Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 817 posts.
Software development requires servant leaders
The idea of “servant” leaders has been on the rise in the agile community of late. Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term in a 1970 essay, but the idea is timeless.
An Apology and an Update
Slack is where work flows. It's where the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use come together to get things done.
A sad update about a scissors maker that went viral
Back in 2014, a lovely short film by Shaun Bloodworth called The Putter went viral. The film shows Cliff Denton making scissors for Ernest Wright & Sons. Denton
October 21 post-incident analysis
In-depth analysis of the incident that impacted GitHub services on October 21 and 22.
Godot at GDC 2018
I went to GDC yet again (this time GDC 2018) trying to see how Godot is doing at the game industry. To my surprise this time, it was quite different..
Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch
I'm Brad Frost, an independent creator, web designer & developer, teacher, speaker, writer, musician, and artist based in Pittsburgh, PA.
Startups I Want to Fund
I hear a lot of startup pitches. I’ve been angel investing now for ~4 years, and I’m an LP and advisor to a number of VC funds. I also heard a lot of pitches through my work at Firebase (the company I co-founded), as many of its customers are startups. I like being pitched – partly because I enjoy meeting smart…
Citus Data Donates 1% of Equity to PostgreSQL Organizations
The donation of 1% of Citus Data stock is being made to advance the growth of the open source PostgreSQL database in both the U.S. & in Europe. The Citus database is an extension to PostgreSQL. Citus Data is also joining the Pledge 1% movement alongside organizations such as Atlassian, Twilio, Box, & more.
I Write Letters to CEOs
I write letters to CEOs and many of them write me back. Here are some of the responses that I’ve received and the lessons that I’ve learned.
The Psychology of Money
Let me tell you the story of two investors, neither of whom knew each other, but whose paths crossed in…
We Spent $3.3M Buying Out Investors: Why and How We Did It
Last month, Buffer spent $3.3 million – about half of all the cash we had in the bank – to buy out our main venture capital (VC) investors. Here is the full journey of how we decided on this path for the company, including all the details and numbers involved in carrying out a stock buyback.
Sony Finally Admits It Doesn’t Own Bach
Here’s the thing about different people playing the same piece of music: sometimes, they’re going to sound similar. And when music is by a composer who died 268 years ago, putting his music in the public domain, a bunch of people might record it and some of them might put it online. In this...
Amazon's policies promote counterfeiting
When someone goes to the lengths of making counterfeits of your products, it's at least a sign you're doing something right. And it deserves a minute of flattery. But when Chinese counterfeiters tool up and make copies of your product, send that inventory to Amazon, then overtake the real product's buy box by auto-lo
Is the Lean Startup Dead?
A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review Reading the NY Times article “Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture,” I realized it was time for …
Repl.it raises $4.5M from A16Z, Paul Graham, and others
We're thrilled to announce that we have raised a Seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Marc Andreessen and Andrew Chen championing the deal. We're also sharing that a million users are now using Repl.it. Moreover, our developers have shipped 250,000 websites/apps since our hosting platform launch in March…
Why Entrepreneurs Start Companies Rather Than Join Them
If you asked me why I gravitated to startups rather than work in a large company I would have answered at various times: “I want to be my own boss.” “I love risk.” “I want flexible work hours.” “I …
Mark Zuckerberg and his empire of oily rags
Surveillance capitalism sucks: it improves the scattershot, low-performance success-rate of untargeted advertising (well below 1 percent) and doubles or triples it (to well below 1 percent!).
YC Top Companies List
We’re excited to share a list of Y Combinator’s top companies [http://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies]. The top 100 YC companies are listed by valuation1 (including the top 12 exits), as of October 16, 2018. We put this list together to help people get to know some of the fastest growing alumni in the YC community…