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The most popular blog posts about startups on Hacker News. 56 posts.

2019
1

I Sell Onions on the Internet

Vidalia Onions to be exact. They’re classified as a sweet onion, and because of their mild flavor (they don’t make your eyes tear up), some folks can eat them like an apple. Most of my customers do. During a phone order one season – 2018 I believe – a customer shared this story where he ... Read more

3

Startup idea checklist

I’ve been tinkering with different startup ideas and needed a good checklist to think through them. There are great templates for this already: The YC application, Amazon’s internal press release, and Sequoia’s Writing a Business Plan. I found myself mixing and tweaking these templates because they don’t exactly match…

7

Takeaways from coaching CEOs, founders and VCs

I went through my calendar recently to count all the clients I worked with in 2019 as part of my coaching practice. The answer: 101 powerful and extraordinary individuals. Wow, I was blown away, I had no idea that it would be this many. The kinds of people I had and continue to have the […]

10

How Not to Die (2007)

August 2007 (This is a talk I gave at the last Y Combinator dinner of the summer. Usually we don't have a speaker at the last dinner; it's more of a party. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could save some of the startups from preventable deaths. So at the last minute I cooked up this rather grim talk…

25

How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers

Today, Firebase has a large team with hundreds of engineers. Before the Google acquisition, however, we had a small team of just 24 exceptional people that I firmly believe was among the strongest of its kind in the world. A big part of that success was the way we interviewed software engineers. I’m sharing our…