Lessons from a 2x YC Founder (Plato & Vybe): Building, Scaling & Selling in Tech | Conversation with Quang Hoang
So many Enrich members are familiar from Plato — the engineering mentorship platform delivered more than 100K sessions over its lifespan — and we we wanted to hear all about founder Quang Hoang’s journey, especially since he’s now embarking on a new venture building Vybe. With his second YC stint under his belt, Quang delivered a masterclass in early-founder perseverance, building co-founder relationships, and why YC is something to go all in on.
If you’d been there, here’s what you’d still be thinking about:
For founders, doing YC is a no-brainer
When starting Vybe, Quang wasn’t sure he wanted to do YC again, but now that he’s been through, he says it’s absolutely the right choice if you can make it work. Why? Because it comes with built-in distribution (LinkedIn, Hacker News, Twitter, etc). “They can get you [early] customers” he says. And that distrubution, and that early support — it helps to build your early reputation with investors, which can drive your valuation up.
He does warn: Do not do it if you can’t go all in. Quang has two small kids and admitted he was working so hard that he flew in his mom from France to help with family support, all so he could focus on the early days of building and growing Vybe.
Lessons learned from building Plato
Now that he’s working on startup number two, Quang has had an opportunity to reflect on his experience founding, scaling and ultimately selling Plato. His takeaways:
Choose problems you deeply understand personally: Quang admitted that he understood the challenge of engineering mentorship and growth at the scale he was at — a smaller startup — but didn’t really have a deep understanding of how it works at a large enterprise. That was a blindspot.
Look for businesses with high switching costs: Plato was easy to sell but also easy for customers to cut during downturns. When it came down to it, Plato wasn’t a “must-have”.
Human-centric businesses (like Plato was 70% human, 30% platform) are difficult to scale efficiently: This time around, Quang is focused more on platform and less on internal people-power, to make scaling easier and more cost effective.
Product-Market fit has three steps
Like all founders, Quang has spent a lot of time thinking about how to achieve product-market-fit. Here’s what he thinks is needed.
First, find some early customers who genuinely love your product. You need to solve a core need and solve it in a way that’s delightful. Until you’ve built something that customers truly love, you can’t make on to steps 2 and 3.
Second, find an initial scalable channel for generating demand. The key here is that the channel has to be scalable; it can grow over time.
Third, make it efficient. This is about solving #2 but doing it for less money so your business can grow. But Quang warns — until you have steps #1 and #2 down, don’t try to get efficient.
To read our complete event notes (including Quang’s insights how to craft a winning YC application!), apply to join Enrich.
