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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 185 posts.
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My YC Interview Experience S09 by James (Listia.com)
I was going to title this blog “Advice For A YC Interview”, but I thought that would be the wrong choice of words for what I want to write. I figured I’d tell the story of h…
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The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not
So, in our last installment of the Y Combinator saga, we talked about applying. Since a handful of folks will be gearing up for their interviews shortly, it seems a fine time to move on to the next step in our journey.
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Having Co-founders Is Valuable But Not Crucial
Many experts, including my personal hero Paul Graham, strongly advise against founding a company on your own: All investors, without exce...
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Bug tracking isn't a network-effect business
Facebook sucks you in because everyone you know is using it. You go to eBay to find something because you know someone is selling what you want to buy. Oracle wins in the enterprise because there are tons of experts and plenty of auxiliary software available. All these business rely heavily on the …
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Figuring out what your company is all about
What is your company about? Recently I got inspired by Kathy Sierra, whose blog Creating Passionate Users and Head First series of books revolutionized developer education. She kept saying the same…
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The most important question to ask before taking seed money (from VCs)
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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Heroku (YC W08) makes PaaS flexible with Add-ons
Heroku has focused since day one on making the end-to-end application experience as easy as possible. From our git focused workflow to the automated...
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What’s in a name – Tips for naming your startup
Essays by Thomas Petersen
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What Startups Are Really Like
October 2009 (This essay is derived from a talk at the 2009 Startup School.) I wasn't sure what to talk about at Startup School, so I decided to ask the founders of the startups we'd funded. What hadn't I written about yet? I'm in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write about startups. I hope the…
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The Ideal Startup Career Path
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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Starting a business isn't as crazy and risky as they say
If you're thinking about starting a new venture right now, you need to understand the risks, but you need the real risks. The truth (as always) lies between baseless off-hand remarks about how "95% of businesses fail" (false!) and those startup blogs that show only the rosy side of things.
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Rich vs. King in the Real World: Why I sold my company
Reflecting on selling Smart Bear in 2007, offering insights for entrepreneurs facing similar decisions.
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You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job
In 1985 Ardent Computer was determined to create a market niche for personal supercomputers. To understand our potential markets, we started by analyzing the marketing literature from Cray Research…
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Heroku: Announcing Huge Growth and New CEO
Big things are happening at Heroku, so we felt it was time for an overall update. I’m happy to say that not only has the platform doubled in size over the.
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Supercomputer Porn - Letting your competitors do your market research for you
As VP of Marketing at our new startup, the CEO literally threw me out of the building and told me not to return until I understood the market and could identify the key applications and customers f…
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Get Out of My Building
Some of the most important business lessons are learned in the most unlikely ways. At Ardent I learned many of them with a sharp smack on the side of the head from a brilliant but abusive boss. Not…
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