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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 …
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How to get hired at a startup when you don't know anyone
A few years ago I saw an early stage startup that I knew I had to be a part of. The only problem was that it was 900 miles away and I had no connection to them. The startup was Formlabs . At the time they had 10 employees, and like most startups reduced risk by hiring people they knew. They were also situated…
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YC Annual Letter 2017
Dear YC Community: In response to a comment on Hacker News, I’m going to try writing an annual letter to the YC community with an update on our progress. Our mission is to enable the most...
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Everything I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Demoing SaaS
Everything you want to know about Medellin and Colombia
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Lessons from my first exit
My takeaways from selling TinyPilot
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Startups Are Hard
Contrary to popular belief, there are no clouds of money that float around Silicon Valley and rain on anyone that utters the phrase, "I'm a founder!" Unfortunately, starting a company and raising money is just as hard as ever; it's just that the investors don't have as much leverage as they used to, but they still…
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Things learned while running your own self-funded startup
Here's a brain dump of the things we've learned while running our business and shipping our first product ( Basis ). My experience at Valv...
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At least now we know why Color really got that funding
Link to: http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-bill-nguyen-qa-2011-3
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How I helped build a profitable MVP over a weekend
A couple years ago, a good friend of mine, who was in charge of operations at a food delivery company, got laid off after a merger - they kept the guy from the other side.
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Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple
What happens to a company when a visionary CEO is gone? Most often innovation dies and the company coasts for years on momentum and its brand. Rarely does it regain its former glory. Here’s why. Mi…
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Super successful companies
I spent some time recently thinking about what companies that grow up to be extremely successful do when they are very young. I came up with the following list. It’s from personal experience and...
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Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship
〰️ it’s weird to look back; I sometimes get confused on how I got here 〰️ Most folks dream of being an entrepreneur; “a path that seemed inevitable“, they say. None of that shit applies to me. I’m only here cause I kept getting laid off and that nonsense infuriated me. I treated my first ... Read more
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Story of Mattermost: Open-Sourced Competitor to Slack
The Open Sourced competitor to Slack
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Why to start a startup in a bad economy (2008)
October 2008 The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies. When Microsoft and Apple were founded. As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a bad time to start a startup. I'm not claiming it's a particularly good time either…
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Raising money fucked me up
My reflections on raising money for Skald Labs
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Y Combinator When No One Cared
Recently I came across one of the first pitch letters I sent to journalists about Y Combinator. It was from the first few months of YC’s existence and it’s a snapshot of what our thinking was way...
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Frog and Toad are Cofounders
The Characters you loved as a child, all grown up and working in San Francisco
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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…
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