Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,603 posts.

Startups
Any year
302

How to pick startup ideas

One of the most important things I learned from running a startup is that on a macro scale the innovation market is efficient. If the market conditions allow for a startup to arise, it’s overwhelmingly probable that multiple startups already exist in that market. The converse is also true — if there are no startups in…

307

Fellowship V2

Last fall, YC ran an 8 week experiment calledThe Fellowship [https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/yc-fellowship]to fund and work with startups at the idea or prototype stage. The goal was to see if we could create a program that could help more early-stage startups at scale. The experiment went well and I have a few…

310

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…

322

Yes, but what does your startup do?

I recently signed up for a hackathon. Part of the deal these days is that sponsors get to send promotional messages to the attendees. Fair enough. The only problem is, most of these messages are rubbish! Here's the verbatim message I received - there were no links other than to Twitter. See if you can work out what…