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Ups and downs of a side project
Reflections from a 4-year side project journey.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 71 posts.
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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 I recently rewrote it to convey the core ideas, minus out-of-date details.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:
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Being a Solo Software Entrepreneur at 40
A tale of growth, responsibilities, and limits.
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Product Market Fit
Kevin Lin builds tools for humans and agents.
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How Fly.io and Tailscale Saved Notado
A technical overview of Notado's migration to Fly.io
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A summary of my learnings on how to find startup ideas
I’ve been searching for new startup ideas and problem areas to tackle. It’s quite difficult to do, especially when you begin adding constraints to the criteria such as “Am I excited about this problem space?”. The internet is filled with helpful ways to come up with startup ideas and below is the summary of what I’ve…
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Stripe is PayPal circa 2010
After integrating both Stripe and Paypal I've come to the realization that they are nearly the same, including all the evil.
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I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls
For a project I was working on, some of the research involved listening to thousands of sales calls from well known high-growth B2B SaaS companies.
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How to kickstart and scale a consumer business by doing things that don’t scale
Also, how today’s biggest consumer products got their first 1,000 users
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Build your fanbase using the K-pop method
Every successful startup needs a fanbase. To build one, learn from the masters.
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Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?
Choosing to be the CEO or CTO after raising a seed round.
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Co-Founding Considered Harmful
“Hell is other people.” Sartre I’ve come to view the idea that you absolutely need a co-founder as one of the most harmful memes in Silicon Valley. It’
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Mapping the unknown – Steps to map any industry
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step Lǎozi 老子 I just had lunch with Shenwei, one of my ex-students who had just taken a job in a mid-sized consulting firm. After a bit of catch…
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Retrospection and Learnings from Dgraph Labs
It's been almost nine months since I left Dgraph Labs, a company that I spent 6 years of my life building -- after a layoff followed by a failed Series B round (unsurprisingly, and in that order).
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The case for building something wonderful alone
I’ve been building Derw alone since sometime last year.
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Want to found a startup? Work at one first
Research shows start-ups with experienced founders are more likely to succeed, and build more valuable companies too. But if you want to found a company, how do you get that experience? My experience says the fast-track is joining an existing start-up and riding that wave, taking the opportunities that come with…