151
How to Hire
After startups raise money, their next biggest problem becomes hiring. It turns out it’s both really hard and really important to hire good people; in fact, it’s probably the most important thing...
152
Thoughts on Bitcoin
Maybe bitcoin will be the world reserve currency, maybe it will totally fail, or maybe it will survive in some niche capacity. I don’t know how to weight the probabilities (although I think in the...
153
154
Why I Dislike EC2
EC2 is great if you need per-hour billing and instance provisioning. For everyone else, which is most, it's just really expensive and slow hardware.
155
156
157
158
Introducing The Paper Bay
Over the last couple of weeks I've been working off-and-on on a little side project. The idea is that there are lots of people that are not in a position to visit a university or that don't have a public library with 'access' at their disposal but that do need to be able to read scientific papers. Ever since the…
159
Amazon and the "profitless business model" fallacy
[DISCLOSURE: As always when I write about Amazon, I'll note I worked there from 1997-2004 and that I still own some shares in the company. I still have many friends who work there, though I have no more idea what Amazon is working on now than any of you in the public.] With every quarterl
160
161
162
How Software Companies Die (1995)
Home Page for Charles Rosenberg
163
How Google keeps employees by treating them like kids (2006)
I was talking with a friend the other day about that perennial subject of conversation in the Valley, Google. And finally she gave me the clue that made the whole place make sense. “It’s about infantilizing people,” she explained. “Give them free food, do their laundry, let them sit on bouncy brightly-colored balls…
164
Two Letters from Steve Jobs
During the 12+ years I worked at Apple I never met with Steve Jobs for work purposes. Of course like all Apple employees I saw Steve in Caffé Macs or walking with Jony Ive around the courtyard insi…
165
How to build great products
If you believe that sales fix everything, it follows that most startups fail because they don’t ship a great product in a growing market before they run out of money. Assuming you’ve picked an explosive market, how do you go about building a great product?1
166
167
168
169
CodeCombat in Y Combinator
Originally posted on the CodeCombat blog.What a crazy weekend! We launched our beta on Friday morning by posting to ...
170
Investor Herd Dynamics
August 2013 The biggest component in most investors' opinion of you is the opinion of other investors. Which is of course a recipe for exponential growth. When one investor wants to invest in you, that makes other investors want to, which makes others want to, and so on. Sometimes inexperienced founders mistakenly…
171
Today I saw the future
Mozilla and OTOY deliver the power of native PC applications to the Web, unveil next generation JavaScript video codec for movies and cloud gaming
172
How GitHub No Longer Works
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
173
174
The unprofitable SaaS business model trap
Marketo filed for IPO. They have $60m in revenues and a nice growth rate; unfortunately they're *losing* $35m/year. Why do SaaS business fall into the trap of being forever unprofitable, and what is the secret to the ones who overcome this trap?
175
176
Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists
At the bottom of my recent post on App Store pricing , I ended a three-paragraph footnote 1 with this:
177
178
An idea for non-technical co-founders: try a service-first business
Non-technical founders often want to start businesses that rely heavily on a technical co-founder they dont have. I have an idea for these founders, try a service-first business instead.
179
Profit affects doctors' treatment decisions
There is little to no incentive in the healthcare industry to hold down costs. Worse yet, the rewards for performing unnecessary surgeries i...
180