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Launching a product in just 3652 days
A story about how I learned a lot of things the hard way
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,552 posts.
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What Did Billion Dollar Companies Look Like at the Series A?
Five key traits of unicorns at the Series A. Some may surprise you.
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Your Job as a Founder Is to Create Believers
Before we launched HelloSign, I remember showing HelloFax to a family member. This person was normally supportive, but he took a glance and walked away. He wasn't the only one. A lot of people...
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Financial Misstatements
First-time startup CEOs make a lot of mistakes, mostly due to ignorance. One particularly bad one is misunderstanding or misusing basic financial terms. I started noticing this in Y Combinator...
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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 Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox (2013)
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The
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Projects and Companies
In the early days of my startup, I used to get slightly offended when people would refer to it as a “project”. “How’s your project going?” seemed like the asker didn't take us seriously, even...
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Standard Treasury Acquired by Silicon Valley Bank
We're proud to say that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has acquired the assets and team of Standard Treasury. More information can be found in the press release. Dan and I started Standard Treasury...
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What Makes Founders Succeed
I recently dug up my introduction to Founders at Work, which I wrote in 2006, and I was amazed how accurate it still seems: –––––– Some kind of magic happens in startups, especially at...
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A Guide to PR for Startups
You’ve built your product and you’re now ready for your first major launch. Or you’ve been through a launch or two, but are looking to scale the process as you’re doing more launches and announcements. You really have two options: do it all on your own, or work with a PR agency. One frequent crossroad is that you’re…
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Lessons from Airbnb's Rejections
I am so happy Brian Chesky shared these rejection emails from Airbnb's early days. I am constantly reminded how most every successful startup began small and faced various types of rejection early...
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Losing 80% of mobile users is normal
Exclusive data on retention curves for mobile apps In a recent essay covering the Next Feature Fallacy , I explained why shipping “just one more feature” doesn’t fix your product. The root cause is that the average app has pretty bad retention metrics . Today, I’m excited to share some real numbers on mobile…
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How I killed app sales by going freemium
Why going freemium may not be the best idea for your app
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Nobody's Going to Steal Your Idea
Should you tell everyone your business ideas, or keep them as your closely guarded secrets?
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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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Why I Sold My Company and Didn't Tell Anyone for a Year
"I worried about what would happen to her without me, and what you would think of me for abandoning her. I worried about how I could explain. I worried about it all the time. And when the day finally ca...
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Why investors don’t fund dating
I’ve been listening to the excellent Season 2 of the podcast Startup , which gives an inside look at YCombinator startup The Dating Ring (NYT coverage here ). The episodes are all great. They talk about many important topics, but I had some specific comments on fundraising for dating products .
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Subtle Mid-Stage Startup Pitfalls
(This post is derived from a talk I gave at SV Angel's CEO Summit.) A lot has been written about the dangers that early-stage startups face. But startups face a different and equally lethal set...
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Postmortem of Venture-Backed Startup, Sonar
Lessons Learned from the rise and fall of @Sonar
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What I'd tell myself about startups if I could go back 5 years
Blog by Ben Dixon, Co-founder of Sona, about startups, elixir, AI, climbing and photography
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