The Fall Of Mic Was A Warning | HuffPost

"I don’t need a pair of Nikes. I need a 401(k)" -- and other lessons from the death of a venture-backed, Facebook-dependent, millennial-focused news site.

Startup Idea Validation Tools

The economics of vending machines

The pandemic has boosted interest in vending machine ownership. We surveyed 20+ operators to find out how much they make.

How We Created A $40K/Month 1-Click Integrations Platform

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?I'm Abhishek A Agrawal and I'm the founder of Integrately and CompanyHub. Our first product was CompanyHub CRM - the world's easiest CRM. Most salespeople hate using CRMs because they are complex and time-consuming. CompanyHub…

Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses

How are individual entrepreneurs (solopreneurs) building multi-million dollar companies? What can we learn from their stories? Read this report to find out.

https://www-bloomberg-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-09-09/lightmatter-startup-tries-to-speed-up-comput…

Sweatpants Forever: How the Fashion Industry Collapsed (Published 2020)

Even before the pandemic, it had started to unravel. What happens now that no one has a reason to dress up?

How a Single Mom Created a Plastic Food-Storage Empire

The story of Tupperware™ is one of innovation and reinvention: a new kind of plastic, made from industrial waste, became a symbol of female empowerment.

Patio11’s Law

@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

https://kamerontanseli.ghost.io/first-it-was-craiglist-next-its-zapier/

How to brainstorm great business ideas

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...

Startup Economic Lessons from Shen Yun’s Empire — Packy McCormick

You probably think startups have nothing in common with a classical Chinese dance performance. You’re wrong.

A startup built around building materials: Yesler marketplace is like Exped

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

On Creating A Health Care Website Used In 190 Countries

Hi! My name is Gerald Diaz. I’m a physician and co-founder of GrepMed.com. GrepMed is an image-based medical reference platform that leverages images as an alternative to traditional text-based medical resources. We’re trying to make it easier for doctors and other clinicians to…

Canva’s Digital Growth Strategy

Canva are one of Australia's most successfull startups. In this case study we analyse how they use digital channels to attract and acquire new users

Elad Blog: A Brief Guide To Startup Pivots (4 Types Of Pivots)

Most of the times, startup don't work. At some point it may make sense to either (1) give up on your original product and to sell the company, (2) shut down what you are doing and return money to investors, or (3) to pivot. You can read more on making the decision to give up in…

Tasks

Crossed Stitches

Beverly Pennington was a Pinterest-perfect entrepreneur whose patchwork quilts—made from people’s most treasured T-shirts—found thousands of devotees all over the country. But when the quilts stopped coming, leaving the shirts in limbo, her customers pieced together a plan to…

How VCs Make Money

Digging into "Two and Twenty" & VC compensation

How I Built A $200K/Month Business Selling Proofreading Courses

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hello! My name is Caitlin Pyle, and I start Proofread Anywhere back in 2014. I help proofreaders earn extra income from anywhere in the world… even if you’re starting from scratch! I have two different courses: Transcript…

Startup Benchmarks

I joked the other day that some of the best fairytales are written in Excel. While there isn’t a single magic number or set formula, understanding industry benchmarks can be really helpful to…

How Our Sustainable Corporate Merchandising Became a $40K/Month Business

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Gonzalo and with my partner Gala, we run a business called Sheedo. Our main product is a paper made out of waste cotton from the clothing industry, so we don’t cut trees or use toxic chemicals in our production line…

The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company

The tech stack of Listen Notes, the best podcast search engine and database.

This researcher studied 400,000 knitters and discovered what turns a hobby

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

All Things Sales! 16 Mini-Lessons for Startup Founders | Andreessen Horowitz

As a former CEO and software engineer (Citrix, XenSource, VERITAS, etc.), board member of GitHub (recently acquired by Microsoft), and lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Busines, a16z general partner Peter Levine is constantly asked “Why sales?” by…

The Subtle Art of User Onboarding & Adoption

The “traditional” user onboarding flows and walkthroughs are dead. Learn about the next era of user onboarding and how to adapt to the changes in your org.

