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A cautionary tale about subscription services and how not to shut down a startup
As you think about holiday gifts this season, I’d like to warn you about the subscription service Whimseybox. This is also a cautionary…
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 1,552 posts.
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SaaS Needs a Single Point of Purchase
The unassailable advantage that big cloud providers like AWS and Azure have over the rest of the SaaS industry isn’t their quality or pace of innovation; it’s that they’re a single point of purchase for a variety of services. If there was a single vendor that large corporations could contract with and pay for SaaS…
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Uber's Failure in Japan
Uber’s disastrous failure in Japan was not caused by local competition, but by a uniquely American strategy that simply could not work in Japan. You see, Uber represents a new kind of startup. The very thing that makes them so successful in America dooms them to failure in Japan.
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The Truth About Starting a Startup
(I wrote this for YC’s Future Founders Conference for Women. I’ll add the recording when it becomes available. The actual talk I gave on November 18th should include bonus streams of unconscious...
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Building a business, not just an app
This past week has not been the first outbreak of independent developer angst over the app store, but it feels like it has been one of the more intense. The pump was primed by the news that Kim Kar…
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Stock-Based Compensation
Why many "profitable" public technology companies actually aren't
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Hiring the first head of marketing at a startup
(Spoiler: Don’t)
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Kickstarter Is Totally Disrupting Consumer Electronics, Probably By Mistake
Given everything out there about Kickstarter’s founding story one gets the impression that the crux of its existence revolves around art and creativity. Just a guess based on that huge banner on their home page. Funding a rock concert in New Orleans and all that . Novellas, art projects, letters, albums, tours, Girl…
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Building the Middle Class of the Creator Economy
The American Dream exists, but what is the reality?
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Pro rata is a bad term for founders
For a long time, I was a strong believer in investor pro ratas. As a founder, I understood the trade and was comfortable with it. As a partner at YC, I thought it made enough sense that I helped...
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The myth of the overnight success
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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Do Not Start A Startup: Or, What I Learned At Startup School 2011
Home page for Andy Brett
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Cash Flow and Destiny
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The
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Asana
I’m delighted to finally be investing in Asana, which I’ve wanted to do for a long time. One of the things I’ve learned about companies is that 1) clear tasks and goals, 2) clearly communicated,...
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No, that is not a competitive advantage
Listening to first-time entrepreneurs talk about their competitive advantages is as predictably invalid as the local weatherman's 10-day forecast. Here's the top, invalid competitive advantages startup founders like to claim.
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Raise less, build more
The conventional venture capital funding path – from raising an institutional Seed, Series A, B, C, D, E, etc, all the way to exit via IPO – has long been treated as gospel. Its verses …
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Job Titles That Can Sink Your Startup
I had coffee with an ex student earlier in the week that reminded me yet again why startups burn through so many early VP’s. And after 30 years of Venture investing we still have a hard time …
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Startups from 2010: Acquired, Pivoted or Still Going?
Editor's Note: This is one of the longest posts I've made - in length and duration. It's said that one year in the life of a startup is the equivalent of dog years when compared to more established co
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How to Become a Must-Have
Most real startups don’t grow like this: Instead, most successful startups grow like this: Those initial loops are unsuccessful attempts to create a product people want to use. The problem is those…