Paul Graham of Y Combinator has a good essay up on “What Startups Are Really Like“. Here are his headlines with some concise additional commentary of my own. 1. Be Careful with Cofounders: hugely important because things get stressful; agree on worst case “breakup scenario” at the start and have founder stock vesting. 2. Startups Take Over Your Life: they …
Startups: hiring, careers, sales people
This week saw two interesting and related posts on startups and hiring/careers. Mark Suster wrote about who you should hire into your startup, and Chris Dixon wrote about the ideal startup career path. Mark’s message is to hire hungry, smart people who want to get to the next level in their career, not the ones who have already arrived. Chris …
Empower your experts
I love despair.com’s line “none of us is as dumb as all of us”. A big part of startup success is tied to the quality of people and how well they work together. That’s why I’m always sad when I see situations where a business has hired someone really good, and then refuses to empower them as an expert. Occasionally …
The New York Startup Scene
As someone who has done startups in New York, Silicon Valley & San Fran, and Austin, I find the topic of location very interesting. Fred Wilson and Chris Dixon just gave a talk at Clickable (embedded below) on why the New York startup scene is special, and I had a few reactions: New York would benefit from a better, more …
Irrationality as a teacher has limits
I’ve seen references to Steve Blank’s startup guide (for lack of a better description) “4 Steps to the Epiphany” and recently picked it up. There is a lot of good stuff in the book, and I can see what the accolades have been about. Like all business books, you have to decide for yourself which concepts you love and want …
Size of Customer: On Suster’s Deer Hunter Analogy
Mark Suster always provides interesting food for thought. In a recent post “Most Startups Should be Deer Hunters“, he examined whether startups should go for “elephants, deer, or rabbits.” He is right to warn of elephants. They can bring in cash, please your investors with a brand name, and put your company on the map in terms of credibility and …
Startups, Law, and Lawyers
Chris Dixon just wrote a post “Entrepreneurs needs to learn some law“, which spawned from a discussion on first round term sheets. Startups are a massive learning curve no matter how many times you have done one (just different curves), but I agree that it is absolutely worth taking the time to become savvy on contracts and business law. I …
Startup Lessons: Don’t Be Afraid to Lose
I recently discovered Mark Suster’s blog Both Sides of the Table, and have really enjoyed his posts on entrepreneurship. He has a good post called “Embrace Losing” that talks about closing sales and learning from mistakes. I’d like to piggyback on the post with two of my own anecdotes that can be summed up with the simple thought: don’t be …
Traction vs Value
David Pakman has an excellent post up called “Confusing Traction with Value“, pointing to the “distressed exit of iLike” and then pointing out a few Web 2.0 aberrations in valuation. For those of you who experienced Web 1.0’s up and down, this is a bit “been there, done that”. Web 1.0 was about startups far outstripping the available audience. Web …