On March 11 2005, Jessica and I were walking home from dinner in Harvard Square. Jessica was working at an investment bank at the time, but she didn't like it much, so she had interviewed for a job as director of marketing at a Boston VC fund. The VC fund was doing what now seems a comically familiar thing for a VC…
How my app’s keywords mysteriously disappeared from search results and downloads were slashed by 44%
We started a computer company!!! The Oxide Computer Company started in my garage, this is a story about its origins.
The most underrated Open Core Company out there
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
Most business ideas are neither objectively good nor bad. The quality of an idea for you (as a founder) depends on your goals, your skill set, and your risk tolerance.
Today we have a special guest post. There have been a few guest posts here at AVC. Maybe a half dozen in total. One of my favorites was this one by JLM during the financial crisis of 2008/2009. But this one today may top that gem. It's from our favorite Giant Robot Dinosaur and it's […]
“My biggest regret is that our first customer was $1M ACV*,” my friend lamented over coffee the other day. “I wish I could take it back.”
This tweet made me think a lot: First of all, as much as I hate this idea, I think this notion is correct. This trend has been happening for a long time, and it’s going to keep happening. I th…
Every year I take a step back and ask if there are common themes in technology.
[orig published in 2019; re-published & updated in 2023 & 2025] The outdoor patio was filled with dude ranchers. It was their yearly conference at Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, and I was there as a vendor (and first-time attendee). I remember saguaro cactus lining the landscape. It was early evening, the sun was…
Angel investing plummets 81% as institutional seed dominates startup funding. New data shows dramatic shift in early-stage venture capital from 2010-2018.
You should be multi-faceted, never work purely to your technical abilities, think about how you can make your entire company better
I remember the early days at my startup almost a decade ago. It was just me and my co-founder and we were enjoying our journey of building a small product and making a few people’s lives a bit better. The empathy we had for our early customers, for each other and for the first people […]
Pioneer paints a pretty picture of a fair tournament for ambitious people of the world. In reality though, the organizers will manipulate…
Discover which seed-stage sectors are booming in 2019: AI startups grew from 0 to 400, Blockchain surged 200x, while FinTech & Food tech show exponential growth.
Over the last few years the number of people and businesses online has ballooned.
How CEO Tobi Lütke Applied StarCraft Gaming Strategies & Concepts To Build Shopify
Discuss these two things before the business makes money. Make decisions on the important, specific issues raised by this post.
May 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Berkeley CSUA.) The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?…
