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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,552 posts.
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My Interviews with Airbnb, Dropbox, Posterous, Reddit, Weebly and Wufoo
Mixergy's feature today inspired me to dig up these old video interviews I did years ago with some YC founders. We talked about things like how they got started, what went wrong, and what surprised...
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Bubble talk
I’m tired of reading about investors and journalists claiming there’s a bubble in tech. I understand that it’s fun to do and easy press, but it’s boring reading. I also understand that it might...
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HippyVM goes to Y Combinator and fails
tl;dr; We decided to go to Y combinator with HippyVM , our high performance PHP implementation, and we did not get through after two round...
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A not-so-obvious reason to apply to YC
I’m a YC founder, but I’m not one of the many YC founders whose company has taken off quite yet. Actually, I’m no longer working on the company that I applied to YC with and presented at Demo Day....
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Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed in a Large Corporation
I just spent a day working with Bob, the Chief Innovation Officer of a very smart large company I’ll call Acme Widgets. Bob summarized Acme’s impediments to innovation. “At our company we have a cu…
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The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator
Culture matters for startups. For a startup to succeed, it must have a culture that reflects what it wants to achieve. This is one of my areas of expertise. I've spent the past decade focusing on Y...
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How to pick startup ideas
One of the most important things I learned from running a startup is that on a macro scale the innovation market is efficient. If the market conditions allow for a startup to arise, it’s overwhelmingly probable that multiple startups already exist in that market. The converse is also true — if there are no startups in…
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Startup advice, briefly
This is a very short summary with lots left out—here is the long version: http://startupclass.samaltman.com You should start with an idea, not a company. When it’s just an idea or project,...
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An Investor Wanted to Give Me $50,000. Here’s Why I Said No
It was money they needed, but it came with strings attached.
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Startup Priorities
One of the most difficult tasks for a startup founder is deciding what to do. Where should the tiny number of people working on a brand new company spend their time? Choosing wisely can place your...
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FarmLogs
I recently got to be a guest at a FarmLogs board meeting. I was struck by how much of an impact the company was having on the world, and how just a couple of years ago it seemed like they were...
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How HoursTracker earns five figures a month on the App Store
Insights from an indie app developer
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Candy Japan 2014 Year in Review
Looking back on what happened in 2014 for the Japanese candy subscription box Candy Japan.
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How I Got the First Paying Customers for My Startup
I launched on a Tuesday and had 3 paying customers by the following Friday. That’s a small win for a young startup — here’s how it happened.
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How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS
There's a newer and updated post published 3 years later on a similar topic: How Pipedrive reached 50,000 paying customers Short answer: great product, some marketing and a bit of luck. These things got Pipedrive to pass the 10,000 paying customers milestone earlier in the year. The longer answer is below. This is the…
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A cautionary tale about subscription services and how not to shut down a startup
As you think about holiday gifts this season, I’d like to warn you about the subscription service Whimseybox. This is also a cautionary…
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