How to hire an idiot (from the 'How to sell your software for $20,000' guy)
Wow, I remember how idealistic I was when I was about to bring on my first employee! After dealing with bad bosses over my career, after doi...
So you want to be a consultant?
Or: Why work 8 hours/day for someone else when you can work 16 hours/day for yourself?
Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project
Today there was a comic book in my mail, sent by Google and drawn by no less than Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics . Within the 38 pages, which I’ve scanned and put up , in very readable format Google gives the technical details into a project of theirs: an open source browser called Google…
Balsamiq hits $100,000 in revenue
News and announcements from your friends at Balsamiq.
Reddit goes open source - the actual announcement from reddit.
Get the latest product news, company announcements, and user insights from the official Reddit blog.
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…
Dropbox finally launches to the public (YC summer 07)
Modern work can be frustrating and chaotic—if you don’t have the right tools. From context engineering to multimodal search, go behind the scenes and hear how Dropbox engineers are building AI that actually understands you, so you can focus on the work that matters most.
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.
Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too
Find new ideas and classic advice on strategy, innovation and leadership, for global leaders from the world's best business and management experts.
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
Architecture astronauts take over
It was seven years ago today when everybody was getting excited about Microsoft’s bombastic announcement of Hailstorm, promising that “Hailstorm makes the technology in your life work t…
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,...
You don't have to sell your company to have financial security
Paul Graham thinks that startup founders need to sell their companies to get freedom and security: They want enough money that (a) they don’t have to worry about running out of money and (b) they can spend their time how they want. Running your own business offers neither. You certainly don…
Workplace Experiments at 37signals
At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy. Here’s are a few of the things we…
How to sell your software for $20,000
I guess you can either sell $20 software to 10,000 people a year, or $20,000 software to one business a year that buys 10 seats, and either ...
Making money twice
A good portion of this industry is still trying to figure out how to make money for the first time (hint: charge people). But for those who’ve mastered that, I want to talk about the next step: making money twice (or three or four times). Making money off original content isn’t hard …
6 Credit Card Processing Facts Nobody Tells You
Well, we’ve solved our latest credit card validation problem and it seems like a good time to give a quick recap of the lessons we’ve learned during this whole sordid process. Things that nobody bothers to tell you, not even the people you’re paying to do just that. This is 2008, but credit card processing is a…