BC STARTUPS
Saved by @zmbnski

The Beatles wrote “Yesterday” in less than a minute.

Led Zeppelin wrote “Rock And Roll” in 30 minutes.

The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”, 10 min during a soundcheck.

The Rolling Stones, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, 40min.

Making a startup in 24 hours is perfectly fine.

 I worked on my first startup for 2.5years. It was an events app. Sunk in cost and expectations were so high, that I had to close it, despite getting consistent revenue.
In comparison, I wrote @CryptoJobsList in 2 days. And it's way more meaningful than what I've been doing in my events startup for 2.5 years.
When I let go of my engineering ego and let go of expectations that I need to raise capital and hustle for 4+ years — I started lauching fast and interating fast without any expectations — then I started coming up with something truly meaningful and useful ✨
12 startups in 12 months by @levelsio
24 hour startup by @thepatwalls
— are great challenges that make you focus on the end product value, iterate fast and see what sticks and ruthlessly kill what does not work.
If you are a first time tech founder, full time engineer, or even an accomplished maker with significant revenue — I urge you to keep launching NEW things on regular basis. 🚀

More from Startups

Eric
Eric
@ericbahn
1/ Recently, I learned about the concept of ‘struggle porn’. This refers to the fetish of sacrificing nearly everything (health, relationships, time) for your startup. I fear that this label is creating more harm than good.

2/ @nateliason wrote a fabulous article about this topic, which first introduced me to this concept. Everyone should read it:

3/ @alexisohanian also recently spoke about struggle porn, though referring to it as ‘hustle porn.’ (as the co-founder of @hustlefundvc, obviously I take issue with this pejorative definition of ‘hustle’, but that’s another topic)

4/ Struggling in itself isn’t necessarily bad. Let’s be real here--if you’re going to start a startup, you will struggle. Founders should expect to work harder generally than employees. You will be challenged in many ways and also be super rewarded in others. This is normal.

5/ However, if you are over-indexing on hard work without clear purpose and degrading your mental health/relationships in the process--then this is very bad and we obviously should not celebrate this behavior.
STARTUPS
John Cutler
John Cutler
@johncutlefish
Advice to a friend dealing with their chaotic startup...

Startups are inherently chaotic. No chaos = no opportunity. Startups exist because there is uncertainty, and new things to learn. (1/7) #startup

During a period of rapid growth, all things (structures, processes, etc.) eventually break. Some chaos is self-inflicted, and too much chaos can cause collapse / chronic harm (2/7) #startup

Agility is solving today’s problem, while not limiting your ability to solve tomorrow’s problem. There’s always a temptation to solve tomorrow’s problems.

There are good ideas everywhere, and opportunities everywhere. So focus is hard (3/7) #startup

Startups require an almost supernatural level of focus. You have to focus, while knowing full well many things are broken, and need work. Nothing is truly repeatable or efficient at this point, even when we want it to be (4/7) #startup

And that’s hard...so we tend to load up on the good ideas.

Pursuing all the good ideas will leave you (and others) burnt out. Self-inflicted chaos (5/7) #startup
STARTUPS
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Andrew Chen
Andrew Chen
@andrewchen
👇Thread.

Published a new essay: The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics – 80 slide deck included!


This was a deck that I created on my (longish) interview process with @a16z. It was a long path, starting with meeting folks at the firm 10 years ago. But the purpose of the deck was to explain how I would use my superpower in an investing context

Here's what I explain in the deck. As investors (whether angel or VC) we're often confronted with an up-and-to-the-right graph. Is it going to go up? Or down?


One solution to forecast these growth curves is the Growth Accounting Framework, where you add up New+Reactivated and subtract churned users. In each time period that gives you the difference in monthly actives.


The problem with this is that it's a lagging metric, not a leading one. We need to go one level deeper and look at the underlying loops that drive these numbers, to understand the quality.
STARTUPS
Elizabeth Yin
Elizabeth Yin
@dunkhippo33
Some wed night thoughts on investor “value add”:

1) At the end of the day, money is a commodity. That mere fact should make every vc shudder.

It is amazing how many ppl (incl myself) clamor to get into a commodity business!

2) As such, to differentiate, different investors provide other things beyond money. Sometimes it’s community. Sometimes hiring help. Sometimes expertise or sector-focused networks. Etc

3) And some VCs are truly value add! For example, if I had an edtech co, I would hands down raise from @jwdanner - he has been there as an entrepreneur, built schools, and invested in so many hit edtech companies.

4) But at the end of the day, regardless of who invested in you, it’s the founders + team who are doing all the work.

5) when I think about what I’ve done for my own founders, it’s ranged from doing intros (mostly to other investors) to cust acq advice to feedback etc

But the reality is - all of my founders would’ve figured out how to get that intro or that piece of advice w out me
STARTUPS , INVESTORS
Damon Chen
Damon Chen
@damengchen
I shipped all these apps in 2020. Most of them generated $0.

