In the early stages of a startup, it's crucial to focus on getting a product out to market rather than perfecting it. Feedback and iteration are key to success, as demonstrated by our experience at Y Combinator when we were advised to launch quickly instead of getting bogged down in details.

If we had waited to launch The Muse until it looked perfect, we would have failed before we even started. When we launched The Muse, we were excited to track user data, but we realized that not all metrics, like video views, were essential for our success.

Building The Muse was incredibly challenging, especially in the early days when I was cold emailing 800 student groups to gain our first users and pitching to over 150 VC firms, receiving 148 rejections in six months. Despite the struggle, I learned that while it never truly gets easy, the risk of failure diminishes as the company grows.

The initial version of The Muse didn't look like a billion-dollar company, but getting it out there was essential for our growth.

At Y Combinator, we advise against starting with a solution in search of a problem. Instead, focus on identifying real problems that need solving, which will lead to more efficient growth.

At Y Combinator, we advise founders to focus on creating a product that 100 people love rather than something that 1 million people merely like, as those 100 passionate users can become your viral sales force.

We launched our first version of The Muse using a WordPress site, providing career advice targeted at women in their twenties, despite investors claiming it was a small market.

I co-founded Y Combinator, the first startup accelerator, which began with a hypothesis about what people wanted, and it turned out they did want it, leading us to fund over 1,800 startups valued at over a hundred billion dollars.

Many founders make the mistake of waiting for the perfect idea; it's better to start with what you have and iterate based on feedback rather than delaying your launch.