I love the idea of reinventing venture capital. Here are some great examples: Patagonia’s venture capital fund: invests in environmentally and socially responsible start-up companies, providing long-term, patient capital. I highly recommend reading Let My People Go Surfing by founder Yvon Chouinard. Y Combinator: invests small sums at the seed stage, but in large batches…
Tag: Y Combinator
Obsess about growth
Here are two fantastic posts from Y Combinator‘s Sam Altman and Paul Graham. Startup advice, briefly: Basically everything what Sam Altman knows, condensed in a very short and excellent post. Do things that don’t scale: Excellent essay by Paul Graham Key parts: “Listen to what your users tell you, improve your product, and then listen again. Keep…
Call your users
I’ve written about Y Combinator‘s mantra before: Talk to your users! Here is what I have done recently: I’ve written a short email to 100 of the most active Exsila users and asked them if they would like to do a short phone call with me. I asked them to send me their phone number and their availability….
Talk to users
Y Combinator — a successful start-up incubator — has a mantra: Talk to your users! Here is Y Combinator’s advice from the How to Start a Startup Lecture Series at Stanford (which I highly recommend!): “At YC, we tell founders to work on their product, talk to users, exercise, eat and sleep, and very little else. All the other…
Venture Leaders Boston 2008
Case Study Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts:Coffee at Dunkin stays warm for 2 hours; Coffee at Starbucks only 15–30 min. Learning: An apparantly tiny thing such as a different cup material can have huge implications. The coffee doesn’t matter, its the cup! Jessica Livingston — Author of the fantastic book ‘Founders at Work’ — her next book will be published…