On Startups

Whatever works for you is great. But it brings to mind Kate Losse's words, on who's supposed to "break things" in our society: "What Stanford does not teach young white men like Midas, in the course of teaching them about startups, is that everything they are being taught—about breaking rules, taking risks, and not asking for permission—works especially well for them, and often only for them, because of who they are, what they look like, and all the associations their appearance does and does not carry. On University Avenue, white men who break things look, in Midas’ words, “cute”, not delinquent or scary, and this is why privileged young men are brought to Palo Alto in droves to learn and practice the business of what Facebook calls “breaking things”. At every turn this breaking of things is celebrated and encouraged. If you’re not breaking things in Palo Alto, you’re not doing your job. "…unless you’re not a young white man. "If you happen to live two more miles down University Avenue from where Midas trespassed camp boundaries, you are living in East Palo Alto, which is the economic and racial counterpoint to blond-boy-celebrating, millionaire-laden Palo Alto. And if you live in East Palo Alto and you decided to walk across the 101 freeway to University Avenue, to the same cafe that Midas walked to from the other side, you’d be taking a risk, but not one likely to be rewarded." (https://medium.com/on-startups/521cb394fda2)

not sure about any revenue. But I guess they are 9 right now. Ryan sent out a blog article about his journey in his newsletter today : https://medium.com/on-startups/the-artifacts-of-product-hunt-11682e9e0…

http://wadefoster.net/post/42802176600/full-stack-marketing https://medium.com/on-startups/rise-of-the-full-stack-marketer-1308a8f…

If your startup is actually shutting down, then this period you're in is as good as a notice period. I suspect you might find chatting with the Pay With Tab guys interesting, they were in a similar boat and also wrote that article about startup failure: https://medium.com/on-startups/b0722086c0f7

SEO has evolved however much of the published SEO advice is stuck in the past. People are proclaiming "SEO is dead"... that will only be true the day people stop using search engines to find information, more like "SEO has changed". There's a new SEO in town. What exactly is the new SEO you ask? Check out my full answer here: https://medium.com/on-startups/f15264e5d790

After skimming through all comments, I decided to humbly post my blog a while ago about hiring offshore team on Elance to develop my first iPad app, because it is a journey along which I learned a lot and derived pleasure. https://medium.com/on-startups/bad992e31ab6

I hope priceonomics is doing well and do not get acquired like Decide.com did by ebay: https://medium.com/on-startups/d74efec8b1a8 Unfortunately I know them mostly from their blog and not their product.

Be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You're probably doing a better job than you realize. Try working with an executive coach - I work with Bryan Franklin. It's easier for you to develop leadership and management skills than it is for an outsider to really grok your business and share your vision. Regarding the marketing role, be sure to get the right kind of marketer: https://medium.com/on-startups/1308a8f17137 Most of all: go slow on executive hires. There are a lot of "good talkers" out there. An empty seat is better than the wrong person.

Should you take random meetings? Gary V. says yes, @ev says no: https://medium.com/on-startups/ea0b02c504cd

Product Hunt - www.producthunt.com - San Francisco/Remote - Lead iOS Engineer -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Imagine if reddit and the appstore would have a baby - that's Product Hunt Mobile will soon be our most important platform and in 5 years from now we wont "install" apps. We wont "open" apps. How will our app look then? We are looking for someone who wants to have a say in this future. The role is essentially an hybrid between Product Owner of the mobile app and the Lead Engineer that brings in structure to the team. Given that the role has a big part in product design, it's easier if this person is in SF. That being said the majority of our team is remote (no further than Eastern Europe). Consider also applying if you are "close enough to SF" that you could come by regularly. There are more details on the role here: https://angel.co/product-hunt/jobs/47947-lead-ios-engineer But in a nutshell: * Strong opinion on codestyle, structure, automated processes, product building * Being able to learn from and enable others Everyone in the team works quite autonomous and we value maker craftman ship highly. https://twitter.com/rrhoover/status/540950035827916800 (we also do livestreamings to brainstorm with the community on upcoming or about-to-release features) https://medium.com/on-startups/the-artifacts-of-product-hunt-11682e9e0… https://medium.com/@rrhoover/we-fucked-up-9163151c9166 To apply…