字數：6433 字 ｜ 預估閱讀時間：33 分鐘
這個週末，我把被譽為「創業界聖經」的 Stanford 經典課程《How to Start a Startup》完整走過一輪。雖然是藉由 AI 幫我整理影片重點，來加快吸收速度，但在聆聽與閱讀每位講者的思路時，我其實更專注於內化背後的價值觀與決策思維。這些分享不僅僅是創業技巧，而是如何在極大不確定中堅持解決問題的信念與執行力。
（在筆記下面還有內容）
（不想看 or 看不懂的可以跳過）
Introduction
“How to Start a Startup,” the legendary lecture series hosted at Stanford and led by Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, offers far more than tactical advice. Across 20 lectures from some of Silicon Valley’s most successful founders and investors, a deeper message emerges: building a startup is not just a business decision, but a full-body commitment to creating real value under extreme uncertainty. This summary distills the collective wisdom of all 20 lectures into one cohesive narrative, highlighting the central themes, non-obvious lessons, and founder mindset that aspiring entrepreneurs must internalize.
1. Startups Are Hard: Begin with Truth, Not Hype
Startups aren’t cool; they’re brutal. They demand total focus, deep resilience, and endless iteration. Sam Altman’s opening lecture warns against glamorizing entrepreneurship. The journey isn’t about raising money or making press headlines—it’s about making something users desperately want. This core message is echoed by Paul Graham, who emphasizes the need to “live in the future and build what’s missing,” not chase trends.
2. Ideas Matter, But Execution Matters More
Good startup ideas are usually non-obvious. They solve real problems in small markets that can grow. But execution—the ability to iterate quickly, talk to users, and ship—is what separates success from failure. Adora Cheung and Emmett Shear both stress: launch early, talk constantly to your users, and keep improving. Founders must act like scientists—forming hypotheses and testing rapidly.
3. Build What Users Love
Kevin Hale and Hosain Rahman focus on emotional connection. A great product is one users love, not just tolerate. This means sweating every detail, from UX to support, and doing things that don’t scale early on to learn and earn love. Great products are not just functional—they are magical, intuitive, and trustworthy.
4. Talk to Your Users: Relentlessly and Honestly
Your product doesn’t live in your code editor—it lives in your users’ minds. Emmett Shear provides a masterclass in user interviews: never ask hypotheticals, never pitch, and always listen. Understand what users do, not what they say they’ll do. Feedback loops must be fast, humble, and deeply human.
5. Your Team Is Everything
A+ teams build A+ products. Patrick Collison and Alfred Lin emphasize building culture deliberately from day one. Define core values, hire slowly, and communicate constantly. Culture is not ping pong tables—it’s how decisions get made under pressure. Early hires shape the entire trajectory.
6. Be the Kind of Founder People Want to Follow
Reid Hoffman reminds us: there’s no single prototype for a great founder, but there are common traits: grit, self-awareness, ability to learn fast, and a mission-driven mindset. Founders must manage paradoxes: vision and adaptability, humility and conviction. You don’t need to be ready—you need to be growing.
7. Product + Distribution = Company
Great products don’t market themselves. Founders must deeply understand how users find and adopt products. Alex Schultz teaches growth as a science of retention and loops. Aaron Levie emphasizes designing product and distribution together, especially for enterprise.
8. Sales Is Human
Tyler Bosmeny reframes sales: it’s not pitching, it’s understanding. It’s about listening, identifying pain, and guiding someone to a solution. Early-stage founders must do sales themselves to learn what works and to close the first crucial deals.
9. Fundraising Is a Tool, Not a Goal
Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel give critical advice: fundraising is not a success metric. It’s fuel, not the engine. Pitch with clarity and honesty, but only when you’re ready. And never confuse investor excitement with product-market fit.
10. Operate with Intensity
Keith Rabois teaches operational excellence as a mindset: one metric per person, fast decisions, no ambiguity. Great operators enforce clarity, urgency, and accountability. Startups move fast by default; founders must accelerate that pace, not slow it.
11. Manage Like a Founder
Ben Horowitz’s lesson: management isn’t overhead—it’s a founder responsibility. Early on, you manage people by being in the trenches, setting clear expectations, and giving honest feedback. One-on-ones, performance clarity, and consistency build momentum.
