Origin stories

Podcast

Olive Ann Beech: Building an aviation empire from the Great Depression to 1993

Founders August 18, 2019

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Origin stories 9

Hiring & recruitment 6

• How a secretary with no aviation knowledge became the First Lady of aviation
• Building a luxury plane in the Depression — and why it worked
• Refusing to pivot to jets was the right call, not a failure

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MVP & prototyping

YouTube

Common mistakes first-time founders make in year one

Y Combinator August 16, 2019

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MVP & prototyping 9

Long-term planning 6

Productivity & habits 5

• Founders who don't care about their problem lose motivation fast.
• Launching late is a mistake — users won't remember your launch day.
• Prioritising press and conferences over product is cargo-culting a startup.

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Case studies

YouTube

Inside Prison Walls: What CEOs Learn About Human Potential

Bill Gallagher August 15, 2019

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Case studies 10

Management 8

Resilience & grit 7

• America's 77% recidivism rate can be cut to under 5%.
• Most prisoners have genuine entrepreneurial instincts — wrong product, not wrong person.
• A day inside prison resets how leaders read and develop people.

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Growth hacking

YouTube

How to launch repeatedly and stop treating launch as a one-time event

Y Combinator August 15, 2019

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Growth hacking 9

MVP & prototyping 6

• Waiting for the perfect launch kills startups before they get a second chance
• Every community, channel, and feature is its own separate launch opportunity
• Build a warm email list pre-product — your network will amplify more than you expect

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Product-market fit

YouTube

Growth for startups: product-market fit, channels, and decisions

Y Combinator August 15, 2019

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Product-market fit 9

Growth hacking 8

SEO 6

• Retention curves are the only honest signal of product-market fit.
• Most successful companies grew through one or two channels, not all.
• A/B tests routinely disprove founder intuition — data beats gut feel.

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SEO

YouTube

How to rank higher on Google: a 5-step SEO process

Ahrefs August 14, 2019

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SEO 9

Content marketing 5

• Moving one position up on page one can boost traffic 60%.
• Wrong content format tanks rankings even with strong links.
• Fix intent first, then links, then authority — in that order.

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Founder interviews

YouTube

Feather: building a furniture subscription business from scratch

Y Combinator August 14, 2019

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Founder interviews 9

Business models 7

Scaling infrastructure 6

• The problem isn't owning furniture — it's committing to ownership too early.
• Built a full proprietary logistics stack because nothing off-the-shelf existed.
• Cold-emailed West Elm's CEO; landed a meeting and conviction to apply to YC that day.

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