Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel talk startups, Silicon Valley and advice for founders.
Latest episodes
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25 min
This Is What Young Founders Should Focus On
At YC, we're seeing more and more people in their 20s taking the leap and starting their own companies.In this episode, Dalton & Michael share their advice on how young founders ca…
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17 min
How To Focus On The Right Problems
When it comes to building a successful startup, focus is critical. But how do you know if you’re spending time on the right things? In this episode, Dalton and Michael share advice…
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21 min
How To Make The Most Out of Your 20s
How should you navigate your 20s - the most important decade in your life? For many people, it’s an age with fewer responsibilities: no kids, no mortgage, no restrictions. And so i…
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16 min
The AI Future Has Arrived: Here's What You Should Do About It
Thanks to advances in AI, we're currently living through one of the biggest technological shifts in a generation. And things aren't slowing down anytime soon. So now the question i…
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24 min
Meta VS Apple: What Their Battle Means For AI Startups
You know what they say, to understand the future, look to the past. Since the early 2000s, Apple and Facebook (now Meta) have been battling over who controls the consumer market. F…
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13 min
What Founder Mode Really Means
Thanks to a recent talk by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and a follow up essay by Paul Graham, the concept of "founder mode" is everywhere. But what does it mean and who does it really a…
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18 min
Signs Your Company Is Recovering From ZIRP
As Dalton & Michael have discussed before, ZIRP stands for “Zero Interest Rate Policy” which refers to when the Federal Reserve sets interest rates around 0% and banks were able to…
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13 min
The Times When Paranoia Fueled Technological Advancement
Space travel, the Internet, cryptocurrency — these huge leaps in technology were fueled at least in some part by distrust and fear of others. In this episode, Dalton & Michael disc…
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10 min
How To Live In The Social Media Matrix
Remember how in "The Matrix," Neo found out that human beings were really just being used as batteries to power the machines that enslaved them? In a sense, social media companies…
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13 min
How To Influence Decision Makers
Whether it's career advancement, leaving a positive mark at an org, or raising funds for your startup, the ability to convince and influence decision-makers is a vital skillset to…
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12 min
The Problem With Startup "Experts"
Despite the most successful tech founders being centralized in the Bay Area, there are founders, accelerators, and investors located around the world. In this video, Dalton Caldwel…
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14 min
Tarpit Ideas: The Sequel
The long awaited follow-up to their original tarpit ideas video, Dalton and Michael dispel some misconceptions about what a tarpit idea actually is and how it applies to current te…
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18 min
What Is ZIRP And How Did It Poison Startups?
ZIRP stands for “Zero Interest Rate Policy,” and it refers to a stretch of time — most recently throughout the pandemic — in which the Federal Reserve sets interest rates around 0%…
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8 min
How New Technology Creates New Businesses
When a major new technology comes out, huge new opportunities open up for founders that get in on the ground floor. Fortunes were made when the app store came out, when online paym…
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12 min
When Should You Trust Your Gut?
When you’re making important decisions as a founder — like what to build, or how it should work — should you spend lots of time gathering input from others or just trust your gut?…
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24 min
Why Founders Shouldn't Think Like Investors
It’s easy to analyze your way out of taking the first step. It’s something we see a lot, particularly when founders try to choose what to build based on what they think VCs and inv…
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12 min
Stop Innovating (On The Wrong Things)
Startups need to innovate to succeed. But not all innovation is made equal and reinventing some common best practices could actually hinder your company. In this episode, Dalton Ca…
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14 min
Should Your Startup Bootstrap or Raise Venture Capital?
Within the world of startups, you'll find lots of discourse online about the experiences of founders bootstrapping their startup versus the founders who have raised venture capital…
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11 min
Do Technical Founders Need Business Co-Founders?
Whether or not you need a co-founder is always a hotly debated topic — but going one level deeper, founders often wonder what kind of co-founder they need. It’s also common for tec…
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16 min
Techno Optimism, Explained
Social media often promotes a doom and gloom outlook about our future society. But is that worldview accurate? In this episode, Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss the best…