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Zillow lost money because they weren't willing to lose money
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Lessons learned after 5 years of climate tech entrepreneurship
This article attempts to reflect back on the most meaningful lessons learned by building electricityMap, Bloom and North at Tomorrow.
How I helped build a profitable MVP over a weekend
A couple years ago, a good friend of mine, who was in charge of operations at a food delivery company, got laid off after a merger - they kept the guy from the other side.
5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0
This is a story about me dreaming of building an online project that generates revenue, seeking financial independence and creative freedom. After five years and no success, it's still a dream. Let me tell you more about my failed projects. Planetoid (2015-2016) It's all started with a game. Who doesn't
About that time I had an outburst during the Y Combinator Interview
And what it taught me.
How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder
Nowadays in the internet it is pretty well known that you should validate your product before you even start building it. However, if the product already exists, then the market is already validated for you. Therefore you can consider yourself in a low risk position.
The SaaS Metrics That Matter
Plus now you can easily generate them using our secret sauce SaaSGrid.
Pro rata is a bad term for founders
For a long time, I was a strong believer in investor pro ratas. As a founder, I understood the trade and was comfortable with it. As a partner at YC, I thought it made enough sense that I helped...
How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users
Considering every startup confronts this question at some point, I was surprised by how little has been written about it. Particularly anything actionable. So I decided to do my own digging. I spent the past month personally reaching out to founders, scouring interviews, and tapping the Twitterverse. Below, you’ll…
Startup Ideas
Proposals for new technologies, businesses, startups, satirical or serious.
Chicken and Egg Problem (2000)
The idea of advertising is to lie without getting caught. Most companies, when they run an advertising campaign, simply take the most unfortunate truth about their company, turn it upside down (…
Building apps in minutes, not months
In order to build the many experiments for my research on the future of personal computing, and the subsequent demos for these Lab Notes, I needed a way to build much faster than was presently possible...
Developer, you may need a co-founder in marketing
Uku Täht is a co-founder of a simple web analytics tool Plausible. It’s bootstrapped, open-source, and currently making $360,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
How to Raise Investment
<p><b>Update: I am no longer personally angel investing - I’m focussed on other things at the moment. Please don’t ask me to invest in your co...
Use Pixar's story formula to win over investors
A framework to make your pitch 10x more compelling in a few minutes
Why Build Toys
I first wrote this essay a few years ago. A founder mentioned it to me over the weekend, and so I decided to re-publish it here. One thing that's bothered me in the time since I wrote it is the way...
NDA expired, let’s spill the beans on a weird startup
Many moons ago, when I was very young and you were even younger... London was in full bloom of tech-startups. I was running my own consultancy. Dashing from business to business, trying to pick up work as an expert in this new-fangled "Mobile Internet" thing. Some of the companies I worked with were great. Some of…
My startup journey
How I “failed” at a YC startup, worked at early Stripe, and then raised $20M
TinyPilot: Month 11
How do I increase TinyPilot’s profit margins?
Want a killer product? Become more opinionated
I laugh at this tweet every time I remember it:
How I raised a $5.1M seed as a first-time, female, solo founder for a biotech co
In January 2020 I closed a $5.1M seed round, my first financing for my first company. I’ve closed another ~$6M since then. This is how I raised that first round.
You can't have too many angels
Conventional wisdom is: Don’t raise money from a ton of angel investors because it’ll clutter the cap table and be a pain in the butt. I strongly disagree.
Competitive Analysis for Engineers
In my experience, most professional software engineers in industry have little to no experience doing competitive analysis. That’s a shame, because competitive analysis is one of the most useful skills that an engineer can have.
Market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure (2007)
An archive of the best articles from Marc Andreessen’s now defunct blog