Series: How To Start a Startup by Y Combinator, 2014

Speaker: Reid Hoffman, founder of Linkedin, partner of Greylock

Avenue: NVIDIA Auditorium, Stanford University

Topic: How to be a Great Founder

I don't do notes from page to page. I just jotted down what was most useful to me.

(context: Linkedin was a distant #2 behind all the major social network darlings from Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook, for a very long period)

Having a strong vision into the future (the separation of one's social and professional online identity/community) and knowing my company is always closer to that vision than anybody else really helped.

How to judge a good founding team?

In a good founding team, cofounders just work really well together. They help each other navigate through unchartered waters and figure out the truth or the missing piece.

How to ensure the cofounder is the right person?

Have a series of very robust and wide-ranging conversations in life that exhaust all the topics, so that no stone is left untouched and all the parameters, no matter how extreme they are, have been explored. Having those hard soul-searching conversations upfront rather than later.

Life of a founder

Startup founders have no balance of life. Period. (ok, at least for a period of time when product is launched)