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How and why we acquired our .com domain
The story of acquiring and migrating from supertokens.io to supertokens.com
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,552 posts.
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A student's guide to startups (2006)
October 2006 (This essay is derived from a talk at MIT.) Till recently graduating seniors had two choices: get a job or go to grad school. I think there will increasingly be a third option: to start your own startup. But how common will that be? I'm sure the default will always be to get a job, but starting a startup…
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The venture capitalist's dilemma
The embarrassing investor meltdown surrounding Silicon Valley Bank should drive us to consider new models.
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I bought back my acquihired startup
I wrote about my language learning startup, Readlang , back in 2014 , and then again in 2016 , both times attracting attention on Hacker News, where my story of a struggling one-man startup seemed to resonate. Well, it’s now 7 years later, and a bunch has happened since, so it’s time for an update…
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Things I learned after getting users
last month, i posted about my website basement community on hacker news and it sorta blew up. you can view the post here. it blew up so much, i was totally u...
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How Duolingo reignited user growth
The story behind Duolingo's 350% growth acceleration, leaderboards, streaks, notifications, and their innovative growth model
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Usage-based pricing isn't always best
When not to make consumption your primary pricing metric.
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Pre-seed, seed startups with employees in office have higher revenue growth
This article previously appeared in EIX – Entreprenuers and Innovators Exchange. Data shows that pre-seed and seed startups with employees showing up in a physical office have 3½ times higher…
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Why to start a startup in a bad economy (2008)
October 2008 The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies. When Microsoft and Apple were founded. As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup. I'm not claiming it's a particularly good time either…
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Is a venture studio right for you?
This post previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Three types of organizations – Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Studios – have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stag…
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Part II: The failure points from $5M to $100M in ARR
I had the privilege of leading PlanGrid to $100M in ARR before I stepped down as CEO and passed the baton to Autodesk Construction. I’ve had years to dissect the mistakes I have made in my first...
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Be where your business is
This post previously appeared on the readwrite blog. A CEO running a B-to-B startup in needs to live in the city where their business is – or else they’ll never scale. I was having breakfast…
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Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
In January 2010 I soft-launched launched Preceden, a web-based timeline maker tool, followed a few weeks later by a larger launch on HackerNews: Today – almost 13 years to the day since the i…
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Ups and downs of a side project
Reflections from a 4-year side project journey.
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How to Sell Your Startup
One year ago, my startup was acquired. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to run an acquisition process yourself.
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1k True Fans (2008)
This is an edited, updated version of an essay I wrote in 2008 when this now popular idea was embryonic and ragged. I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details. This revisited essay appears in Tim … Continue reading →
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Startup childhood – Tiny startups are not Google-in-miniature-form
Tiny startups are not Google-in-miniature-form
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Using ChatGPT as a Co-Founder
In the quest to explore the capabilities of ChatGPT, I decided to utilized it as a startup brainstorming partner. From product description to building the product on AWS and GCP, crafting an elevat...
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Google has a company strategy, not a product strategy
Or, Why Google keeps killing products
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$7M lost on Amazon inventory, then bankrupt
Our Amazon journey started in January 2018 when HyperVolt released the first massage gun on the market. We were so careful with this…
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Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale
Rust is awesome, for certain things. But think twice before picking it up for a startup that needs to move fast.
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Which one of these will be the biggest “unicorn” failure ever?
Jeffrey Lee Funk and Gary Smith have a list of startups with $3 bllion or more in cumulative losses: