people bf I get to meet these founders before they're famous

I think money fame fortune notoriety that's all byproducts of of working your ass off

if they don't care a little too much about the product correct then that that's a warning sign and that that that trait 10-year okay I've been doing this for 20 years that trait didn't start pinging in my brain until like ten years ago and then five years ago it became alarm

if you focus on the product obviously the only way to measure success of the product is users and you will keep tweaking that product until user growth starts to explode