I asked, "What’s the best free tool for startups?"

I received 200+ replies.

Here are 10 free tools every startup must know:

Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.

In that spirit, here's some quick Things Many People Find Too Obvious To Have Told You Already.

Your idea is not valuable, at all. All value is in the execution. You think you are an exception; you are not. You should not insist on an NDA to talk about it; nobody serious will engage in contract review over an idea, and this will mark you as clueless.

Technologists tend to severely underestimate the difficulty and expense of creating software, especially at companies which do not have fully staffed industry leading engineering teams ("because software is so easy there, amirite guys?")

Charge more. Charge more still. Go on.

The press is a lossy and biased compression of events in the actual world, and is singularly consumed with its own rituals, status games, and incentives. The news necessarily fails to capture almost everything which happened yesterday. What it says is important usually isn't.

Companies find it incredibly hard to reliably staff positions with hard-working generalists who operate autonomously and have high risk tolerances. This is not the modal employee, including at places which are justifiably proud of the skill/diligence/etc of their employees.

Swami Ramanujar:
Important personalities in Sri Ramanujas Life :
🌸ASURI KESHAVA SOMAYAJI-Father of Sri Ramanujar .Asuri keshava somayaji was a learned brahmana living in sriperumbudur.

🌸KANTHIMATHI-Mother of Sri Ramanuja. Kanthimathi was the sister of sri periya thirumalai nambi .
🌸SRI YAMUNACHARYA-Acharya of Sri Ramanuja.Also known as Alavandar.
🌸THIRUKOKOSHTIYUR NAMBI-Also known as Ghosti Purna.He instructed the Rahasya Traya to Sri Ramanujar.

He lived in thirukoshtiyur.
🌸THIRUKKACHI NAMBI-Kanchi purna was born in puvirunthavalli near kanchipuram and met the young ramanuja at an important time.He did the service of Lord Varadha.

🌸THIRUVARANGA PERUMAL ARAIYAR-Important acharya lived in srirangam and rendered the service of playing music for lord Sriranganatha.

🌸PERIYA THIRUMALAI NAMBI-He was the maternal uncle of Sri Ramanuja.He taught sri ramanuja about the epic of sri ramayana and other ithihaas and puranas.Served sri venkateswara at tirumala.

1/ new essay: What's next for marketplace startups? Reinventing the $10 trillion service economy, that's what. Co-authored with @ljin18 https://t.co/fgKbrHTnH5. A short thread 👇

2/ Marketplace startups have done incredibly well over the first few decades of the internet, reinventing the way we shop for goods, but have been less successful services. It's bc services are complex, subjective, fragmented, and often in real life. Makes it hard

3/ There's been 4 major eras at making the service economy work online. The Listings Era, the unbundled Craiglist era, the Uber for X era, and the Managed Marketplace era

4/ Each era has added more value than the last, and utilized technology innovations, from internet to social / "read/write web" to mobile. The "Unbundling Craigslist" era was particularly epic at generating startup ideas

5/ The problem is, all the low-hanging fruit has been picked off. The techniques that got us to here won't get us to the next phase. So we have to do some pretty different things. That's why "Managed Marketplaces" have been a big deal - hire folks as W-2s, certify quality, etc.

How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.