Best of 2018

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2018. 120 posts.

Startups
97

The Benefits of Thinking Small (2010)

In previous posts I wrote about visionary entrepreneurs, and how to constantly ask how you can 10X your business. However, many startups fail because the founding team thinks *too big* from day one, and doesn't take the time to really define the short term, immediate value their product or business provides.

103

Unequal Cofounders

One of the big myths in Silicon Valley is that co-founders should be equal. However, if you look at the most successful tech startups of the last 50 years, almost all of them had a dominant co-founder for most of the life of the company. This includes[1]:

104

Luck and startups: Our journey

To make money and acquire users in the startup world, you need lightning to strike, a rare moment of sheer luck that propels your company towards success. So how can tech founders cope with this randomness? In this post, I'll share my tips on making your own lightning. Luck and

110

Applications for YC W19 Are Open

Applications for YC Winter 2019 are now open. Apply here [http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/]. Here are some helpful resources if you’re thinking about applying: * Why Apply? [https://www.ycombinator.com/why/] * YC Bio [https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-bio/]: A new way for us to fund early-stage life science companies…

112

Companies from the YC Winter 2018 Batch

At Y Combinator, founders decide when they want to announce that they’re part of the program. Meet 12 of the companies who have announced that they’re part of the YC Winter 2018 batch so far: Buglife [https://www.buglife.com/] is a mobile SDK and web platform for reporting bugs and collecting feedback in mobile apps…

116

Pivot or Fail?

The Pivot is celebrated in startup land. Huge successes like Twitter and Slack are all the results of pivots. So surely pivoting is a good thing, right? Well, I am not so sure. And I certainly don’t want entrepreneurs to think that pivoting is the right thing to do when their original idea fails. It […]