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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 244 posts.
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Not for sale
You can’t say your company is not for sale these days without incredulous stares and doubtful gasps. The big flip has become the holy grail. Worshipped to the point where non-believers are chastised, straight-faced, for refusing to give up their life’s work. See, the new world of …
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Profits = Freedom
There are many reasons why someone would want to start a company. There’s the pursuit of wealth, glory, and fame, but above all, I believe most founders are searching for freedom. Freedom to run things the way they see fit, freedom to be the masters of their own domain. But until you have …
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DHH vs. Calacanis on This Week in Startups
An intense debate about business models, bubbles, capitalism, quality of life, market share vs. profit share, running a business vs. selling a business, and a variety of other related topics from episode 46 of This Week in Startups. This is really good stuff. (There’s 47 minutes of mater…
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Employed with a side of startup
Starting a side gig during your 9-to-5: Avoid legal issues and maximize success.
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Time tracking app Mite reveals numbers for first 20 months
37signals , poster child of our industry, claims to serve more than 3 million users. What they don’t tell is, how many of those people pay for the premium version of their web apps (Basecamp, Highrise et al). All of them are served in the freemium business model , which is: use a basic version of the product for free…
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Shit I Learned Burning through My Family's Life Savings on a Failed Startup
I wrote this three years ago after burning through my family’s life savings in a failed startup, but never posted or published it – as frankly it hurt too much. After all, no one ever …
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Flightcaster (YC S09) and the Future of Asymmetric Intelligence as a Product
When John Paulson bet against the real estate markets, he knew something that other people didn’t. By applying his models against purchased real estate databases, he perceived an opportunity where others saw folly. Fifteen billion in profit later, people are understandably a bit curious as to how he pulled it off…
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Considering Applying to Y Combinator?
[Timely note! We're hosting a Y Combinator Meetup in Seattle on Thursday Feb 25... details here!] March 3 is the deadline for YC’s Summer 2010 session. I figured that I ought to throw my thoughts out there on the decisions that lead up to the application, the app itself, and... Continue Reading
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SEO for Startups: Top 7 Lessons + A Trip to Y Combinator
Last week, while in London, I received an email from Paul Graham, whom I've long admired, possibly even idolized a bit. He asked if I was available to come speak at a YCombinator SEO event in Mountain View. Tonight, I presented at that evented and thought I'd share my experiences, recommendations…
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No Accounting for Startups
Startups that are searching for a business model need to keep score differently than large companies that are executing a known business model. Yet most entrepreneurs and their VC’s make startups u…
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All the wrong reasons for Stack Overflow's VC chase
Joel has decided to chase venture capital for StackOverflow, but I can’t exactly figure out why. He lists six benefits that just don’t compute under even light scrutiny: 1. The Answers market is in a land grab modeUnlike eBay, where there’s a general market for goods and you ge…
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Raising money for StackOverflow
A few people heard me on This Week in Startups (starting at 15:45) asking Jason if we should take money from the first VC who fell into our laps, or spend time doing the Sand Hill Road rounds, meet…
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Every time an engineer joins Google, a startup dies
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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It Must Be A Marketing Problem
The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model, reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is call…
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If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good.
By now, everyone is tired of hearing about the iPad, but the negative responses are so perfectly misguided that it would be wrong to waste t...
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Startup Equity For Employees
2020 PREFACE: I originally wrote this back in the mid-2000s and have resurrected it by request.