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entrepreneurship

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That Time I Told My Wife I Wanted to Quit My Job
2 months ago
- The author launched a software licensing side project in 2016 after feeling frustrated with existing licensing systems.
- He struggled with burnout from juggling a day job and side project, often feeling overwhelmed and stressed.
- After years of hesitation, he finally told his wife he wanted to quit his job to focus on the business, and she supported him.
- He resigned and has been running the business full-time for almost two years, achieving self-sustainability despite ongoing challenges.
- The business is growing, with happy customers and recent enterprise deals, though savings are lower and marketing strategies are still evolving.
Why to Not Not Start a Startup
2 months ago
- Y Combinator's first batch had a 50% success rate, with 0% of founders regretting the experience.
- Most people hesitate to start startups due to a mix of real and bogus reasons; analyzing them helps.
- Common fears like being too young, inexperienced, or lacking a cofounder are often overstated.
- The best way to gain experience is to start a startup, not get a regular job.
- A good idea is not essential initially; startups often pivot, and focus on building something people want.
- The shift from farming to manufacturing parallels the current shift to startups, making it a historic opportunity.
It's okay to be selfish
2 months ago
- It's acceptable to build a lifestyle business that prioritizes family, health, time, freedom, and happiness over traditional growth metrics.
- You can choose alternative paths in business, such as using email over sales calls, working fewer hours, staying small, and focusing on profitability.
- It's okay to reject common startup norms like constant marketing, late hours, perpetual reinvestment, and empire-building in favor of personal choices like taking time off or prioritizing family.
- You can design a business around your life rather than reshaping your life for the business, embracing calm over chaos.
- The main message is that being 'selfish'—focusing on your own wellbeing and preferences—is valid in entrepreneurship.
Imposter syndrome
2 months ago
- The founder of Keygen, Zeke Gabrielse, feels persistent imposter syndrome despite running a successful business for almost nine years.
- Hitting milestones like sustainability, revenue, or customer numbers hasn't alleviated the self-doubt; the goalposts keep moving.
- The main challenge is internal self-doubt, not external criticism, with feelings of not belonging or being lucky ignoring years of hard work.
- Zeke ignored 'fail-fast' trends and focused on survival, redesigning his business for work-life balance while doubting himself constantly.
- Despite success, the imposter syndrome voice persists, whispering 'Who are you to talk about this?' and historically prevented sharing his journey.
- Zeke now recognizes the self-doubt as irrational and normal, even for figures like Neil Armstrong, and sees it as a side effect of growth.
- The real risk is not being 'found out' but letting the voice stop him from sharing and creating; he refuses to wait for permission to belong.
- Imposter syndrome may never fully go away, but Zeke is acting regardless, and he notes that positive feedback from others can be empowering.
From Side-Project to Full-Time: 5 Things I've Learned in 5 Years
2 months ago
- Don't quit too hastily; improve your marketing before giving up on a good idea.
- Avoid wasting time on launch sites like Product Hunt; focus on real marketing efforts.
- Know what you want from your business, whether lifestyle or growth, and let that guide decisions.
- Don't let large clients overpay if it leads to excessive overhead; it's okay to say no.
- Put family first and prioritize personal life over business success.
- Side hustles are acceptable; wait until the right time to go full-time.
Some business advice for academic startups/spinouts - Bert Hubert's writings
2 months ago
- Academics entering business must use compatible language (e.g., distinguish marketing, sales, and business development) to maintain credibility.
- Signaling theory: Consistent branding (logos, fonts, colors) signals competence and reliability, while inconsistency signals disorganization.
- Marketing has two parts: corporate identity (visual consistency) and content marketing (tailored messages for specific audiences).
- Sales is essential for new products; it involves understanding customer needs and overcoming inertia, but startups often need founders to learn sales themselves.
- Business development addresses obstacles like 'interface problems' or lack of reference customers, requiring partnerships and senior leadership involvement.
- Founders must actively drive sales and business development; hiring external experts is rarely sufficient for early-stage ventures.
How to Start a Startup
2 months ago
- A successful startup requires three things: good people, a product customers actually want, and minimal spending.
- A brilliant initial idea is not necessary; the key is to make something better than what exists, as Google did with search.
- Most startups fail because customers don't want the product, not due to lack of funding—funding issues are a symptom.
- Get a prototype out quickly and refine it based on user feedback; rapid prototyping is essential.
- Founders should include technical people who understand users; business skills can be learned on the job.
- Target niche markets first, as they offer better odds and allow you to grow slowly and learn.
- Raise seed money from angels, avoid IP problems by checking founders' history, and negotiate with VCs carefully.
- Spend money slowly, hire minimally, and cultivate a culture of cheapness to extend runway and focus on product.
- Ideal startup founders are good hackers aged 23–38, willing to compress their working life into a few intense years.
Hiring is Obsolete
2 months ago
- The cost of starting a startup has dropped dramatically, now mainly requiring food and rent, enabling more people, including undergraduates, to start companies.
- Young people are often undervalued by employers, but the market can directly value them through startups, and users don't care about age.
