Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 22 posts.
July 2013 One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they…
Sometimes financial decisions that are seemingly rational on their face can precipitate mass exodus of your best engineers. We Hired the CFO Last week as a favor to a friend, I sat in on a board me…
One of Gail Goodman's legacies to the software industry has been proving you can build a profitable business in the SMB space.
Our Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud series profiles companies that have over one million dollars in revenues, didn’t take VC, and are profitable.
September 2013 Most startups that raise money do it more than once. A typical trajectory might be (1) to get started with a few tens of thousands from something like Y Combinator or individual angels, then (2) raise a few hundred thousand to a few million to build the company, and then (3) once the company is clearly…
2008 is a leap year. That means that three hundred and sixty six days ago, almost to the minute, I was sitting alone in a booth at Zeke’s Sports Bar and Grill on 3rd Street in San Francisco. I wouldn’t normally hang out at a sports bar, let alone a sports bar in SOMA, but back then Thursday was “I Can Has Ruby” night…
CHICAGO—September 24, 2009—37signals is now a $100 billion dollar company, according to a group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1. Founder Jason Fried informed his employees about the new deal at a recent company-wide meeting. The…
August 2013 When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back. The right way to lift heavy things is to let your legs do the work. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake when trying to convince investors. They try to convince with their pitch. Most would be…
Paul Graham YC partner (and lawyer) Carolynn Levy has created a new alternative to convertible notes, called a safe, that has the advantages of convertible debt without some of the disadvantages. We’re publishing a standard safe document for all startups to use, and we expect most future YC startups will use this when…
My greatest fear as a startup founder isn’t to fail, it is to become a zombie startup.
August 2013 The biggest component in most investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. Which is of course a recipe for exponential growth. When one investor wants to invest in you, that makes other investors want to, which makes others want to, and so on. Sometimes inexperienced founders mistakenly…
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.
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?
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.
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