🎬 https://t.co/JAhXqsuu6h $0
🌍 https://t.co/BrNUAhfiIT $0
💡 https://t.co/ZWcLfOH4aI $0
🐞 https://t.co/aghOxYEcPI $1.99
👍 https://t.co/2JhJLe27pW $3,025 in 10 days.

But that's ok, just keep shipping! My stories👇

🎬 https://t.co/wuiBp1XsYD is the first thing I created. It's a community for indie makers. The different thing is we post updates in videos. I created it for fun as I think the world doesn't need one more text-based forum, so I make a video one. No monetization plan so far.

🌍 https://t.co/fiwjgCWho5 is a social app. The idea is from Linktree, an app to share your social links. I thought it would be cool to add more visuals to it, and meanwhile we can explore others around. I also have no monetization plan for it. Make it for fun too.

💡 https://t.co/fZfL45uvVX is a platform to connect influencers with their fans. People says it's like @superpeer. But the only difference is it's all sync. Influencers don't need to commit their time to fixed slot. Fans pay to ask questions, influencers can answer at anytime.

Continuing Influenswer... I think the product has its potential. But for now maybe I didn't find the right niche to serve. Will re-evaluate it in future.
STARTUPS

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Jacques Favreau
Jacques Favreau
@betaorbust
For the record: that's not a "strong work ethic."
That's exploiting young unattached engineers and spinning it as "team culture."

Toxic 💀💀


That's not something to aspire to. That's not good management. If you're working sustained 70+ hrweeks, somebody is taking advantage of you.

We have fetishized the overworked engineer. It's toxic but so pervasive that Mr. Ng (and others) feel it's ok to advertise as a positive.

Having this as "culture" breeds a monoculture of unattached, young engineers. Not good for them & not good for your company long term.

It's not good for them because their first job burns them out and physically wears them down. This happened to me and many of my coworkers.
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Robin Berjon
Robin Berjon
@robinberjon
Recently, the @CNIL issued a decision regarding the GDPR compliance of an unknown French adtech company named "Vectaury". It may seem like small fry, but the decision has potential wide-ranging impacts for Google, the IAB framework, and today's adtech. It's thread time! 👇

It's all in French, but if you're up for it you can read:
• Their blog post (lacks the most interesting details): https://t.co/PHkDcOT1hy
• Their high-level legal decision: https://t.co/hwpiEvjodt
• The full notification: https://t.co/QQB7rfynha

I've read it so you needn't!

Vectaury was collecting geolocation data in order to create profiles (eg. people who often go to this or that type of shop) so as to power ad targeting. They operate through embedded SDKs and ad bidding, making them invisible to users.

The @CNIL notes that profiling based off of geolocation presents particular risks since it reveals people's movements and habits. As risky, the processing requires consent — this will be the heart of their assessment.

Interesting point: they justify the decision in part because of how many people COULD be targeted in this way (rather than how many have — though they note that too). Because it's on a phone, and many have phones, it is considered large-scale processing no matter what.
TECH
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Dani\xeblle Stotijn
Daniëlle Stotijn
@DDay35962863
NESARA / GESARA explained for all who are not aware.

"The End of Poverty, The End of Debt, The Beginning of a New Golden Age!"

No Poverty, No Hunger, No Debt, Only Global Prosperity and Peace for ALL

NESARA will merge with GESARA

N = National (US)
G = Global
CRYPTO
Suhail
Suhail
@Suhail
1/ The first 18 months of starting a company is often life or death. I must've made 5 different companies that each failed within 9 mo. 😭 Each time the company failed I figured out what I could do better. Eventually startup #6 got to $40K/mo by month 18. Here’s what I learned...

2/ Stay focused! Ignore things that are a waste of time: meetups & conferences, meetings with no clear agenda, fundraising if you're not fundraising, reading lots of tech media articles, etc. Every week should feel like significant progress in the first year.

3/ Your first 5 hires will be the difference between life or death. Choose carefully. Be picky. Many of the things we do at the company still are a result of those early hires' legacy. Have fun as a tight knit team. It will change & evolve as you get bigger so enjoy this moment.

4/ Growth may be flat for the first 9 months. It's gonna be okay. Almost every company has experienced this: Airbnb had to sell cereal in-between, Slack failed as a gaming company first, Tesla sold only 147 cars after 6 years! You probably won't be an overnight success either.

5/ In the beginning, do customer support yourself. You will learn a lot about why your product sucks. I did 5,000+ support tickets when it was the two of us. Delight customers & fix things fast while you learn. It will help you build an amazing intuition about your customers.
STARTUPS
Bijay
Bijay
@Bijay_reborn
A small write up on how the OPTION PRICES BEHAVES AT SUPPORT & RESISTANCE


https://t.co/EIbXwcHpHf


https://t.co/zDamXyOhh6
ALL