Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

In hindsight, we clearly made the right decision. But at the time it wasn't obvious, so we kept negotiating with them. My tip for someone in a similar situation—a company looks like it might be going out of business—this might be the only way to get enough capital to survive, on terms that really aren't very acceptable: keep pushing at it. Don't sa

We always give a major update within 30 days after we launch a new product. Because that's really something that reinforces people's feelings about the project. If they buy in on day one and then they see a major new update after 2 weeks, they're really pleased. So for us, one of the secrets about how we market the product is to make sure that laun

Livingston: Is there any other advice you would give to someone who was thinking of starting a startup? Geschke: If you aren't passionate about what you are going to do, don't do it. Work smart and not long, because you need to preserve all of your life, not just your work life. One of the things that I felt really good about is that we—from the ve

Livingston: Was there ever a time when a competitor did something that made you fearful? Currier: iVillage started copying us, and I was very worried about it for probably a year, and then it all just faded away. Probably because it's hard to get the engineers, the psychologists, and the writers to talk to one another. You've got to build a culture

I think it's really important that you have a realization of what's important. You can't stress over things that you can't necessarily control. Even though we can control the success of the company to a certain extent, you have to be grateful for what you've got. We were able to buy a house. We never thought we'd be able to buy a house. That's a hu

Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least. It's that way with most startups too. The earliest phase is usually the most productive. That's when they have the really big ideas. Imagine what Apple was like when 100% of its employees were either

We would constantly try to come up with ones that the other person wouldn't be able to solve. I'm really into puzzles. I'm not a very quick solver, so I tend to take a long time. Not always, but on occasion, I will take a lot longer than an average time to solve it, but I almost always will succeed.

They wanted 30 percent of the company, which would value us at $1 million. It was an intense negotiation; I threatened to go to the other VCs if they didn't pony up the money. We finally settled on a 15 percent split with them and they valued the company at $2 million post money. But they'd put in a right of first refusal. Since I was a young entre

This book can help fix that problem, by showing everyone what, till now, only a handful people got to see: what happens in the first year of a startup. This is what real productivity looks like. This is the Formula 1 racecar. It looks weird, but it goes fast.