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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. 337 posts.
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Pricing as Signal
Forbes: “EMI Group boss Alain Levy said at press conference today that he believed Jobs would introduce multiple price points for iTunes music within the next year.” The story they̵…
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VentureHacks: How to Pick a Co-founder
Update: Also see our 40-minute interview on this topic. Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding …
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We need a middle class for startups
Idea: Make Mittelstands cool in America. Rebrand the US Middle Market. Create a studio and fund to build and buy Mittelstands.
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YC’s Essential Startup Advice
A lot of the advice we give startups is tactical; meant to be helpful on a day to day or week to week basis. But some advice is more fundamental. We’ve collected here what we at YC consider the most important, most transformative advice for startups. Whether common sense or counter-intuitive, the guidance below will…
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My 2 Year Journey to $10K MRR
Startups are hard, bootstrapping is harder! Here's how I bootstrapped a SaaS product to $10k MRR over the course of 2 years.
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Startup lessons
There are already very good lists of startup lessons written by really talented, experienced people (here and here). I’d like to add another one. I learned these lessons the hard way in the past four years. If you’re starting a company, I hope you have an easier path.
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YC Changes
TL;DR: *Michael Seibel will be the new CEO of YC Core, which we are now just going to call “YC”. *Ali Rowghani is now the CEO of the YC Continuity Fund. *I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes YC, YC Continuity, YC Research, and our new online class. We’ll add more organizational units over time…
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The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud
The Pinboard Co-Prosperity Cloud is a startup self-incubator. Six successful applicants will receive a modest amount of funding and as much publicity as I can provide for their sustainable and useful business idea.
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Storemapper: Bootstrapped to $50k/year in 2 years
Two years ago I launched Storemapper an embedded store locator service that runs on any website or ecommerce platform. Today around 500 brands use Storemapper to help their customers find the closest place to buy their stuff. The service has grown from bootstrapped to over $50,000 per year. It’s not cool like a…
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Startup School – YC’s Online Class
[https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/SSYC_Logo.png] We’re excited to announce our new online Startup School, with classes beginning on April 5. Anyone can sign up at StartupSchool.org [http://startupschool.org/] for the 10-week massively open online course (MOOC), starting today. We want to…
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YC Annual Letter 2017
Dear YC Community: In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress. Our mission is to enable the most...
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Startups Are Hard
Contrary to popular belief, there are no clouds of money that float around Silicon Valley and rain on anyone that utters the phrase, "I'm a founder!" Unfortunately, starting a company and raising money is just as hard as ever; it's just that the investors don't have as much leverage as they used to, but they still…
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A new team at Reddit
Last week, Yishan Wong resigned from reddit. The reason was a disagreement with the board about a new office (location and amount of money to spend on a lease). To be clear, though, we didn’t...
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Guide to Sending Email Like a Startup
Sendwithus helps teams manage transactional emails outside of source code — leading to streamlined workflows and always on-brand emails. Learn more here!
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The Worst Part of YC
We are going to send out YC summer 2014 interview decisions (both yes and no) before 10 pm PDT tonight. The worst part of our job at YC is rejecting companies. It leaves me feeling down for many...
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YC China and Qi Lu
Edit: Read this update [https://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-yc-china/] on YC China. I am delighted to announce that Qi Lu [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSydk0XzxEE] is joining YC to launch and run YC China. I have been trying to recruit Qi for many years—he is one of the most impressive technologists I know…
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The Arc Product-Market Fit Framework
Arc is our company-building immersion for pre-seed and seed stage companies. This framework outlines three distinct archetypes of PMF which help you understand your product’s place in the market and determine how your company operates.
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If I Launched a Startup - Cheat Sheet
Startup lawyer tips for launching: incorporate smart, use mentors/advisors carefully, and raise seed capital with founder-friendly, low-drama terms.
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The Post-YC Slump
At the end of a YC batch, the general consensus among the partners is that about 25% of the companies are on a trajectory that could lead to a multi-billion dollar company. Of course, only a...
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Why you can't hire
There isn’t a shortage of developers and designers. There’s a surplus of founders. The cost of starting a company has collapsed. It’s now just (minimal) salaries. For entrepreneurs, desks are free, hosting is free, marketing is online, and company setup is cheap. Raising the first $25K for product development is easy…
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How to get your first ten customers (2013)
Preface: the assumption for this essay is that you’re building a B2B app, and you have something built but you’re having trouble getting people to pay for
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