Meeting smart people was always great. We learned a lot of things. It was life changing - Still I feel like we didn't make the best out of it due to several reason. One of them was our self doubt when it came to communication - This was our first time outside our home country(India)and we had a lot of inhibitions socialising with people. We always kept thinking if we were doing something right or wrong in terms of western culture.

I think under pressure we made a lot of stupid decisions. We were inexperienced and we were doing that for the first time.

I don't think these are harder to practice - My second startup was recently acquired and I think I did a decent job there. The reason why YC emphasise about these mistakes are probably the same - they have seen a lot of first time founders make the same mistake.