Aaron Swartz: How To Launch Software
37signals recommends that software developers pursue what they call the Hollywood Launch . They don’t give any argument for this method, except perhaps the title (as if Hollywood was a business you should try to imitate?) — I guess the idea is that you’re supposed to do it since 37signals says to.
A Fundraising Survival Guide
August 2008 Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup. The hardest part is making something people want: most startups that die, die because they didn't do that. But the second biggest cause of death is probably the difficulty of raising money. Fundraising is brutal. One reason it's so brutal is…
Looking Back on Selling Gravatar to Automattic
For an entrepreneur, the line between horrible mistake and runaway success can be so thin that even Kate Moss would be envious. I lived with Gravatar for nearly four years before that line even became thick enough to measure.
Pmarca: If Microsoft goes fully hostile on Yahoo
Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to
JL: Why I Do YC
I think the past 4 months have been the busiest of my life. We wrapped up YC's winter funding cycle, hosted Startup School for more than 700 people, conducted interviews for the summer funding cycle,...
Paul Buchheit: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain
How much is an idea worth? Many normal people assume that ideas are valuable, and that if only they could think of one, they might be able t...
Your idea sucks, now go do it anyway
Your idea probably sucks, and it doesn't matter because your business will probably turn out to be something completely different.
Lessons learned from a failed poker software business
This story begins in March ’08. Bored with the project I was working on and overly optimistic because of TechCrunch articles, I decided to create some sort of online business. I hesitate even…
The most important thing to understand about new products and startups
First, a quote from Marc Andreessen's " Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters " If you ask entrepreneurs or VCs which of te...
Stack Overflow Launches
You know what drives me crazy? Programmer Q&A websites. You know what I’m talking about. You type a very specific programming question into Google and you get back: A bunch of links to discussi…
Diary of a Failed Startup: Aftermath
It's now been 5 months since Diffle folded, so I figured I'd write one last post to wrap up this blog. There seems to be a lot of curiosity...
The Wrong Way to Get Noticed by YC
So, I’m sitting at my kitchen table the other night thinking about startup type things when an idea pops into my head: Create an index for Hacker News. Now, this isn’t the first time th…
The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Misjudgment, part 1: Biases 1-6
Marc Andreessen is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is an innovator and creator, one of the few to
So, you're gonna code the whole thing, do the servers and work for sweat equity...
******You must get a business lawyer to implement all these points!! One who knows business contract law!!! No exceptions. Do not get you...
A Newbie’s Guide to Startup Compensation (or “Stock Options will Make Me Rich”)
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How to Meet Your Next Cofounder
Over the last few months I’ve seen a number of people looking for cofounders on Hacker News or via their own personal blogs. I think this is, at best, a highly inefficient way to find a cofounder and, at worst, a way to fool yourself into finding the wrong cofounder. In any case, it’s a naive approach to finding the…