Success image from Demetri Martin’s “This is a Book” For some reason, Founders are very open about all of the things they did “wrong”. Whether or not things worked out in the end, everyone has a narrative about how they bucked the […]
PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY THEY WANT TO START A COMPANY. Nobody ever spends years wishing they could run a company, or track key performance indicators over several quarters for a company. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard someone say that their dream is to lead a company. People are […]
THE LEFT ONE! NO! NO! THAT’S TOO FAR LEFT! SECOND FROM THE RIGHT. SECOND FROM THE RIGHT NEVER FAILS! PICK THE MIDDLE ONE! The Stanford CS106 Section Leaders are having their weekly staff meeting, and the Door Prize is being awarded. […]
tl;dr: Use Amazon Fresh for your grocery delivery, or Instacart if you’re a hipster. Disclaimer: I have friends who work at Instacart, but I have no loyalty to them, or to any friends really. Over the past several months, our household has […]
“You are making a major mistake,” said the prominent startup exec who was trying to convince us to give up on Context Optional and be “acqui-hired” by his well funded and highly praised startup. To be fair, it was something that we approached them with, when we were basically […]
Today is your day. You’ve got your degree! You’ll start your career as an interviewee. You’re ready to go. You know all your stuff. But maybe you’ll find that that stuff’s not enough. The people you’ll work for Are the Valley’s elite. […]
If you ask most founders why they wanted to start a company, you’ll likely find that a big part of it had to do with building a team. The notion of creating a place where people can have fun, build a career, […]
Ah, the “pivot”. It’s not a failure if it’s merely a complete change in what you’re doing. You’ve heard about lots of high profile pivots, like Groupon (originally for charity fundraising), Flickr (originally a game), and PayPal (originally a type of stone […]
In a number of recent conversations with startup founders, I’ve preceded any advice I might offer with this disclaimer: “We did things in a very nontraditional way.” Sure, every startup takes a different path. Some focus on building a killer product before […]
Especially early on, starting a company is about addressing one overarching concern that, if solved, will totally make everything so much easier. When I first started thinking about SpotDJ, I had a job. Being a loyal employee not looking to get sued, […]