Perfectly Awesome

The commerce technology stack is changing. And the ability to move information from one system or platform to another is, perhaps, the essential feature mid-sized or enterprise businesses should look for in software providers.

Business models based on the compiled list at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4924647. I find the link very hard to browse, so I made a simple version in Markdown instead. · GitHub

The unbundling of Excel is just as important as the unbundling of Craigslist. Here's what you need to know about the Excel Economy and how SaaS companies can take advantage of different verticals and use cases that Excel has dominated.

Eliciting product feedback elegantly is a competitive advantage for LLM-software. Over the weekend, I queried Google’s Bard, & noticed the elegant feedback loop the product team has incorporated into their product. I asked Bard to compare the 3rd-row leg room of the leading 7-passenger SUVs. At the bottom of the post is a little G button, which double-checks the response using Google searches. I decided to click it. This is what I would be doing in any case ; spot-checking some of the results.

Methodologies for understanding and measuring marketplace liquidity

On asking people to consider stuff that sounds crazy

Tap into people's unspoken needs to create breakthrough innovations.

Building a two-sided market is probably the hardest thing you can build as an entrepreneur. It's so hard that a few weeks ago, I organized a Marketplace

Reselling software can mean recurring revenue and great profit margins. But how do you choose a niche and find your first customers?

Zapier has 3M+ users and generates $125M in ARR. At a $5B valuation, its fast-growing horizontal platform is unable to meet the demands of all of its customers. The increase of underserved Zapier customers presents an opportunity.

How data businesses start, and how they keep going, and growing, and growing.

Two inventors turned a failed experiment into an irresistibly poppable product that revolutionized the shipping industry

SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics shows how the shift in technology has changed business; it is a perfect example of using the Internet to one’s advantage.

From blood banks and barcodes to the Super Soaker and the pizza box, here are the fascinating stories behind inventions that changed the world.

The marketplace revolution is still just beginning and the enterprise gateway is the newest type of marketplace.

Some careers can be made on the back of a single, wonderful idea. We take a look at what that looks like, through Bill Gurley's VC career.

An introduction to forming hypothesis statements for product experimentation.

Curious about product design at Dropbox? Here’s a look at tools we use for solving problems, making decisions, and communicating ideas.

The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea...

@mmcgrana: Patio11’s Law: The software economy is bigger than you think, even when you take into account Patio11’s Law.1 A few years ago, I woke up in Sunriver, OR, and went to make coffee. The house had one of those bed-and-breakfast-type coffee trays. Drip machine. A stack

Working backwards and breaking free from the norm exposes new and unique opportunities you probably haven’t considered.

It's been said that ideas don't matter, and that only execution does. I wholeheartedly disagree. You need both to succeed, but you can only get so good...

Matt Meyers spent two decades at Weyerhaeuser dealing with product engineering, manufacturing, software engineering, product development, sales and

An MIT Sloan Ph.D. candidate discovered what turned skilled hobbyists into entrepreneurs.

Robert R. Taylor is a name you’ve probably never heard before. But this serial entrepreneur made his mark on the world of business by coming up with several products you are almost certainly very familiar with. Today we’re going to talk about, on the surface, the most boring of those- liquid hand soap. Something you can thank Mr. Taylor and [...]

Your phone increasingly knows what you’re taking a picture of. And which apps you have installed. So…

Chris Dixon's blog.

Editor’s note: This article by now-a16z general partner Alex Rampell was originally published in 2012 in TechCrunch.  The biggest ecommerce opportunity today involves taking offline services and offering them for sale online (O2O commerce). The first generation of O2O commerce was driven by discounting, push-based engagements, and artificial scarcity. The still-unfulfilled opportunity in O2O today is tantamount to...