A simple heuristic that will save inexperienced startup founders from several different types of mistakes: be really cheap. This will save you from hiring too many people, from renting a fancy office, and from growing by buying users instead of making great things.
If you raise from VCs, most will pressure you to spend faster. Partly because, as money people, they think money solves problems. But partly for a more sinister reason: so they can buy more of the company when you burn through this money and need to raise more.
If you're a young founder, VCs have a powerful weapon to convince you to spend faster. They can tell you it's amateurish to be cheap. That you're thinking small. Don't listen to them. Most famous founders were cheap.
It's hard to think of a YC company that was killed by being too cheap. But the number killed by spending too much seems endless.
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