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There's always time to launch your dream
“I’d love to start a company / become a great programmer / write an awesome blog, but there’s just not enough time in the day!” Bullshit. There’s always enough time, you’re just not spending it right. Now that’s some tough love, but I’m sick and ti…
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YC: What No Means
Twice a year, Y Combinator has to say no to lots of people. Though we’ve done it 5 times already, it doesn’t seem to get any easier. Selecting a small number of investments from a much larger...
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How to Start a Startup (2005)
March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A…
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Setting Pricing for a Startup - The Rule of 80%
In just the last week, two different people have come to me to get feedback on their pricing. One was a startup selling a very sophisticated product to corporate enterprises. The other was selling...
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Six strategies for overcoming "chicken and egg" problems
programming, philosophy, history, internet, startups
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Throw out that five-year plan, build something now, and don't take any money
A couple of Getting Realish ideas spotted in Best Life magazine: Greg Gianforte is the author of “Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money.” In Follow Your Dream, he advises throwing out your five-year plan and focusing on building somethi…
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I'm Getting Pretty Tired of Startup Advice that Doesn't Include Any Mention of SEO
Ever since SEOmoz took venture capital investment last fall, I've been reading a lot of blogs and sites geared towards the startup world. Even though we've been around for 5 years (and Gillian and I have been doing web marketing for 10), I still think of us very much like a startup - we've grown…
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Spolsky on "Commoditizing Your Complements"
When I was in college I took two intro economics courses: macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macro was full of theories like “low unemployment causes inflation” that never quite stood u…
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What does a startup CTO actually do?
What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Often times, it seems like people are thinking it's synonymous with "that guy who gets p...
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Chicken and Egg Problem (2000)
The idea of advertising is to lie without getting caught. Most companies, when they run an advertising campaign, simply take the most unfortunate truth about their company, turn it upside down (…
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How IMVU learned its way to $10M a year
“Lean startups are built from the ground up for learning about customers.” – Eric Ries I recently sat in on Eric Ries’ presentation on lean startups at Berkeley. The slides and audio ar…
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Sacrifice your health for your startup
Maximizing your chance for success means sacrificing health and family. This sounds controversial, but it's not just me.
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