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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 56 posts.
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Takeaways from coaching CEOs, founders and VCs
I went through my calendar recently to count all the clients I worked with in 2019 as part of my coaching practice. The answer: 101 powerful and extraordinary individuals. Wow, I was blown away, I had no idea that it would be this many. The kinds of people I had and continue to have the […]
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Story of Odoo: Open-Sourced Competitor to Oracle, SAP
The most underrated Open Core Company out there
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Shopify: A StarCraft Inspired Business Strategy
How CEO Tobi Lütke Applied StarCraft Gaming Strategies & Concepts To Build Shopify
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Story of Mattermost: Open-Sourced Competitor to Slack
The Open Sourced competitor to Slack
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My Bootstrapped Micro-Startup Got Acquired
This website is for sale! mohddanish.me is your first and best source for information about mohddanish. Here you will also find topics relating to issues of general interest. We hope you find what you are looking for!
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Hiring Is Obsolete (2005)
May 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Berkeley CSUA.) The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?…
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How to proceed when you run out of cash, but you still believe?
My name is Gabi and I am the co-founder of Chicisimo (Fashion Taste API).
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Born in a Garage
We started a computer company!!! The Oxide Computer Company started in my garage, this is a story about its origins.
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How Y Combinator Started (2012)
On March 11 2005, Jessica and I were walking home from dinner in Harvard Square. Jessica was working at an investment bank at the time, but she didn't like it much, so she had interviewed for a job as director of marketing at a Boston VC fund. The VC fund was doing what now seems a comically familiar thing for a VC…
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Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business (2017)
How I built and sold a bootstrapped Micro-SaaS business in five years. A guide for founders to selling a SaaS business.
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How Not to Die (2007)
August 2007 (This is a talk I gave at the last Y Combinator dinner of the summer. Usually we don't have a speaker at the last dinner; it's more of a party. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could save some of the startups from preventable deaths. So at the last minute I cooked up this rather grim talk…
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“Is your startup idea taken?” and why we love X for Y startups
☝️Above: Michelle Rial ( follow her at @TheRialMichelle ), then working at Buzzfeed, posted this hilarious infographic with all the “X for Y” ideas. Here’s the original article .
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The next big thing will start out looking like a toy (2010)
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS
Money can be only a short-term motivation / Make it “better” rather than “bigger” / Figuring out “enough” / Life is one shot
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Pricing niche products
I recently visited a friend who runs Keycult , a business that designs and sells $500 keyboard kits.
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How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers
Today, Firebase has a large team with hundreds of engineers. Before the Google acquisition, however, we had a small team of just 24 exceptional people that I firmly believe was among the strongest of its kind in the world. A big part of that success was the way we interviewed software engineers. I’m sharing our…
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Self-serve first: an overlooked paradigm underlying great software companies
“My biggest regret is that our first customer was $1M ACV*,” my friend lamented over coffee the other day. “I wish I could take it back.”
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The dude that built DudeRanch.com
[orig published in 2019; re-published & updated in 2023 & 2025] The outdoor patio was filled with dude ranchers. It was their yearly conference at Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, and I was there as a vendor (and first-time attendee). I remember saguaro cactus lining the landscape. It was early evening, the sun was…
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Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018)
How a quick weekend app for sharing book quotes, Snaplight, got featured by Apple—and the lessons that matter more than star ratings.
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‘Product engineers’ vs ‘Software engineers’ in startups
You should be multi-faceted, never work purely to your technical abilities, think about how you can make your entire company better
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Which Categories of Seed Startups Are Thriving? Which Aren't?
Discover which seed-stage sectors are booming in 2019: AI startups grew from 0 to 400, Blockchain surged 200x, while FinTech & Food tech show exponential growth.
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How to get your first ten customers (2013)
Preface: the assumption for this essay is that you’re building a B2B app, and you have something built but you’re having trouble getting people to pay for
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Pioneer manipulates scores to pick winners
Pioneer paints a pretty picture of a fair tournament for ambitious people of the world. In reality though, the organizers will manipulate…