Week #9 ODNC — Capstone Week
Hi, I’m Kavir! Here's recapping Week #9 of ODNC1.
If you're new here, I’ll be chronicling the 10 weeks of ODNC1 with key takeaways of events, noteworthy quotes, and my perspective while I build in public. Subscribe to get updates:
We just had a whirlwind week that culminated in (last minute) submissions for our Capstone projects. In the coming week, we'll have the showcase presentations and I'll share snippets in next week's wrap-up.
Coming back to Week #9, we had a stellar lineup of speakers including Erik Torenberg (On Deck) and Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad). And workshops from Blake Emal (Pitch Workshop) and ODNC folks Brandon Taleisnik (How On Deck Leveraged No-code) and Doc Williams (Intro to API).
Let's dive-in to the takeaways from the fireside chats of this week:
Erik Torenberg — On Deck
Erik is the Co-founder/Chairman @ On Deck, and at Co-founder/General Partner & Village Global. Here are 3 takeaways:
On being a founder
Starting a company is less risky than you think. You develop a network because other people respect founders who build cool stuff.
Being a founder is hard. I know this from my founder experience. But when I wanted to search for a job after that, each interview I took respected and empathized with my founder experience and that was often the deciding factor for them in my favor.
Separating passion from work
Your passion can just be a hobby. It doesn't have to be your work.
Eric talks about his experience with Rapt.fm, a chatroulette for freestyle rapping. It was a passion, but that didn't make it a good business. Or that the founder-market fit wasn't there.
There can be passions that still make good businesses. And that's fine. You can pursue them. I disagreed with the 'passion economy' term because it could be misleading. Skills and market fit matter more.
On Communities
Communities not only give these sense of belonging and connection but also instills the sense of shared reality.
I felt this deeply with the No-code and writing communities. None of my friends from business school write or build things. I needed to find my set of people, and I'm glad On Deck was able to give me that sense of belonging and shared alignment.
Sahil Lavingia — Gumroad
Sahil is the founder of Gumroad, angel investor in startups like Lambda School and Figma, and runs his own rolling fund. Here are 3 takeaways from his talk.
Peers over mentors
Mentors are overrated. My peers and friends have been the most helpful people in my life
I've also never had a "mentor" in my life. I placed a lot of value in having one. But now when I am building a career on the internet, peers matter more. Mentors will only be able guide you on to old paths that they have crossed themselves. They may not be able to guide you on to newer paths. The mentor-mentee relationship is imbalanced, where the mentee might be trying to extract more value than the mentor. A peer relationship is more balanced.
Shipping
You will not know if it is valuable until you build it.
Having worked at early-stage startups almost all my career, I can completely attest to this. The problem is no longer whether you can build or design this feature well. It is whether users will adopt it. And you don't really know until you've shipped.
Building in Public
Can I convert every outbound sales function into an inbound marketing function?
This is a great quote that applies to all kinds of "sales" - recruitment, customers, investment. If you create compelling, easy to consume content that explains you or the company better, then it buys you hours of time.
I am on the same journey with my newsletter, where if I have thought deeply about a topic - I would rather have someone read my thoughts than having to repeat myself while talking.
My Build in Public Journey
This past week was tough personally, so I couldn't get to build my Slack bot in time for the capstone project. But that remains my longer-term project.
I did end up submitting my shipped YC Prep App MVP as the capstone project. Here's a loom video demoing what I built.
That’s it for this week! See you next time.
Follow me on Twitter @KavirKaycee!
Subscribe to get this delivered straight to your inbox