Items tagged startups in Dec
Filters: Month: Dec × startups × Sorted by date
There is something so vulnerable and frightening about doing your own thing, because it’s your fault if it doesn’t work. And then there’s this other kind of work, where you’re paid an extraordinary amount of money, you’re the hero before you walk in the door, you’re not even held that accountable, because you have a limited amount of time, and all you can do is make it better.
— Craig Mazin # 31st December 2023, 8:53 pm
If you are pre-product market fit it’s probably too early to think about event based analytics. If you have a small number of users and are able to talk with all of them, you will get much more meaningful data getting to know them than if you were to set up product analytics. You probably don’t have enough users to get meaningful data from product analytics anyways.
— Michael Malis # 11th December 2020, 6:39 am
What are the best strategies to get a tech job at YC-backed startups in the next 5 months?
Keep an eye on jobs | Hacker News—it’s the official listing of almost all jobs advertised at YC companies.
[... 46 words]What are some examples of startups funded simply for the strength and uniqueness of its founders rather than for any particular idea?
A good portion of YC companies fit this definition—it’s common for YC to fund the team and then work with them to help them either fix their initial idea or find a better one.
[... 64 words]What is the Y Combinator cycle?
The winter program generally runs from January until March, with application deadlines the previous October (this year the deadline was was October 21st). Interview invites were sent out on November 4th, and interviews themselves in Mountain View were November 15th-19th. Teams get a yes or no answer the day of their interview.
[... 98 words]Is it fair for someone who calls themselves a “seed” investor to require traction?
It’s completely fair. If you’re building a web-based startup these days, you should be able to demonstrate initial traction on an idea with very little up-front investment—a couple of months of your time and a few hundred dollars in hosting costs, perhaps. Being able to do that is an excellent indicator that you’re a good bet for a seed investor. If you are unable to do that, you’re a much higher risk for investment.
[... 129 words]Which Y Combinator companies focus on finance?
TrustEgg (YCW11) help people open trust funds for their kids: TrustEgg Allows Anyone To Set Up A Trust For Their Kids | TechCrunch
[... 38 words]How did GitHub get its initial contributors?
The founders were active participants in the open source and Ruby on Rails communities. The first users were people they knew in those communities (GitHub accounts were invite only at first).
[... 44 words]What are the best set of marketing/payment tools for use in startup with a subscription webapp?
Stripe has excellent support for subscription payments, including helping manage recurring payments and pro-rataing for upgrades to plans half way through a billing cycle etc. I believe BrainTree offers similar tools.
[... 88 words]As a non-technical single founder for a web startup, is it better to hire a design firm to build the prototype, or find a technical co-founder?
Find a co-founder. The problem with using an outside agency to build your initial prototype is that you won’t really start learning about your product until after you have launched it. You need to have the talent available in-house to then make changes and improvements based on the feedback you get from real users.
[... 123 words]How great do you need to be in programming to be a technical (Co) founder?
You don’t need to be amazing, but you do need to know how to ship. You might be the best person at writing complex machine learning algorithms in the world, but if you can’t get running code deployed in a way that lets customers use it you won’t be able to get anywhere that matters.
[... 76 words]Is it viable to say to an investor that you will quit your job and work full-time on a startup, if you get the funding?
This will reflect badly on you. Why should an investor risk their money on your company if you aren’t even willing to take the risk of quitting your job for it?
[... 62 words]What advice does Paul Graham commonly give Y Combinator startups?
Read the essays on http://www.paulgraham.com/—many of them are derived from advice he has already been giving YC startups.
[... 37 words]How much Django should one know before going in for an interview for a developer position?
I’ve hired people for Django positions who didn’t know Django at all. If you’re a good web engineer you should be able to pick up Django in a few days, and be properly productive with it in a few weeks. Instead, I’m interested in testing your understanding of the key underlying concepts: HTTP, SQL, HTML and JavaScript, XSS, CSRF, scaling, cookies, web app security in general, web performance optimisation, unit testing, refactoring, model/template/view-or-controller—and evidence that you’ve solved problems relating to those in production environments.
[... 177 words]How do startups verify the real names of their users?
The short answer is they don’t: they expect people to obey the policy, then block accounts that are clearly in violation.
[... 134 words]What are the coolest benefits/perks offered by startups?
I heard that Songkick give all of their employees a monthly gig budget to encourage them to go to live music (since that’s what the site is all about), which I think is a neat and appropriate perk.
[... 52 words]Where can I find a calendar of upcoming tech events in the San Francisco / Bay area?
Take a look at http://lanyrd.com/places/san-fra...
[... 29 words]What are the main things a non-technical co-founder of a tech company should focus on while the site is still being developed?
Building the right product.
[... 32 words]If I’m bootstrapping a company and expect to get funding within months, what structure of company do VC’s look for? C Corp, S Corp, LLC?
Apparently a Delaware C Corp makes everything a whole lot easier once VCs are involved.
[... 46 words]What are some ways I can get the word out about my startup/entrepreneur focused conference?
Add it to lanyrd.com and make sure you list all of the speakers. Then anyone who signs in to Lanyrd and is following at least one of your speakers on Twitter will be told about your event.
[... 59 words]StartupBoeing—Starting an Airline (via) Boeing’s guide to starting your own airline. # 15th December 2009, 10:38 pm