Luc Cheung

So here's the story of how we missed Airbnb, one of the best startups to come our way in the past few years.

The Airbnb founders came out of the winter 2009 Y Combinator class. They came to see us during their time at YC. They told us about a great stunt they pulled at the Democratic Convention in Denver (in which Obama was nominated). They bought a... See more

One of the most important principles in Silicon Valley is that "you make what you measure." It means that if you pick some number to focus on, it will tend to improve, but that you have to choose the right number, because only the one you choose will improve; another that seems conceptually adjacent might not. For example, if you're a university... See more

“Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they are doing.” -Warren Buffet

in time customer expectations inflate. Per Jeff's latest annual letter to shareholders:

One thing I love about customers is that they are divinely discontent. Their expectations are never static – they go up. It’s human nature. We didn’t ascend from our hunter-gatherer days by being satisfied. People have a voracious appetite for a better way, and

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The opposite of process is chaos, but an in-between is rapid adaptation, emphasis on rapid . Limit scope as much as possible, ship small things fast, and react to feedback quickly.

The design process assumes that dev time is the utmost priority, and this moves a bulk of labor into the design process. This is a faulty premise. The most valuable thing... See more

Email GTD

The goal of the system is that the vast majority of emails don't get to you, because they don't need to.

You should only be responding to the very few emails per day that are important for you to take action on, and everything else should go to the relevant person.

To do that, everything needs to have a clear "place" it should go. The... See more

Incentives are the strongest force in the world. They explain why good people do awful things, why smart people do stupid things, and why ordinary people do amazing things. Nearly everyone underestimates how much their own beliefs and actions are influenced by their incentives, many of which are designed to fulfill someone else’s goals.