The 4 Stages of 0->1 Products

This was first published on my mailing list The Looking Glass. Every week, I answer a reader’s question.

Buy Low-Tops, Sell High-Tops: A Sneaker Exchange Is Worth $1 Billion

StockX is one of several online marketplaces that have turned resales of shoes into a big — and highly valued — business.

Meet the next generation of entrepreneurs. They’re all over 65.

Inside Senior Planet, the tech-savviest retirement community on earth.

SoftBank’s first bet in energy storage is a startup that stacks concrete bl

So far, most large investments in energy storage have gone to companies building lithium-ion batteries. SoftBank's newest bet changes that.

How Duolingo Built a $700 Million Company Without Charging Users

“We believe true equality is when spending more can’t buy you a better education.” – Duolingo founders When the language learning software company Rosetta Stone went public in 2009, they… Keep reading

Tech Due Diligence Calculator by Point Nine Capital

That Time a Guy Cornered the Liquid Soap Market by Sneakily Buying Nearly Every Hand Soap Pump Available in the World

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…

Startup idea checklist | defmacro

I’ve been tinkering with different startup ideas and needed a good checklist to think through them. There are great templates for this already: The YC application, Amazon’s internal press release, and Sequoia’s Writing a Business Plan. I found myself mixing and tweaking these…

Pitt and CMU To Create Autonomous Robotic Trauma Care System

CMU and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense to create an autonomous trauma care system that fits in a backpack — or, as shown here, a folded stretcher.

The Camera as the App Layer

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

What Seven Years at Airbnb Taught Me About Building a Business

Create strong culture, stay laser-focused on problems, and set wildly ambitious goals

The Truth About the Scooter Economy — An Insider’s Perspective

There is a story arc of the electric scooter market that took the world by storm in 2018, was second-guessed late in the year and has…

Name It, and They Will Come — overreacted

A change starts with a story.

Stupid Advice: “You’ll Never Be Rich Working for Somebody Else”

Is being an entrepreneur really necessary for success? Here's why you should ignore the hype and how to pick your career path instead.

Markets To Build In (2019)

Nine interesting markets to track in 2019.

Iterative Development: The Secret to Great Product Launches — MindK

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is winning the space race. His secret to success lay in the iterative development process, borrowed straight from the software industry.

“She Never Looks Back”: Inside Elizabeth Holmes’s Final Months at Theranos

At the end, Theranos was overrun by a dog defecating in the boardroom, nearly a dozen law firms on retainer, and a C.E.O. grinning through her teeth about an implausible turnaround.

9 Habits of World Class Startups

A discussion of the 9 core operating principles that world class companies tend to embrace, by NFX Managing Partner James Currier.

Don't Pay to Acquire Your First Users

Recently, a founder asked to chat with me about SEO. During our call, the founder - whose startup is backed by a top-tier VC - said to me “I assume that you acquired your first users through paid marketing.” Really? Is this an assumption nowadays? Since we’ve raised money

Starting A Skin Care Product Business as a Middle School Teacher

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi there! I’m Leslie, the founder of Almond Clear, a line of skin care products that are formulated with mandelic (almond) acid (MA). MA is an amazing remedy for a range of skin concerns, from clearing up acne and folliculitis…

How PopSockets Prospered after Leaving Amazon

PopSockets opted not to be a direct vendor to Amazon. Instead, it chose one major reseller to represent it on the marketplace. But, Amazon would not allow it. So, PopSockets walked away.

Speed as a Habit

All things being equal, speed will determine whether your company succeeds or not. Here's how to make it core to your culture.

More Start-Ups Have an Unfamiliar Message for Venture Capitalists: Get Lost (Published 2019)

Frustrated with the perverse incentives of fast growth, founders are criticizing the investment model that built the tech industry as we know it.

CEO interview series: Michael Seibel on leadership attributes in successful startup leaders

Explore a glimpse into how M. Seibel thinks about leadership attributes and some contrarian views that may be at the heart of how he picks great companies.