52 Tiny Venture Lessons

By definition, you will likely succeed a vanishingly-small percentage of the time, but—as the saying goes—that’s a feature, not a bug. The point is to venture—fistfuls of money in hand—at the furthest extremes of capitalism, hoping to stumble upon that rare, proper intersection of technology and commerciality.By design, most investments will miss t... See more

Take, for example, the ambition to “make your venture-backed startup profitable”: to develop, market, and distribute a product or service that’s never existed before, in a form that’s valuable and accessible enough for large numbers of people to want to pay you for it, in sufficient quantity that your revenue consistently exceeds your costs.

If you... See more

But life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible caree

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The deadline for YC S24 is tomorrow. Here's why you SHOULD NOT APPLY TO YC: YC seems like a reasonable proposition. They give you some money to help start your business, and they promise you access to a community of people that can help you along the way. In exchange, they don't ask for much. The standard YC deal is $500K for 7% equity. That doesn... See more