Jessica Livingston - What's Different about "Unicorns"

TL;DR

The video identifies nine differences between merely successful startups and "unicorns" (billion-dollar companies), emphasizing that unicorn founders are lucky on timing, fanatically interested in their work, pursue huge markets (often unknowingly), start with ideas that seem bad or dubious, are independent-minded, ambitious, exceptionally driven, treat the company as their life's work, and can le

Key insights

• Timing is a critical form of luck for unicorns; the best ideas grow organically out of founders' lives, not deliberate planning.
• Founders of super successful startups are never primarily motivated by money or coolness; they are fanatically interested in the company's mission.
• Huge markets are required, but market sizes are impossible to predict; YC advises working on something you yourself want and hoping many others are like you.