I was trying to understand why food startups are so hot when I ran across the following two charts. In the image, you’ll notice that I circled a line labeled “P/E.” In the language of finance, P/E is short for “price-to-earnings ratio,” which is the relative value of...
“Each time you crest the rise in front of you, it just makes it clear the size of the even larger hill that looms beyond it. It goes on for a long time.” -Marc Randolph, Founder/CEO Netflix **** After six years in the saddle as an entrepreneur, I’ve...
Magazines take your photo. Venture Capitalists offer to invest over email. Billionaires smoke weed in your living room. No one doubts you. Like this post? Discuss it on Hacker News. Your company is hot. You are hot. And it feels awesome. To struggle for months, to...
So much of the best advice is impossible to hear when you are first starting out. Success feels within our grasp, just a sprint or two away. We’re in too much of a hurry to listen. Failure slows you down. The pain of failure forces you to stop. Failure creates...
Silicon Valley favors the brash and the brilliant. If you have a pedigree and a network (e.g. if you studied Computer Science at Stanford), the bar is lower. People will doubt you less. The corollary to this, of course, is that the more of a nobody you are, the harder...
