Pmarchive

His old blog is no longer online, but someone collected it here. Very much worth reading: http://pmarchive.com/ edit: Ah, it was published as an ebook as well this January: http://a16z.com/2015/01/09/pmarca-blog-ebook/ His current blog: http://blog.pmarca.com/archive/

Marc used to blog beautifully, many of his posts are available at http://www.pmarchive.com. Right now I'm guessing he posts tweets because it's most convenient for him, and he has more important things to do with his time. So he lets others do the boring, tedious work of formatting his thoughts for him. It all works out, ultimately. If it saves Marc a few minutes, it's probably worth it for him. I've been meaning to do something similar for all of Elon Musk's interviews, but... I don't have the time, either. I have all the data sitting pretty in my Evernote but it needs some real brainwork-led-formatting.

Great feedback. Will do. It's just a digital notecard based on this story: https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html

best career advice is still pmarca's guide to career planning: https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part0.html

One thing I've learned from sports is that positioning wins matches. Positioning is literally being in the right place at the right time, but it's not dumb luck. There's a bit of strategy to it. I love Andreessen's breakdown of luck: https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html Another good analysis of it is Gladwell's book Outliers. Branding is an approach, but make sure it aligns with getting you in position. Some things will make you visible, but it would not position you as the smartest person on a list.

This isn't a very useful article. Marc Andreessen's "Guide to career planning"[1] is a much better piece for almost everyone. My takeaways were: 1) You probably won't be the best in your field. Aim for top 25% in two or more (disparate) fields and becoming the best at the intersection of those is achievable. (This is actually advice from Scott Adams that Andressen quotes) 2) Better to be a small fish in a big pond. [1] https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part2.html

I think it's applicability first, then trust second. Applicability - The platform has to get me to some goal faster, easier, better than if I got at it alone. The goal can be anything. Ex. If I need to build messaging within my app I'll use Twilio, if I need distribution/users, I'll list on iOS/Android. Trust - It's all the signal that platform has staying power. Great APIs and docs means they care and are investing in developers, years in existence, community, amount of end users, pass history of doing what they say relative to roadmap, etc. I think it's weighing all these tings before you start to build. maybe related, I think this is the best article on "platform" , Marc Andreessen 2007 - https://pmarchive.com/three_kinds_of_platforms_you_meet_on_the_interne…

I think I can provide some context. When I was working as engineer in an R&D group for a large corporation, I typically have to email a lot of vendors and buy a sample to test it out for solving some internal. Ghosting usually happens when: 1. Your product doesn't meet the spec and/or doesn't work as advertised 2. Your product is good but I wasn't able to get the budget cleared to actually move forward. 3. There is budget now but stuck internally in political/procurement hell after my handover to the project manager or procurement person. 4. All good, but project cancelled. TLDR - Moby Dick theory of enterprise procurement. [1] I try my best to let the salesperson know whats up but after the handover I lose contact. [1] https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part5.html

This is a great example of what Marc Andreesen called the Moby Dick theory of big companies [1]. Paraphrased, the behavior of any big company is largely inexplicable when viewed from the outside. And from the inside, too! [1] https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part5.html

I'm reminded of Marc Andreessen's guide to startups, particularly on firing executives: "Demotion as an alternative to firing (or, alternately, "I know, we'll hire her a boss!"). Hate it. Great people don't deal well with getting demoted. There is an occasional exception. Unless you are positive you have such an exception, skip it, and move directly to the conclusion." http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part8.html

I saw this same advice on Marc Andresen's blog a long time ago: http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part2.html One third strategy I've seen but unfortunately don't quite have the temperament for is: 3. Become the best at one very specific thing. Unlike becoming the best at something hugely popular, there's a lot less competition once you niche down far enough. I've seen people do this with as youtuber analysts of a specific video game, as creators of art using an unusual medium, as bloggers with freemium content focused on a specific niche and with marketers who specialize in both an acquisition channel and an industry. What's appealing about this is that after becoming #1 in a niche, it's often possible to use the success there to springboard into a larger territory, learn new skills and then enter either path #1 or path #2 with a significant advantage.

If you implement a setup where your email reader is decoupled from the program that fetches emails, this is trivial to do. Personally, I use mutt + mbsync. I have bound key 0 to call mbsync from mutt. I try to check email only twice per day [1]. I'm in the process of switching to gnus + mbsync. This has the additional advantage of gnus being close to a news reader, which is optimized for an inbox-zero way of reading. Since my email often carries stressful news, I love having my inbox "paused". I pull emails. They are not pushed to me. Way saner. [1] http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html

My advice: Don't ignore the part of you that likes art! Two interests meeting is where great things happen. > If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: > Become the best at one specific thing. > Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. From: http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part2.html

The new guy publicly throwing the old guy under the bus is actually a a step in a recommended strategy for turning a company around. See this blog post from Marc Andreessen's archive: http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_big_companies_part1.html

