[https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/wordpress/2019/01/yc120-v1.png] The world is shaped by people with intelligence, drive and vision. At YC, we’ve learned a lot about cultivating a network of such people — and we believe that having a strong network is such a force multiplier that it is one of the most…
April 2010 The best way to come up with startup ideas is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you? There are two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to be necessary to some class of users other than…
DoorDash is the first company that I’ve had the opportunity to follow all the way from YC application to IPO, so to celebrate I thought it would be fun and interesting to share what a great company like DoorDash looks like at the earliest stages. Meeting startups at the very start of their journey is one of my…
I took a deep dive on freemium pricing and decided to document it in this post. Why freemium? I think it’s how the little guys can win against market leaders. Basically, it’s how you kill a unicorn. Notion, Figma, Canva, Mailchimp, and Segment. What do all of these
We’ve just open-sourced a sales agreement [http://www.ycombinator.com/documents/#sales]any company can use. Though obviously you should use this at your own risk, we’ve had a lot of experience with what makes good and bad sales agreements. Special thanks to Tyler Bosmeny, James Riley, and Carolynn and Jon Levy for all…
Before we launched HelloSign, I remember showing HelloFax to a family member. This person was normally supportive, but he took a glance and walked away. He wasn't the only one. A lot of people...
A lot of people have been saying we’re in a tech bubble for quite some time. Someday they’ll be right, but in the meantime, I thought it'd be fun to look back at some articles from the last 10...
Japanese candy subscription box Candy Japan exceeded $10,000 per month in sales.
Looking back on the last four years, what worked, what didn't.
It’s been more than one year that I wrote “ How I've Made $200k in the iOS Education Market ” post which has been well received by the indie...
At DjangoCon Europe 2017 , and again at DjangoCon US 2017 , I gave a talk entitled “Autopsy of a slow train wreck: The life and death of a Django startup”. After I gave those presentations, a number of people requested that I publish the content in blog form so they could share it with colleagues.
In the early days of my startup, I used to get slightly offended when people would refer to it as a “project”. “How’s your project going?” seemed like the asker didn't take us seriously, even...
In the quest to explore the capabilities of ChatGPT, I decided to utilized it as a startup brainstorming partner. From product description to building the product on AWS and GCP, crafting an elevat...
By now, everyone is tired of hearing about the iPad, but the negative responses are so perfectly misguided that it would be wrong to waste t...
I laugh at this tweet every time I remember it:
Steli Efti explains how to price a product, sell it to customers, and build a sales team.
July 2009 Now that the term "ramen profitable" has become widespread, I ought to explain precisely what the idea entails. Ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. This is a different form of profitability than startups have traditionally aimed for. Traditional…
Reimagining organisational structure for the digital age.
Team superiority is a myth.
Tell your company’s story more effectively, including specific details that matter to investors.
