CS183B is a class we taught at Stanford. It’s a sort of one-class business course for people who want to start startups.
Videos of the lectures, associated reading materials, and assignments are all available here. There are 20 videos, some with a speaker or two and some with a small panel. It’s be 1,000 minutes of content if you watch it all.
We 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 think we were able to 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.
We did this because we believe helping a lot of people be better at starting companies will be good for everyone. It is hopefully valuable even for people who don’t want to start startups.
Talks like these have really helped Y Combinator founders create their companies. We hope you find it helpful too!
-Sam
Hundreds of meetups have been held around the world to bring people together to watch and discuss the videos. You can see the list of sessions that have previously been held
here.
Many viewers found it valuable to have a group to discuss the ideas from the lecture videos, as well as to discuss their own startup ideas. If you want to organize a viewing session in your area or at your university, feel free to do so at the pace you choose.
Lecture | Speaker | Topic |
1 |
Sam Altman,
President, Y Combinator
Dustin Moskovitz, Cofounder, Facebook, Cofounder, Asana, Cofounder, Good Ventures |
Welcome, and Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I Why to Start a Startup |
2 |
Sam Altman,
President, Y Combinator
|
Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II |
3 |
Paul Graham,
Founder, Y Combinator
|
Before the Startup |
4 |
Adora Cheung,
Founder, Homejoy
|
Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing |
5 |
Peter Thiel,
Founder, Paypal, Founder, Palantir, and Founder, Founders Fund
|
Competition is For Losers |
6 |
Alex Schultz,
VP Growth, Facebook
|
Growth |
7 |
Kevin Hale,
Founder, Wufoo and Partner, Y Combinator
|
How to Build Products Users Love |
8 |
Walker Williams,
Founder, Teespring
Justin Kan, Founder, Twitch and Partner, Y Combinator Stanley Tang, Founder, DoorDash |
Doing Things That Don't Scale PR How to Get Started |
9 |
Marc Andreessen,
Founder, Andreessen Horowitz and Founder, Netscape
Ron Conway, Founder, SV Angel Parker Conrad, Founder, Zenefits |
How to Raise Money |
10 |
Alfred Lin,
Former COO, Zappos and Partner, Sequoia Capital
Brian Chesky, Founder, Airbnb |
Culture |
11 |
Patrick Collison,
Co-Founder, Stripe
John Collison, Co-Founder, Stripe Ben Silbermann, Founder & CEO, Pinterest |
Hiring and Culture, Part II |
12 |
Aaron Levie,
Founder, Box
|
Building for the Enterprise |
13 |
Reid Hoffman,
Partner, Greylock Ventures and Founder, LinkedIn
|
How To Be A Great Founder |
14 |
Keith Rabois,
Partner, Khosla Ventures
|
How to Operate |
15 |
Ben Horowitz,
Founder, Andreessen Horowitz, and Founder, and Opsware
|
How to Manage |
16 |
Emmett Shear,
Founder and CEO, Twitch
|
How to Run a User Interview |
17 |
Hosain Rahman,
Founder, Jawbone
|
How to Design Hardware Products |
18 |
Kirsty Nathoo, Carolynn Levy,
Partners, Y Combinator
|
Legal and Accounting Basics for Startups |
19 |
Tyler Bosmeny,
Founder and CEO, Clever
Michael Seibel, Partner, Y Combinator Qasar Younis, Dalton Caldwell, Partners, Y Combinator |
Sales and Marketing How to Talk to Investors Investor Meeting Roleplaying |
20 |
Sam Altman,
President, Y Combinator
|
Later-Stage Advice |