We’ve all heard that line about the 10 year “overnight” successes. A friend* recently told me a key metric of his company was growing 4% week-over-week. Actually, he related with some dismay that it was only growing at 4%, and he was looking to build another product to make their Continue Reading
It’s all over the news, Yahoo! is in talks to acquire Tumblr. The popular blogging platform, which was founded in New York in 2007, has just a few months of cash left and hasn’t successfully monetized their platform fast enough to cover costs. To date investors have put $125M into Continue Reading
Past performance does not guarantee future results for startups, venture capitalists, accelerator programs, the media, individual founders, or any other part of the startup ecosystem. On the mission to see into the future, there is a tendency to over value the information and lessons of the past. With 20/20 hindsight Continue Reading
500 Startups announced the non-stealth participants in their current batch today in a TechCrunch article, and while they’ve kindly put them in alphabetical order… you probably know by now that’s not how I roll. I’ve been tracking many of these companies for awhile now and will certainly start tracking those Continue Reading
This is the Startup Index series, an ongoing effort to measure the momentum of startup companies using external signals. It is calculated based on weighted factors such as web traffic, social media share of voice, inbound links, etc. I usually add some music, to make cruising a spreadsheet a little Continue Reading
I get a lot of feedback asking why the monthly startup momentum index doesn’t include revenue as a signal. There are two reasons, and the first is that most startups don’t want to provide that data to outsiders. The second is a bit counterintuitive, but stick with me and I’ll Continue Reading
How to Read the Startup Momentum Index Momentum measures a quantity of motion, measured as a product of its mass and velocity. In case we want to measure the momentum of a startup (the “bodyâ€) where mass is the company’s share of web traffic (as measured by Alexa rank) and Continue Reading
Companies currently interviewing for Y Combinator have taken the Internet’s advice to reach out to alumni to practice before they present, but unfortunately we don’t scale very well. I’ve prepped with a dozen teams so far and will probably talk to a dozen more before the weekend ends, but that Continue Reading
My old startup died. I have been working on my new startup. It’s kind of named after this band I love, but not entirely. New name, and we’ve got a long way to go. Art Is Hard Cut it out – your self-inflicted pain is getting too routine the crowds Continue Reading
Last night I logged into Referly for the first time in a few weeks. I’ve been trying not to do that, because there are still so many things I want to fix and when I see them I just… and I was so in love with it and it’s just… Continue Reading