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The New American Micro-SaaS Dream
Raise millions of dollars from Venture Capitalists, rent a fancy office in San Francisco, hire an expensive team of "superheroes," and get valued, on paper, as a "unicorn."
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,552 posts.
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If it isn't going to work, just shut it down
Don’t build the startup ship of Theseus.
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I turned down $500k, pissed off my investors, and shut down my startup (2016)
I just did what no startup founder is ever supposed to do. I gave up. It wasn’t even one of those glorious “fail fast and fail forward” learning experiences. After seven months of hard work and two weeks before we were to start ...
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I killed my startup
It's been over a year since I killed my startup, and a few weeks ago I revisited the spot where I decided to do it. It's about time I talk about it
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Take my app ideas
I would rather give away my favorite ideas than to let them go to waste. Please do something with them.
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We need a middle class for startups
Idea: Make Mittelstands cool in America. Rebrand the US Middle Market. Create a studio and fund to build and buy Mittelstands.
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The great VC pullback of 2022
Are we witnessing a major VC pullback? Is it temporary? What does that mean for startups? Certainly the topic du jour in startup circles. Here’s what I’m seeing
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My startup is broken
Whenever I advise (or join!) a startup, one of the first conversations goes something like this: "Oh man. Everything here is broken! It sucks! There's so much to do and not enough people to do it. We're missing so many things, we don't know where to start! The product needs so much work. Marketing needs
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Don't build useless features
One of the most important core product management skills is the ability to triage unsuccessful products and avoid spending unnecessary effort on products that are destined to be losers.
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Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
Zapier has 3M+ users and generates $125M in ARR. At a $5B valuation, its fast-growing horizontal platform is unable to meet the demands of all of its customers. The increase of underserved Zapier customers presents an opportunity.
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Success and Failure at Pebble
We launched Pebble on Kickstarter 10 years ago today! It was an amazing ride and I learned a lot from the experience. Story time…
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What software engineers can learn from the rapid collapse of Fast
What can software engineers learn from the shutdown of the company? Exclusive details.
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I stopped advertising and nothing happened
What happens when you turn off all of your Internet advertising? Apparently, nothing. This post explores how I came to the decision to turn off all ads, and what I found as a result.
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Unbundling Airbnb
There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is to unbundle. So the idea behind unbundling of Airbnb is simple: Pick a niche use case with passionate but unsatisfied guests and then build a business around it.
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I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)
When good ideas make bad business
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My Notes on the Lean Startup
Kevin Lin builds tools for humans and agents.
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How on earth I became an entrepreneur
The email landed in my inbox around 10:05/am, alerting us of an all-hands meeting in 15 minutes. “Guess we got acquired”, we all thought. 16 minutes later, we were all laid off. This was February of 2001. I was first alerted of my uselessness in 1995, when ~ fresh out of college ~ I worked ... Read more
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Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
Elevator pitch: Bring enough light to simulate daylight into your home and office.
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Minsky Moments in Venture Capital
Markets rise, and markets fall. This much, at least, is well-known. But why do market cycles occur? What causes the pendulum to swing from euphoria to crisis and back? Hyman Minsky was a 20th-century economist whose ‘financial instability hypothesis’ is probably the best-known explanation for the boom and bust cycles…
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Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A
Learn key M&A insights from $5B in startup exits. Discover 10 proven strategies for founders on building relationships, navigating acquisitions & maximizing deal value.
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6 months of working at a hypergrowth startup
I joined Scale AI late last summer. It’s been a crazy experience — Scale is growing incredibly fast right now, hitting a valuation of over $7 billion last year and recently signing a $250 mil…
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I used indie hacking to sponsor my own green card
The longest project of my life
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How will the correction in the stock market impact startup fundraising?
Analyze how the 52% public market correction impacts startup funding rounds, with data showing divergent effects on Series A vs. Series D valuations in 2022.
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Lessons learned on SaaS pricing
When starting a SaaS business you eventually arrive at the challenge of pricing and packaging. Many great articles have been written on the subject, we've read them all, and still we missed the mark. Here's our thoughts on version 2.0.
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How I took my SaaS from idea to sold in 14 months
I built an MVP in one month and grew the product for a year. But now it’s time to pass the torch. It’s official, I sold Mugshot Bot! Here’s how it all went down.