> And that Benchmark’s best-known V.C., the six-feet-eight Bill Gurley, another outspoken giant with a large Twitter following, advised Horowitz to cut Andreessen and his six-million-dollar investment out of the company. Andreessen said, “I can’t stand him. If you’ve seen ‘Seinfeld,’ Bill Gurley is my Newman”—Jerry’s bête noire. Sheds some light on http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part9.html

"Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. " "Become the best at one specific thing. Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things. The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try." ref http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part2.html

v. late reply. Was busy working:-) There is a lot of empirical research that attribute grit, perseverance, practice to success. The best and most "successful" creatives, are also the ones that started the earliest, are the most productive (worked the hardest),.. http://pmarchive.com/age_and_the_entrepreneur.html More anecdotal research like the 10000 hour "rule" for mastering a skill,... also state the same thing. Sure you can be born rich and this doesn't apply to you. But most people aren't born rich, so, what is available to them is hard work. Ok, I'm going back to work now. Thanks for listening

Marc Andreessen's old blog posts. http://pmarchive.com/ http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/

PG's list is just the tip. Of one of many icebergs a startup will hit. Serious. Head to http://pmarchive.com

I also love this term. It reminded me of a wonderful post by Marc Andreessen from 2007, where he discusses "Luck and the entrepreneur.. The four kinds of luck" http://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur In the post, he skillfully dissects the book Chase, Chance, and Creativity (1978) by Dr. James Austin - a neurologist and philosopher.

Another oldie but goodie in the career planning vein: https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_career_planning_part0.html This is Marc Andreessen's guide to career planning, and I've found it exceptionally useful. In particular, he backs off from the narrow "decide what track you want to be on" approach to frame the problem as developing a set of skills that will make you more valuable to any enterprise you choose to be a part of. Then while you do that, watch for the most valuable opportunities to apply those skills. The other great thing about Marc Andreessen's guide is that it acknowledges the role of risk and opportunity in how your career will shape out. So instead of tracking yourself into a path based on how the world looks today, you stay alert to how the world is changing, and then use the downtime to improve yourself. Despite being a guide for "high-potential people who are not interested in work/life balance", it feels like it puts less pressure on individuals than feeling like there's a set of steps you must hit to be on your chosen track.

Very important talk. Not sure when the phrase was popularized, but my introduction to it was in Marc Andreessen's blog post [1]. This entire series of posts in his blog are worth reading, by the way. Marc calls this "The only thing that matters", and it is definitely true. I like this video because of the emphasis on the role our psychology plays in the search for product-market fit. Understanding people/users well - what they mean when they say "this is interesting" is really important. Systematic de-biasing of our own mind is an important idea in this talk. Richard Feynman's famous conclusion to his report on the shuttle Challenger accident said "Nature cannot be fooled"-similarly, markets/users cannot be fooled. Either a product or service solves their problem or it doesn't. Anything in between needs to questioned carefully and observed (in an unbiased way) closely. Feynman also says "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool". Same idea as Peter's -- and a very important one! I wish more founders talked about "what product-market fit feels like" (once they found it) - because only with enough samples, new startup founders can better understand whether they have achieved pm-fit. However, I wish video shouldn't be mistaken for thinking: "my Show HN post tanked, so I don't have pm-fit". I think it is worthwhile trying to understand what he means. It is quite clear when you really solve a problem that someone else has.…

So the above is obviously written through a VC lens. Through an entrepreneur's lens - who also survived the dot-com bust (at etoys.com) and has since run several failed and now successful businesses - I'd add the following: The most valuable advice in this post reminds me of Marc A's awesome blog entry. Quote: "Companies that have a retention problem usually have a winning problem. Or rather, a "not winning" problem." http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_big_companies_part2.html In my opinion winning is, ultimately, measured by how much cash you can generate. We stopped thinking about an exit a long time ago while in the deepest darkest part of the valley of the shadow of startup death. We were forced to do it because we ran out of money and no one cared about us. Then we started focusing completely on our customers and our income statement. As soon as we did that, amazing things started happening. Cash, in this case and in this climate, is king. Or net income to be specific. If you're able to generate large amounts of cash and keep a lot of it, not a heck of a lot else matters. From my perspective the only problems that really remain is giving your team a great quality of life and serving your customers. Cash takes away issues like the board bugging you, investors breathing down your neck or (worst case) wanting to play CEO, hiring problems, retention problems, funding, what business are we in problems, product problems (you're obviously killing it, so do more of that!),…

or.. http://pmarchive.com/

Direct link if you're in a hurry: http://pmarchive.com/

feels like a variation on Andreessen’s perspective that the market matters most in startups https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

I created a todo app based on Marc Andreessen productivity hacks explained here: https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html which is pretty much how I used to get things done but with a notebook. it's v1.0 and very simple but the simplicity is on purpose (all other todo apps require a bunch of clicks to add a task!) feedback is appreciated. PS: don't sue me Marc, I checked the trademark for pmarca and doesn't exist, also the real name of the app is pmarca productivity porn aka PPP

Should mention that this idea has been around the internets for a while. Is mentioned in article, but not linked to. https://pmarchive.com/luck_and_the_entrepreneur.html https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area

https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html > market is the most important factor in a startup's success or failure.