Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, And Marissa Mayer Want To Teach You 'How To Start A Startup'
Joe Corrigan/Getty Images
The 20-session course will be taught at Stanford within its computer science department. But all videos, reading materials, and assignments will be posted online on Altman's website, so anyone can follow the class content for free.
Altman, Y Combinator's president, will teach the first two sessions. But from Sept. 30, he will be inviting a star-studded lineup of guest lecturers, including Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, and Marissa Mayer. They will cover topics from business strategy and monopoly to how to raise money.
Altman said on the class website:
"We'll cover how to come up with ideas and evaluate them, how to get users and grow, how to do sales and marketing, how to hire, how to raise money, company culture, operations and management, business strategy, and more.
You can't teach everything necessary to succeed in starting a company, but I suspect we can teach a surprising amount. We've tried to take some of the best speakers from the past 9 years of Y Combinator dinners and arrange them in a way that will hopefully make sense."
Here's the full course schedule:
Date | Speaker | Topic |
9/23/14 | Sam Altman, President, Y Combinator | Welcome, and Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I |
9/25/14 | Sam Altman, President, Y Combinator | Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II |
9/30/14 | Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator | How to Have Ideas and How to Get Started |
10/2/14 | Adora Cheung, Founder, Homejoy | Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing |
10/7/14 | Peter Thiel, Founder, Paypal & Palantir, and Partner, Founders Fund | Business Strategy and Monopoly Theory |
10/9/14 | Alex Schultz, VP Growth, Facebook | Growth |
10/14/14 | Kevin Hale, Founder, Wufoo and Partner, Y Combinator | How to Build Products Users Love, Part I |
10/16/14 | TBA | |
10/21/14 | Marc Andreessen, Founder, Andreessen Horowitz and Founder, Netscape Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel Ben Silbermann, Founder & CEO, Pinterest | How to Raise Money |
10/23/14 | Alfred Lin, Former COO, Zappos and Partner, Sequoia Capital | Company Culture and Buliding a Team, Part I |
10/28/14 | Patrick and John Collison,Founders, Stripe | Company Culture and Building a Team, Part II |
10/30/14 | Aaron Levie, Founder, Box | Sales and Marketing |
11/4/14 | Reid Hoffman, Partner, Greylock Ventures and Founder, LinkedIn | TBA |
11/6/14 | Keith Rabois, Partner, Khosla Ventures | How to Operate |
11/11/14 | Ben Horowitz, Founder, Andreessen Horowitz, and Founder, and Opsware | How to Manage |
11/13/14 | Marissa Mayer, CEO, Yahoo | TBA |
11/18/14 | Hosain Rahman, Founder, Jawbone | How to Build Products Users Love, Part II |
11/20/14 | Kirsty Nathoo and Carolynn Levy, Partners, Y Combinator | Mechanics--Legal, Finance, HR, etc. |
12/2/14 | TBA | |
12/4/14 | Sam Altman, President, Y Combinator | Closing Thoughts and Later-Stage Advice |
Disclosure: Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.
- I quit McKinsey after 1.5 years. I was making over $200k but my mental health was shattered.
- Some Tesla factory workers realized they were laid off when security scanned their badges and sent them back on shuttles, sources say
- I tutor the children of some of Dubai's richest people. One of them paid me $3,000 to do his homework.
- Why are so many elite coaches moving to Western countries?
- Global GDP to face a 19% decline by 2050 due to climate change, study projects
- 5 things to keep in mind before taking a personal loan
- Markets face heavy fluctuations; settle lower taking downtrend to 4th day
- Move over Bollywood, audio shows are starting to enter the coveted ‘100 Crores Club’