Paul Graham:

It sucks to run a start-up. Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly.

We're mass-producing the start-up.

Everything around us is turning into computers. Everything is becoming software.

Justin Kan:

You could be working on the most boring piece of software, and you talk to Paul and you think, Man, I'm excited to go back to work.

Fred Wilson:

I don't mean this in a negative way, but Y Combinator is more like a cult than a venture capital fund. And Paul is the cult leader.

Max Chafkin:

Graham tends to have an air of impatience, as if even a momentary distraction is too much to bear.

Winifred Gallagher:

You can’t be happy all the time, but you can pretty much focus all the time. That’s about as good as it gets.

From the archive:

Marge: I'd really like to give it a try!
Homer: I don't know, Marge, trying is the first step towards failure.

Jeff Bezos:

People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure's going to be. Failure's not that expensive ...

The big costs that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission.

Johan de Kleer:

One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ...

Atul Gawande:

Let us look for the positive deviants.

The Start-up Guru

Open Coffee Club Atlanta

Wednesday May 20, 2009 at 3:00pm

Tech Square Starbucks
48 5th St NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30308

Its been many months, and so its time again - Open Coffee Atlanta! Come one come all to discuss startups and network - entrepreneurs, investors, curious souls, but please no service providers.

Open Coffee Club Atlanta at Tech Square Starbucks (Wednesday May 20, 2009) - Upcoming

So all the forces are pushing VC firms to do bigger deals, that consume more capital, that deliver the potential for ever-higher multiples. 10X may not be enough… maybe your target now needs to be 20X, or 30X. You’re swinging for the fences every time.

If you’re an angel investor, this may not be a good idea.

If you can put $2M into an angel investment over two rounds and sell your stake in Year 3 for $6M… that’s only a 3X multiple, but a a 54% rate of return! If you own a third of the company, that means an $18M acquisition… as mentioned above, that can be done as the divisional level at many, many large companies.

No substantial VC is going to be interested in a deal that sells for $18 million. “Doesn’t move their needle.” “Failure to launch.” If they have one of these in their portfolio, its counted as a failure.null

Don’t Cross the Streams! | Academic VC

William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything.

Now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, William K. Black tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it.
----
Watch online...

This is the best analysis of the situation that I've seen.

William K. Black: CSI Bailout

Eric Ries and I recently sat down to talk about minimum viable products: the product with just the necessary features to get money and feedback from early adopters.

The minimum viable product (MVP) is often an ad on Google. Or a PowerPoint slide. Or a dialog box. Or a landing page. You can often build it in a day or a week.

I recorded the interview and synchronized it with some simple slides below. That’s my favorite way to consume the audio. You can also find a transcript and stand-alone audio below. Eric also highlighted some excerpts from the conversation on Lessons Learned. Let me know what you think — I’m especially interested if you like the synchronized audio and slides.

Create the 'Coming Soon' page first, with a 'contact me when its available' form, and only build that form of your product if people sign up. Rework your concept until they do.

Gold star.

What is the minimum viable product? - Venture Hacks

Dear Paul Graham,

Everyone but you sucks.

Allow me to explain. I either live in the valley or want to live in the valley. I idolize you and love this site. You are the smartest guy on planet earth, and anyone that copies you is pathetic because they could never be as cool as you. Who do they think they are!?

Now that I've impressed you with flattery and have defeated your enemies on your behalf, I'd like to tell you about Project Tomacco. With your help, we can caffeinate tomatoes and hook every college kid on a healthy alternative to coffee. Did you know tomatoes have antioxidants that fight cancer? Thats right, we're helping to prevent cancer. We're going to change the world, Paul, one tomato at a time.

Is there a way to attach a spreadsheet to a comment on hacker news? Because my projections are going to blow you away. If we get one percent of the tomato market you're going to be a very rich(er) man, Paul.

Signed,

Valley Hater

In this episode I pitch Paul Graham on 'Project Tomacco.'

Hacker News | Atlanta Gets Its Own Y Combinator In Shotput Ventures

Eric Ries and I recently sat down to talk about minimum viable products: the product with just the necessary features to get money and feedback from early adopters.

The minimum viable product (MVP) is often an ad on Google. Or a PowerPoint slide. Or a dialog box. Or a landing page. You can often build it in a day or a week.

I recorded the interview and synchronized it with some simple slides below. That’s my favorite way to consume the audio. You can also find a transcript and stand-alone audio below. Eric also highlighted some excerpts from the conversation on Lessons Learned. Let me know what you think — I’m especially interested if you like the synchronized audio and slides.

What is the minimum viable product? - Venture Hacks

Twenty years ago, financial industry salaries were a tiny fraction of what they are today. Did lesser people do the work? Did they try less hard? Think smaller thoughts? Of course not. The reasons salaries are high is that the number is a signaling mechanism, a very expensive marketing campaign.

Law firms went through this cycle twenty years ago. The top firms competed with each other to recruit a too-small pool of talent from the top law schools. Unable to muster up even a mite of marketing insight, they chose to compete on only one axis: salary. So, 24 year olds were given jobs at $120,000 a year, when their peers from college were making 20% of that. The firms could have found great people at half the price, except that with only one axis, they had to be at the top if their peers were.nullnull

Seth's Blog: The myth of big salaries (it's all marketing)

Twitpay has raised an undisclosed amount of angel financing and will launch a service that allows users to order and buy downloadable content, via Twitter.

The Atlanta-based social payments startup, launched four months ago, allows users to make payments of up to $1,000 through the micro-blogging phenomenon that Twitter has morphed into.

Twitpay is part of an eco-system of services and applications that is transforming Twitter from a social media site into a communications — and now an ecommerce — platform.

CEO Michael Ivey was tight-lipped on the details of the fundraise. After some prodding, he ventured to say that seed funding for Internet startups at Twitpay’s stage is generally less than $300,000.

Congratulations to Twitpay, the hottest concept to come out of Atlanta in some time.

Twitpay Raises Seed Funding - AtlanTech

Step 1: Think of an idea that you think (or know) that can be monetized in the future. Even if you don’t know exactly how to do it, think of something better than “I’ll just get a lot of users”.
Step 2: Let your startup grow, and do the numbers to see when you’re going to NEED to be profitable. If it gets out of control, it might cost you a lot of money
every month just to keep the thing running. Does that sound like a good business?
Step 3: Profit your ass off. After you do this, then you can retire to your very own Caribbean island and watch South Park all day.

Don’t Be Like the Underpants Gnomes | KillerBlog