Hard Pivot

David Phillips from Fondo (YC W18)

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Introduction for David Philips

  • LinkedIn, Twitter, Fondo
  • CEO and founder of Fondo, which just announced a $3M pre-seed round.
  • CEO and co-founder of Hackbright, a coding academy for gender equality, acquired by the public company Capella University.
  • Co-founder of safeXai, which went on to raise $220M from Softbank and others.
  • Previously an accountant at Deloitte!
  • Angel investor in dozens of companies, notably Rippling, Flexport, Liquid Death, and Career Karma.


    • Key Insights & Takeaways By ✨ GPT-4 ✨

    • Pivoting a company can be a better option than shutting down and starting from scratch, especially if there are valuable assets in the current company, such as being a part of the YC community.
    • Building relationships with investors and keeping them informed of the company's progress is important, even if they don't always respond.
    • Being honest with team members about the company's struggles can lead to better collaboration and problem-solving.
    • Having a long-term commitment to a startup is crucial in navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, as persistence will pay off.
    • Talking to users and understanding their needs is essential in building the right product or service.
    • Worst advice: Disregard advice from investors who claim to know whether an idea will work or not, as nobody can predict the success of a startup.
    • David and his friend Ali attempted to become landlords in San Francisco, subleasing apartments on Airbnb, but had to stop when the city started cracking down on Airbnb properties.
    • David's brother Dylan had a Facebook page with 700,000 followers called "nights that end up being a crazy story to tell the next day," which they turned into a meme page called Pizza Bottle.
    • David created a WordPress blog for Pizza Bottle, which eventually grew to 100 million page views a month.
    • The idea for Bloom Joy, David's current venture, came from his experience with Pizza Bottle.
    • David felt burnt out while working on Hack Bright, a coding bootcamp, due to the pressure of helping people change their lives and careers.
    • For founders pivoting right now, David advises focusing on getting customers and solving problems for them, even if it means doing it for free initially.
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      Hard PivotBy Jeff Tang