Lessons from working with 600+ YC startups | Gustaf Alströmer (Y Combinator, Airbnb)

If I drill down, like what makes companies fail, it's, it's, it's quite simple. It's just like, they don't talk to users, which means they don't find product market fit. And if they don't find product market fit, like nothing else really matters. And what mistakes do people make is like, is all, all about that. It's all about talking to customers and, and learning that you're building something that's actually useful. YC's like headline is, make things people want, and that's ... It's still true, and it's always gonna be true.

(instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Gustav Alstrimer. Gustav is a group partner at Y Combinator, where he's been for almost six years. Prior to that, Gustav was at Airbnb for over four years where he started the original Airbnb growth team, and where I was very lucky to get to work alongside him for a number of years. Gustav is also at the heart of YC's increased focus on climate tech, and in my opinion, is one of a handful of people who've had an incredible impact on the increasing amount of investment and people flowing into climate tech. We chat in depth about what's happening in climate tech, why things have shifted so much recently, what's new and exciting, and how to think about the space if you're hoping to make the jump. We also get deep into Gustav's experience working with over 600 startups over his time at YC. We talk about what are the most common mistakes that early stage startups and founders make, what advice YC partners give founders most often, the most common attributes of successful founders, the importance of having a technical co-founder and why that's the case, so much more. I guarantee you will leave this episode smarter and more inspired, and I can't wait for you to hear it. With that, I bring you Gustav Alstrimer after a short word from our wonderful sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Linear. Let's be honest, the issue tracker that you're using today isn't very helpful. Why is that it always seems to be working against you instead of working for you? Why does it feel like such a chore to use? Well, Linear is different. It's incredibly fast, beautifully designed, and it comes with powerful workflows that streamline your entire product development process. From issue tracking all the way to managing product roadmaps, Linear is designed for the way modern software teams work. What users love about Linear are the powerful keyboard shortcuts, efficient GitHub integrations, cycles that actually create progress, and built-in project updates that keep everyone in sync. In short, it just works. Linear is the default tool of choice among startups, and it powers a wide range of large established companies such as Versel, Retool, and Cash App. See for yourself why product teams describe using Linear as magical. Visit linear.app/lenny to try Linear for free with your team, and get 25% off when you upgrade. That's linear.app/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next generation AB testing platform built by Airbnb alums for modern growth teams. Companies like Netlify, Contentful and Cameo rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running experiments is increasingly essential, but there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern grow team stack. This leads to wasted time building internal tools, or trying to run your experiments through a clunky marketing tool. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved about our experimentation platform was being able to easily slice results by device, by country, and by user stage. Eppo does all that and more, delivering results quickly, avoiding annoying prolonged analytic cycles, and helping you easily get to the root cause of any issue you discover. Eppo lets you go beyond basic click-through metrics, and instead use your North Star metrics like activation, retention, subscriptions, and payments. And Eppo supports tests on the front end, the back end, email marketing, and even machine learning clients. Check out Eppo at GetEppo.com, GetE-P-P-O.com, and 10X your experiment velocity. Gustav, welcome to the podcast.