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Things learned while running your own self-funded startup
Here's a brain dump of the things we've learned while running our business and shipping our first product ( Basis ). My experience at Valv...
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,552 posts.
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How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product
I discuss the six major barriers that I had to break through in order to go from lurker to launcher.
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The life and death of a startup
At DjangoCon Europe 2017 , and again at DjangoCon US 2017 , I gave a talk entitled “Autopsy of a slow train wreck: The life and death of a Django startup”. After I gave those presentations, a number of people requested that I publish the content in blog form so they could share it with colleagues.
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Startups should not use React
That is, if you ever hope to be acquired by a larger company
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How to Pick Your Next Gig: Evaluating Startups
Samvit Jain writes on startups, the tech industry, machine learning, and what he has learned along the way.
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To start a billion dollar startup, start looking for problems
Yes! You read that right. If you want to start a billion dollar startup and you are looking for ideas to work on then most probably you are...
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Building a startup in public: from first line of code to frontpage of Reddit
I show how I built a mini startup called Hoodmaps in public from the first line of code to a functioning web app that I got to the frontpage of Reddit with ove…
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Successful Solo Founders
Note* Since publishing this, a research study came out by MIT with more information and data on this. See 2 founders are not always better…
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Twilio – Why there's no API for crossing the chasm
How the market focus and culture that helped Twilio reach significant heights can transform from assets into liabilities…and what to do about it.
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The Decline of Investment in San Francisco Startups
Data analysis reveals 50% drop in San Francisco startup funding, with Series C & D rounds falling 66-75%. Key insights on shifting venture capital trends in 2016-17.
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Why getting traction is so hard these days
The end of the cycle One of the best essays written last year was Elad Gil’s End of Cycle? – referencing our most recent 2007-2017 run on mobile and web software, and the implications for investing, startups, and entrepreneurs. Although he doesn’t directly talk about it, the end of a tech cycle has major implications…
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Everything I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Demoing SaaS
Everything you want to know about Medellin and Colombia
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Twice as happy customers means half the marketing spend
Halving your cancel rate doubles the number of customers your business has. Even if you run a subscription business forever, you will not have infinite customers. Instead you reach a steady-state number.
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Ten Weeks with Y Combinator’s Startup School
In early March 2017, I found out that Y Combinator had announced its first online startup school. That really made me happy, since we’ve…
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SaaS Pricing (2013)
SaaS pricing is a mystery to many developers. Here is how to do it better.
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Y Combinator When No One Cared
Recently I came across one of the first pitch letters I sent to journalists about Y Combinator. It was from the first few months of YC’s existence and it’s a snapshot of what our thinking was way...
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Climbing the wrong hill (2009)
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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How a Large Customer Can Kill a Startup
I often hear a founder get very excited about the prospect of a large customer. The implied expectation is that this out-sized customer is going to shower the startup with cash & confer on them the imprimatur of legitimacy. However, when I hear a founder start talking about “the big one” I cringe. I start …
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Unkown Unknowns: Why you should release early
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. - Mark Twain
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Convertible and SAFE notes
Angel/seed rounds used to be done via priced equity securities, either common or preferred. Then, starting about ten years ago, we started to see convertible debt being used in the angel and seed rounds. By 2010 this was the norm and Paul Graham tweeted this in Aug 2010: Convertible notes have won. Every investment so…