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Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 248 posts.
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Life at a startup
As a child, I had read about the Homebrew Computer Club, where Osborne and Apple were born - and I wanted to be part of a big movement like that ever since. When I first heard about Y Combinator I thought here was something happening right now that might be looked back on in the same way. I worked my way through the…
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The unprofitable SaaS business model trap
Marketo filed for IPO. They have $60m in revenues and a nice growth rate; unfortunately they're *losing* $35m/year. Why do SaaS business fall into the trap of being forever unprofitable, and what is the secret to the ones who overcome this trap?
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Lessons from GitHub's First Year
The end of the year is a great time to sit down with a glass of your favorite beverage, dim the lights, snuggle up next to the fire and think about what you’ve learned over the past twelve months.
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Startup Idea: User Retention as a Service
An in-depth blog post talking user retention and lifecycle email marketing for startups.
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Trello, Inc
Hello? is this thing on? I’m not sure if I even know how to operate this “blog” device any more. It’s been a year since my last post. I’m retired from blogging, remember? Want to hear something fun…
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The Unauthorized Story of Andreessen Horowitz
Why media whisperer Margit Wennmachers is going direct.
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LinkedIn's Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs
At Greylock, my partners and I are driven by one guiding mission: always help entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter whether an entrepreneur is in our portfolio, whether we’re considering an investment, or whether we’re casually meeting for the first time.
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Is My Startup Burn Rate Normal?
Self-examination for Seed and Series A startups
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The idea maze
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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The Next Feature Fallacy
A few weeks ago, I read this tweet, and found myself nodding my head in vigorous agreement.
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Minsky Moments in Venture Capital
Markets rise, and markets fall. This much, at least, is well-known. But why do market cycles occur? What causes the pendulum to swing from euphoria to crisis and back? Hyman Minsky was a 20th-century economist whose ‘financial instability hypothesis’ is probably the best-known explanation for the boom and bust cycles…
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The Dentist Office Software Story
I’ve been telling this fictional story about Dentist Office Software for years to describe why we are so focused on our “networks” investment strategy. Yesterday I told it at a HackNY event we did at the USV office and my partner Albert provided a finishing touch that really drives it home. Since I’ve never told […]
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“Startup Names” by Paul Graham (2006)
[This was originally published on the now-defunct Infogami and was surprisingly hard to find online, so I put it here. I’ve added commentary, with our now internet-decades of hindsight, in brackets. I’ve also summarized the names mentioned (and alluded to) along 7 dimensions: Evocativity, Brevity, Greppability…
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Starting a Business Around GPT-3 Is a Bad Idea
(Update 2023-03: I wrote this in 2020 when GPT-3 was highly hyped, but ultimately made only <1% of the splash that the monstrous ChatGPT made 3 years later. If I had to rewrite this today, I’d 1) think more kindly about defensibility, especially through deep product, user experience, and marketing/distribution (see…
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I’ve Made $216,688 From Products This Year
Hey, would you look at the time? It’s getting late. Just two months until the deeply introspective blog posts start comin’ hot & heavy. It’s still on
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Pivoting
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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