Stripe is PayPal circa 2010
After integrating both Stripe and Paypal I've come to the realization that they are nearly the same, including all the evil.
It's okay to make something nobody wants
产品看起来是给用户用的,但我觉得这可能是一种假象,它实际上更像是一种自我表达。 许多表达被不同的人创造出来,经历了自然选择后,存活下来的那一个,是用户喜欢的那个。 我的意思是,这个过程是这么发生的:你做一个东西,不是“我觉得他们可能需要这个”而做,而是“我觉得这个有点意思”而做。然后,别人在使用你的产品时,感受到了与你相同的那种感受,这时他说:“我觉得这个有点意思”。 从这个角度来说,产品就像一种情绪的存储器,作者存进去,复制一千份,用户从产品中取出来。 你不能自己不含任何情感,却期望用户使用后带有情感。 我觉得即使做了个没人想要的东西,也没关系。你唯一需要做的是确保你已经完整呈现了你的情感。…
$7M lost on Amazon inventory, then bankrupt
Our Amazon journey started in January 2018 when HyperVolt released the first massage gun on the market. We were so careful with this…
Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
Here I sit, in a cabin on Lake Superior by the fire, with late-season snow pelting the windows and ominous waves crashing against the rocky shore.
Beeper – Moving Forward
Each time that Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or is made to be unreliable due to interference by Apple, Beeper’s credibility takes a hit. It’s unsustainable. As much as we want to fight for what we believ…
Startup advice, briefly
This is a very short summary with lots left out—here is the long version: http://startupclass.samaltman.com You should start with an idea, not a company. When it’s just an idea or project,...
How to Convince Investors
August 2013 When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back. The right way to lift heavy things is to let your legs do the work. Inexperienced founders make the same mistake when trying to convince investors. They try to convince with their pitch. Most would be…
I Listened to 1000 B2B SaaS Sales Calls
For a project I was working on, some of the research involved listening to thousands of sales calls from well known high-growth B2B SaaS companies.
The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud
The Pinboard Co-Prosperity Cloud is a startup self-incubator. Six successful applicants will receive a modest amount of funding and as much publicity as I can provide for their sustainable and useful business idea.
Dilution
There has probably been more capital looking to invest in private technology companies in the past five years than any five-year period before. An obvious consequence of this increased supply is that company valuations (i.e. prices) have gone up, and so has the amount of capital raised by most companies. A non-obvious…
Reflections on Palantir
A retrospective of an eight-year stint.
Pebble Round 2
We’ve finally gotten around to it The entire Pebble relaunch would not be complete without revisiting one of our most iconic watches from 2015 Pebble Time Ro...
Browserling goes viral with cheap phone users trying to use WhatsApp
The most random and amazing things happened at my company Browserling in the last few weeks. Someone in India discovered that they can use WhatsApp on very cheap $20 phones (Jio Phones) via Browserling. These cheap phones can't run WhatsApp but if you go to Browserling, you can use it via web.whatsapp.com. He made a...
Don’t Build a Billion-Dollar Business
The better goal? Keep your head down, make a great product, and build a successful business. Silicon Valley prays at the altar of the billion-dollar
Pricing Your Product
A lot of startups treat pricing as a math problem or, worse, an afterthought. Pricing is as much an art as it is a science, one that relies as much on marketing and psychology as it does on classical economics.
A solo journey to $100k in sales
Follow our journey and learn from our work.
5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0
This is a story about me dreaming of building an online project that generates revenue, seeking financial independence and creative freedom. After five years and no success, it's still a dream. Let me tell you more about my failed projects. Planetoid (2015-2016) It's all started with a game. Who doesn't
How I Screwed Up My Google Acquisition
I began building a web-based version of PowerPoint called Preezo back in the Spring of 2005 after switching the direction of my angel-funded startup for the third time in less than a year. Prior to that I had been working on a web collaboration concept akin to JotSpot , but after awakening to the the potential of AJAX…
Building for the Blockchain
If you’re here, we assume that you’re a developer/hacker who’s intrigued by the blockchain. You’re convinced that you understand how it works and now you’re itching to figure out what the blockchain means for you and your developer skill set.
The end of Airplane.dev
I worked at Airplane, an internal tooling startup, for nearly two years. Earlier this year, it was announced that the company was being acquired by Airtable and that the product would be shut down. In this blog post, I want to explain what happened from my perspective as a former employee.
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