Sequoia, a16z, and others are getting into the accelerator game — With YC’s success with Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, and others, YC became one of the most popular ways to start a company. By providing advice, brand-name recognition, high-quality access to seed-stage investors, and initial funding — it was a no-brainer to apply to YC. YC had some competition with Techstars, 500…

Can you guess what slide it is? — I don’t know how many pitch decks I’ve seen, but I’m noticing a common trend. Founders never forget the problem, the solution, the market size, the team, etc. However, the traction slide seems to frequently and conveniently be ignored. On the one hand, I can understand why founders with little…

7 tips for successful angel investing from a founder — You got on the cap table — congrats! Getting on the cap table of a competitive startup is no small feat. But, to be a successful angel investor, you will need to invest in more great startups. One of the best ways to find other great startups is through the…

…and why it may not be a flat retention curve or 40% of your customers saying they’d be “very disappointed” if you went away — Product-market fit (PMF) is the mythical goal of early-stage startups — and rightfully so. Once you have PMF you are at that point where you can shift your daily focus from building something people want to getting what you’ve built out into the world and making money. Despite PMF being…

Culture doesn’t always eat strategy for breakfast — A recent article by NFX, a Bay Area-based VC firm, titled “Where to Build Your Startup” got many things right about where to build your startup, but still fell short on a key issue. Most importantly, arguing that culture was the cause, not the result of Silicon Valley’s success. So…

The Option 1, Option 2 Framework — When you’re building a new product, you constantly have to decide which features to build, when to build them and how to build them. However, when it comes to making these decisions, teams often fall into two failure modes — The Never-Ending Debate mode or The “Yes Team” mode. …

Minimizing your accomplishments is a morale killer — When I first started my startup, I often used the word just when talking about what we’d accomplished. We just had five customers. We just raised a pre-seed round. It‘s just me and the CTO. When I meet other founders, I often hear them using the “j word” too. This…

Along with discounts to save yourself some time and money — Updated October 2020 Finding the right products to use and looking for discount programs can be time-consuming. Here’s our tech stack along with discounts to save yourself some time. These aren’t affiliate links, just products we like. Products w/Discounts

6 questions to ask before applying to an incubator — You have an idea and want to make it a reality. Incubators and other programs like them are often among the first organizations you’ll encounter on your startup journey. As a result, they often seem like a logical place to start. …