Lessons from Keith Rabois

Lessons on identifying and solving ambitious problems

Aim to solve important, ambitious, and specific problems with high impact.
Understand opportunity, avoid trapdoors, and find the path to treasure using idea maze.
Embrace naivety and ask “why” questions from experts to find why an idea might not work.
Identify an incredibly fragmented industry with low NPS, integrate vertically and improve the experience and achieve a high NPS.
Timing is never a good excuse for founders.
Every startup needs a secret that most people don’t understand or appreciate yet.
Consumer products need to rearrange a lot of people’s life.

Find co-founders who compliment you and agree with you on first principles.
Creating a cult makes your team believe that they’re better than everybody else in the world.
List 2-3 main risks or challenges of your startup, find a directly responsible individual (DRI) for solving and delivering each challenge.
Think of building a startup as creating a movie: start with a narrative (vision), cast (recruit) the team, produce (raise money), release trailer (value prop), sell tickets (market).
Define your startup mission and attract people who are passionate about it.