- Big companies struggle with product development and often buy startups to acquire talent and technology, which is becoming more efficient than in-house development.
- The trend of large companies acquiring early-stage startups will accelerate, with hybrid investment-acquisition models becoming common.
- Investors have less power over founders as startups need less funding, allowing founders to retain control and avoid being replaced by CEOs.
- Risk is proportionate to reward; young people should take career risks like starting a startup because they have time to recover from failure.
- Experience is not the main barrier; the key is learning to make something users want, which can be understood by talking to users directly.
- The essay advises finishing college and working for a company before starting a startup, but acknowledges exceptions like Bill Gates who succeeded by dropping out.
The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn
2 months ago
- Release a minimal version 1 quickly to get user feedback, then improve it based on reactions.
- Continuously add features and improvements to keep users engaged and attract new ones.
- Prioritize user happiness by making a great product and explaining its value clearly.
- Focus on real threats like other startups and internal issues, not big companies or minor disasters.
- Determination is the most important quality for startup founders; be flexible but committed.
- There's always room for innovation; don't assume any field is tapped out.
- Manage optimism by being realistic about deals and external factors, but stay focused on building for users.
A Student's Guide to Startups
2 months ago
- Graduates now have a third option beyond jobs and grad school: starting a startup, which may become as popular as grad school.
- Starting a startup in college has a built-in 'escape hatch' that reduces motivation; graduation removes this excuse, making failure more significant.
- Peer opinion is a powerful motivator for startup founders, often stronger than the goal of getting rich.
- Graduation changes the 'prevailing winds' of peer pressure, making it harder to start a startup later due to increased stakes.
- Young founders have advantages: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues from school, and ignorance that can lead to innovation.
- Poverty allows founders to live cheaply and think cheaply, which is critical for startup survival and evolution.
- Rootlessness enables mobility, which is important as many startups require moving to startup hubs like the Bay Area.
- Undergrads have an edge in finding co-founders because they are surrounded by ambitious, technically minded peers in school.
- Ignorance can be useful as it prevents intimidation and can lead to innovative reinventions, as seen with Steve Wozniak.
- Young founders often build 'class projects' that lack iterative problem definition and intensity, which are key in real startups.
- Work experience teaches the elimination of the 'flake reflex' and the harsh reality of the work-money relationship.
- To prepare for a startup in college, learn from startups by observing or working at one, build skills like user understanding, and leverage the co-founder-rich environment.
The Founder Visa
2 months ago
- Establish a new class of visa for startup founders, costing nothing, to increase the number of startups in the US.
- The biggest constraint on new US startups is not taxes or regulations, but preventing founders from entering the country.
- Letting 10,000 startup founders per year could create 2,500 new companies, boosting the economy and creating American jobs.
- Visa terms would prohibit founders from working for existing companies, only their own startups, so they don't take American jobs.
- Define a startup by market-based test: recognition from accredited startup investors, similar to university accreditation for student visas.
- This small immigration change could have a visible economic effect and costs practically nothing to implement.
What Kate Saw in Silicon Valley
2 months ago
- Many startups fail constantly, even well-known ones.
- Startups often pivot their ideas significantly from the start.
- Starting a startup can cost very little money.
- Founders are scrappy, combining threat and lack of dignity effectively.
- Silicon Valley is heavily tech-saturated, making industry involvement common.
- YC speakers consistently advocate launching fast, iterating, and listening to users.
- Successful startup founders are often casual and unassuming.
- Having advisors is crucial for founders to avoid being lost.
- Startup work is solitary, requiring long uninterrupted focus.
Organic Startup Ideas
2 months ago
- The best way to generate startup ideas is to ask yourself what you wish someone would make for you.
- There are two types of startup ideas: organic (growing out of your own life) and made-up (for other users).
- Organic ideas are generally preferable, especially for young founders, as they come from personal experience.
- Examples of organic ideas: Apple (Steve Wozniak wanted a computer), Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg's project).
- Made-up ideas can work, but require experience to predict what others want; Viaweb is an example.
- Focus on fixing broken things in your daily life, even if they seem trivial; they may become valuable.
- Don't be discouraged if your initial product is dismissed as a toy—that can be a good sign.
- Young founders are best at discovering organic ideas because they use the latest technology.
- The most valuable opportunity is an unmet need that is just becoming fixable.
Why Startup Hubs Work
2 months ago
- Startups naturally fail; the key question is what saves them in places like Silicon Valley, which acts as an antidote to the default failure.
- The antidote has two components: an environment where startups are the norm and chance meetings with helpful people, both driven by the density of startup people.
- A startup-friendly environment makes starting a company feel normal and encourages ambition, even for those who might not succeed.
- Chance meetings, like Sean Parker meeting Facebook founders, provide unexpected critical help that can compensate for typical startup disasters.
- Density of startup people enables chance meetings, diverse expertise matching, and the formation of social norms that promote optimism and ambition.
