Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel discuss Paul Graham's essay "Default Alive or Default Dead." They share strategies to cut your company's burn rate and keep your startup alive to see another day.

Paul Graham's essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html
Trevor Blackwell's startup growth calculator: http://growth.tlb.org

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/DandM-apply
Work at a Startup: https://yc.link/DandM-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 - Introduction
00:23 - Default alive or default dead
02:14 - The calculator
02:59 - Founder's distraction - Fundraising game
07:32 - Fundraising leverage
09:57 - Math are different
11:29 - Kill or cure
15:37 - The fatal pinch
19:22 - Tough decisions when default dead
19:40 - Headcount
20:46 - Ad Spend
22:50 - Raising prices
25:16 - Personal bankruptcy - Taking a big hit to growth rate
26:28 - Twitch's pirate ship
32:22 - Takeaways
32:27 - Survive to thrive
33:15 - To burn or not burn
34:06 - 10x better if operationally intensive business

#ycombinator #startups #burnrate