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Financial Misstatements
First-time startup CEOs make a lot of mistakes, mostly due to ignorance. One particularly bad one is misunderstanding or misusing basic financial terms. I started noticing this in Y Combinator...
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Why investors don’t fund dating
I’ve been listening to the excellent Season 2 of the podcast Startup , which gives an inside look at YCombinator startup The Dating Ring (NYT coverage here ). The episodes are all great. They talk about many important topics, but I had some specific comments on fundraising for dating products .
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Let a thousand flowers bloom, then rip 999 of them out
For the past eleven months I’ve been the tech lead for Twitter’s Engineering Effectiveness group. Engineering Effectiveness is our name for what elsewhere might be called Developer Tools, Developer Productivity, Engineering Infrastructure, or Developer Efficiency. We provide the tools and processes that allow the rest…
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HippyVM goes to Y Combinator and fails
tl;dr; We decided to go to Y combinator with HippyVM , our high performance PHP implementation, and we did not get through after two round...
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How I killed app sales by going freemium
Why going freemium may not be the best idea for your app
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List of Y Combinator companies I have worked with (hacked)
Background: I have worked with lots of companies as security consultant through bug bounties either I asked them if they need my service or they approached. I’m a big fan of Paul’s essa…
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The Social Radar: What I Did at Y Combinator
Culture matters for startups. For a startup to succeed, it must have a culture that reflects what it wants to achieve. This is one of my areas of expertise. I've spent the past decade focusing on Y...
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Launching a product in just 3652 days
A story about how I learned a lot of things the hard way
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What Makes Founders Succeed
I recently dug up my introduction to Founders at Work, which I wrote in 2006, and I was amazed how accurate it still seems: –––––– Some kind of magic happens in startups, especially at...
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A not-so-obvious reason to apply to YC
I’m a YC founder, but I’m not one of the many YC founders whose company has taken off quite yet. Actually, I’m no longer working on the company that I applied to YC with and presented at Demo Day....
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Candy Japan 2015 Year in Review
2015 was a nerve-wrecking year for Candy Japan, with some dramatic ups and downs.
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Postmortem of Venture-Backed Startup, Sonar
Lessons Learned from the rise and fall of @Sonar
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Why Founders Fail: The Product CEO Paradox (2013)
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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Subtle Mid-Stage Startup Pitfalls
(This post is derived from a talk I gave at SV Angel's CEO Summit.) A lot has been written about the dangers that early-stage startups face. But startups face a different and equally lethal set...
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Candy Japan 2014 Year in Review
Looking back on what happened in 2014 for the Japanese candy subscription box Candy Japan.
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Startup Priorities
One of the most difficult tasks for a startup founder is deciding what to do. Where should the tiny number of people working on a brand new company spend their time? Choosing wisely can place your...
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The Next Feature Fallacy
A few weeks ago, I read this tweet, and found myself nodding my head in vigorous agreement.
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To predict the future 1/3 of you need to be crazy
In a rapidly changing world those who copy the past have doomed their future. When companies or agencies search for disruptive and innovative strategies they often assemble a panel of experts to ad…
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A Guide to PR for Startups
You’ve built your product and you’re now ready for your first major launch. Or you’ve been through a launch or two, but are looking to scale the process as you’re doing more launches and announcements. You really have two options: do it all on your own, or work with a PR agency. One frequent crossroad is that you’re…
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Princess Pricklepants, Startup Founder Extraordinaire
Previously: Princess Pricklepants, Entrepreneur Dear reader, for our preamble we’d like to say a number of fascinating, witty, clever, and delightful things, but we can’t think of any. …