Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may...

No matter what deal you have going on, assume it will fall through. The predictive power of this simple rule is amazing. There will be a tendency, as...

Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying...

Bootstrapping sounds great in principle, but this apparently verdant territory is one from which few startups emerge alive. The mere fact that...

One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the...

Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company...

Even if you get demoralized, don't give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. There are a lot of...

In a rapidly growing market, you don't worry too much about efficiency. It's more important to grow fast. If there's some mundane problem getting in...

"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models...

Running a startup can be demoralizing. That is certainly true. I've been there, and that's why I've never done another startup. The low points in a...