12. Culture Compounds
Culture is the unseen engine behind performance. It’s how your team acts when you’re not around. Founders are cultural mirrors. What you tolerate becomes your standard. What you celebrate becomes your brand.
13. Mechanics Matter (Even if They’re Boring)
Kirsty Nathoo makes it clear: don’t skip the back office. Legal structure, equity, compliance, and financial hygiene matter more than you think. Being sloppy here can kill you later, especially during fundraising, hiring, or acquisition.
14. Startups Are a Series of Bets
Every decision—market, product, hire—is a bet. Some you will lose. Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman both emphasize making these bets fast, informed, and recoverable. Perfectionism kills startups. Progress wins.
15. Obsession Wins
The best founders are obsessed. They think about the problem non-stop. They talk to users before sleeping and tweak UI after midnight. Obsession fuels focus, resilience, and innovation. If you’re not obsessed, you won’t make it through the hard parts.
16. Your Real Job: Build Something That Matters
The final message is deeply human: startups are not just vehicles for wealth—they are attempts to change the world. That doesn’t require size; it requires depth. Build something users would cry to lose. Solve a real problem. Make a dent in reality.
Conclusion
The 20 lectures of “How to Start a Startup” are not just a startup course—they’re a manifesto. The core message isn’t about hacking growth or building unicorns. It’s about committing your life to solving a problem with love, urgency, and clarity.
It’s about shipping before you’re ready, listening harder than you talk, and surrounding yourself with people who care as much as you do. It’s about staying alive long enough to become great. And it’s about never forgetting that a startup is, at its core, a human endeavor.
If you want to start a startup, don’t start with a pitch deck. Start by deciding what you’d be willing to spend the next 10 years obsessed with. Then start listening, building, improving. The rest will follow.
This is the real lesson. The rest is tactics.
有趣的是，這一週我也從一場 Coffee Chat 裡得到了兩個特別重要的提醒：
資訊與觀點的「更新速度」。
在那場對談之後，我決定開始使用 Twitter（X），並主動追蹤這些來自矽谷、創投圈、技術社群中真正站在前線的人們——正好也是這門課的許多講者。他們的每一則推文，不是觀察趨勢，就是正在定義未來。我相信這會是我學習的一大助力，也是一種長期的 input 練習。
關於閱讀這件事
我很喜歡在談話中的其中一句話：「只讀了一點，是最危險的，因為那會讓你太早下判斷，卻還不夠知道自己錯在哪裡。」這讓我重新反思自己過去太容易滿足於「我好像懂了」的那種錯覺。接下來的暑假，我除了會持續寫技術筆記與專案紀錄，也會開始閱讀更多與創業、產品思維、組織管理有關的原文書。ZLibrary 成為了我的大寶山，能為我提供充足的閱讀來源。
感悟
可以說是下定決心嗎？
我想成為一個超級厲害的人，想要能夠把自己想做的事情給完成。
這周五去辦公室參訪時，被問了一個很重要的問題：
「你人生最大的夢想或追求是什麼？」
當下我腦子一片空白，是啊，我其實目前並沒有答案。
沒有極大的動力，更多的是把突然迸出的有趣想法給實踐。
大概就像是一路往前撞的玩具車吧。
現在似乎就是把握每個出現在眼前的機緣與機會，並且盡自己所能的去達成。
然後是自己熱愛並開心的，至於點子到底在哪，課程裡也說硬想是沒有用的，這樣只會產出扁平的點子而已。
我能做的便是做更多的嘗試，嘗試讓自己的生活變得更多元，自然會遇到的那個問題或開創出屬於自己的一片領域。
所以希望接下來的生活能同樣保持這樣的多元，不過成績會更上心點就是。
其實會寫這些看起來很突兀的話，是因為明天要開始我的實習生活。
蠻出乎意料的，現在想起也是有些不可思議，會好好記錄這段過程，之後再來發。
總之，盡自己所能從我的Mentor和其他夥伴身邊學習，並朝著自己所想的方向前行。
Learn to appreciate the hard moments in my life.