better doing
6 lessons from Y-Combinator, 10 years later.
“YC taught us to outsource very little. Own the problem. Own the outcome. And if you do, you get to be stupidly ambitious.” ~ learn more
Tag: Startups
tech, startups, internet
Medical tourism: a tarpit idea.
“I was recently introduced to the idea of tarpit ideas. These are essentially startup ideas that seem like a great opportunity and have been tried many times before but end with the company not working out.” FYI: Scroll down a […]
oh, chicago
An ode to Techstars Chicago.
“The story of Techstars Chicago starts with an organization called Excelerate Labs. Created in 2009, the program was led by a group of local founders and investors, and was designed to connect existing successful founders and operators with new companies […]
tech, startups, internet
Advice for AI startups: sell work, not software.
VC investor Sarah Tavel suggests that LLM-based software companies should avoid selling end-user productivity, and instead sell a complete work output. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet
The low budget startup.
Indie draws parallels between low budget movies and low budget startups. A quote from producer Jason Blum, who generated $193 million in box-office revenue on its $15k budget for Paranormal Activity: “The single biggest reason people don’t replicate the our […]
tech, startups, internet
How an infant formula startup recovered from an FDA recall.
A bit of publicity almost killed this startup, Bobbie, by drawing the attention of regulators to their pilot. This is the story of how they turned the situation around and capitalized on the moment. A couple years since this article […]
tech, startups, internet
Venture scale vs. venture risk.
“There is nothing inherently “wrong” with venture capital. Its impact and ability to fund, and rapidly scale, businesses is undeniable and highly valuable. But there is an underlying business model driving behavior that many overlook or ignore until they can’t […]
tech, startups, internet
Bet-the-company ideas.
“The big late-stage pivots tend to look too early from the outside and to feel too late from the inside.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet
The acquihire market for early stage startups is ice cold.
VC Hunter Walk suggests a wild strategy for those who face a dwindling cash pile and no prospects of a fundraise: announce publicly that you’re for sale. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet
The state of private markets in Q1 2023.
Carta’s doing some content marketing with their data (which is arguably pretty good). “Total venture capital raised by startups plunged 80% from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023. Venture deal count fell 45% over the same span. Overall, Q1 was the […]