Jessica Livingston at Startup School 2012

TL;DR

Jessica Livingston describes "monsters" that kill startups: rejection, cofounder disputes, investor problems, and the difficulty of making something people want. Her central point is that determination has two components – resilience (withstanding rejection) and drive (improvising through problems) – and that most startups fail because they underestimate how bad these specific problems can be.

Key insights

• Determination comprises two separate things: resilience (keeps you from being pushed backwards) and drive (makes you go forward).
• Founders are often surprised by the volume of rejection because they previously received constant external validation for conservative choices (e.g., college, a job at Google) – but a startup like Air
• Even Y Combinator was rejected early on; its own lawyers tried to talk them out of it, and Ron Conway initially brushed them off with "I'm jammed up."