New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 244 posts.
How New Ideas Almost Killed Our Startup
Vinicius Vacanti is co-founder and CEO of Yipit. Next posts on how to acquire users for free and how to raise a Series A. Don’t miss them by subscribing via email or via twitter .
Startup Fundraising is a Time Sink
"Which one of you is going to be doing the fundraising?" queried a calm and collected Tom Robinson while in a loud venue one Saturday evening at a Startup School after-party. Tom had good reason to be relaxed that evening. His startup, 280 North, had been acquired by Motorola for 20 Million a few mo
Having a launched product is hard
Over the last 6 months, we have been learning what it means to support a launched product.
Startup Blogs To Make You a Better Entrepreneur
As an aspiring startup founder, I’m always on the lookout for blogs that will help me become a more adept entrepreneur. Fortunately for me and for the startup community there’s a lot o…
10% unemployment yet every startup in NYC struggling to hire
Managing Director in Lazard's Media, Entertainment & Sports Group. Former CEO of Future Plc, founder of Cheddar News, and President & COO of BuzzFeed.
How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition
I began building a web-based version of PowerPoint called Preezo back in the Spring of 2005 after switching the direction of my angel-funded startup for the third time in less than a year. Prior to that I had been working on a web collaboration concept akin to JotSpot , but after awakening to the the potential of AJAX…
Founder Control
December 2010 Someone we funded is talking to VCs now, and asked me how common it was for a startup's founders to retain control of the board after a series A round. He said VCs told him this almost never happened. Ten years ago that was true. In the past, founders rarely kept control of the board through a series A…
The creators of no-longer-with-us products explain what went wrong
Verifiable (shut down August 1, 2010) Stuart Roseman shut down Verifiable, a crowdsourced charting and data analysis site, to start SaneBox, a product that automatically identifies important email and separates them in a user’s inbox. Below, he explains how he knew when it was time to pull t…
Startup Ideas Every Nerd Has (That Never Work)
Over the years I have spent a lot of time brainstorming startup ideas with people who are (asymptotically) as nerdy as me. For some reasons, every time I brainstorm with a new set of people, the following ideas come up. This suggests that either all nerds think alike, or alternatively, that they are unsolved problems…
When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars
When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars Ralph Waldo Emerson This Thanksgiving it might seem that there’s a lot less to be thankful for. One out of ten of Americans is out of work. The common wisdom say…
Announcing Browserling: Interactive cross-browser testing in your browser
Hey guys, here are the lastest StackVM news. So we applied to Y Combinator for the Winter 2011 funding cycle but got rejected. On November 2 we got an email saying that they could not accept our application for funding, which meant that we wouldn't even get the interview. Our plan was to surprise Y Combinator folks…
A Cautionary Tale from the Startup World
Marketing, entrepreneurship, and the ongoing study of how influence spreads (with the occasional interlude on travel, pasta, TV -- the important stuff) from founder Rand Fishkin.