The Startup Masterclass

Well, you should have some superpowers. It's generally speaking useful to be a good product person. It's useful to have good skills in leadership, bringing networks in, persuading people, and it's useful to be able to -and this is kind of fundamental- recognize whether you are on track or not.

Generally speaking, you have to have some things that are a unique edge to you, some things that are unique to the problem you are trying to solve, and some things that will help you get an edge. Because competitive differentiation and competitive edge are super important.

It's usually best to have two or three people you trust on a team rather than being a solo founder. It's not to say that solo founders don't actually play out successfully. But most often, two or three people are much better.

If you have two or three founders, you have different skills you can compensate. In the diversity of problems you encounter as a founder, you can actually attack them.

Great founders seek the networks that will be essential to their task. And they realize it's not just about, "I am superman, I can do this anywhere". In order to be successful, you have to go to where the strongest networks are for the particular kind of thing that I am doing.

The reason why Silicon Valley startups are so successful is because of all of the great people you meet there.