- Optimism is a distinctive trait of Silicon Valley, contrasting with other prosperous regions.
Startup = Growth
2 months ago
- A startup is defined by rapid growth, not just being newly founded or tech-focused.
- Startups need to make something scalable for a large market.
- Successful startups often originate from founders seeing problems others overlook.
- Growth rate is the key metric; target 5-7% weekly growth during early stages.
- Focusing on growth simplifies decision-making, acting as a compass for the startup.
- High growth leads to exponential value; small differences in growth rate produce vastly different outcomes.
- Startups are risky but have high expected value due to potential huge returns.
- VCs prefer startups for easier oversight (capital gains vs. dividends) and high returns.
- Acquirers buy startups for both their value and the threat they pose to existing businesses.
- Growth drives the entire startup ecosystem: funding, acquisitions, and the rational choice to start one.
The Hardware Renaissance
2 months ago
- Y Combinator observed a significant trend: 7 out of 84 recent startups were hardware companies, and they performed better on average.
- Investors often have a bias against hardware, but founders are better at foreseeing the future because they are creating it.
- Multiple factors are driving the hardware trend: crowdfunding, tablets enabling new products, improved electric motors, reliable wireless connectivity, easier manufacturing, better prototyping tools (Arduinos, 3D printing, laser cutters, CNC milling), and online retail reducing reliance on traditional retailers.
- Hardware has always been appealing, but software had an advantage for rapid growth; this advantage may be temporary if hardware shipping becomes as easy as software.
- Founders interested in hardware should not be discouraged by investor bias; Y Combinator is especially interested in funding hardware startups.
- There is room for the next Steve Jobs, but also for new founders to make their mark.
How to Get Startup Ideas
2 months ago
- The best startup ideas come from problems founders themselves have, not from trying to think up ideas.
- Successful startups often begin with a small, urgent need (a 'well') rather than a broad but shallow interest.
- Founders should 'live in the future' and build what seems missing, often by noticing gaps in their own experience.
- Avoid 'made-up' or 'sitcom' ideas; focus on real problems that users urgently need solved.
- Being at the leading edge of a changing field helps you notice opportunities that others miss.
- Turn off filters like 'unsexy' and 'schlep' to see valuable ideas that others avoid.
- If you need an idea quickly, look for unmet needs in your own life or others', or seek out dying industries ripe for replacement.
The New Normal
2 months ago
- The 'new normal' is a phenomenon where your perception of normality changes due to the people around you, altering your ambitions and chances of achieving them.
- Event 1 (Serendipity): At age 12, Mitchell joined a BBS for writing game cheats, leading to a business selling cheats for $25/month, earning $400/month as a freshman.
- Event 2 (Opportunity): His programming passion and popular PHP blog led to a job as a Ruby on Rails developer, shifting his focus to building web applications for startups.
- Event 3 (Choice): He chose to move to San Francisco, work at Kiip, and surround himself with tech entrepreneurs, making it normal to pursue passion and start companies.
- Event 4 (Confidence): He left Kiip to start HashiCorp due to Vagrant's popularity, gaining confidence from his new normal to take the leap into entrepreneurship.
APPLE: My Key to Success
2 months ago
- APPLE is an acronym used by Apple store employees: Approach customers with a personalized warm welcome, Probe politely to understand needs, Present a solution to take home today, Listen for and resolve issues, End with a fond farewell and invitation to return.
- Mitchell Hashimoto attributes the success of his side projects (a passive income business sold to fund HashiCorp, Vagrant, and IRCRelay) to applying the APPLE method.
- Being respectful, welcoming, polite, and attentive to customers is more important than immediate outcomes; the example of handling a cancellation request from user Brian shows probing for issues and presenting a systemic solution rather than a quick fix.
- The best solution goes beyond a simple response; for IRCRelay, Mitchell implemented a change to automatically handle nickname conflicts, demonstrating genuine care for user experience.
- Ending interactions with a fond farewell and invitation to return reinforces good customer relations, even if the customer does not immediately re-engage.
Success may not matter if you aren't doing what you love
2 months ago
- Product market fit is essential but insufficient for startup success; founder market fit is also critical.
- Founder market fit involves cultural alignment, temperament, and personal traits that enable effective communication and connection with target customers.
- It encompasses factors like introversion/extroversion, cultural niche, technical background, location, hobbies, team size, fundraising preferences, and even attire.
- Without founder market fit, founders may lose interest or become frustrated, leading to startup failure even if some success is achieved.
- Founders should introspect to identify trade-offs and ensure they pursue markets they can sustain passion for over the long term (typically 7-10 years).

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entrepreneurship

That Time I Told My Wife I Wanted to Quit My Job

Why to Not Not Start a Startup

It's okay to be selfish

Imposter syndrome

From Side-Project to Full-Time: 5 Things I've Learned in 5 Years

Some business advice for academic startups/spinouts - Bert Hubert's writings

How to Start a Startup

Hiring is Obsolete

The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn

A Student's Guide to Startups

The Founder Visa

What Kate Saw in Silicon Valley

Organic Startup Ideas

Why Startup Hubs Work

Startup = Growth

The Hardware Renaissance

How to Get Startup Ideas

The New Normal

APPLE: My Key to Success

Success may not matter if you aren't doing what you love