After 14 years running my own businesses, I’ve failed a lot. I haven’t kept count thankfully, but I’d say I’ve started at least 50 businesses / ideas and out of those, 3 have worked. And when I say worked I don’t mean staying in business, I mean resulting in either a decent income for me […]
Startup Mistakes: First-Hand Lessons from 80+ Failed Startups
We've analyzed why +80 startups have failed and identified some of their common mistakes. Here're our findings!
How Bad Entrepreneurs Reveal Themselves in the First 5 Seconds of a Pitch
A few simple words is all it takes to figure out a founder’s odds of startup success.
12 Things I Learned from Chris Dixon about Startups | Andreessen Horowitz
#1 “If everyone loves your idea, I might be worried that it’s not forward thinking enough.” Anyone thinking about starting a business should be searching for mispriced opportunities. While markets are mostly efficient in eliminating opportunities for extraordinary profit, there are always areas of an economy in which there are significant uncertainty. These areas are...
How to brainstorm great business ideas
It's been said that ideas don't matter, and that only execution does. I wholeheartedly disagree. You need both to succeed, but you can only get so good...
How I Went from Burn-out Entrepreneur to Automating my $4M Company and 10x my Productivity.
Building a business is hard enough. On its official website, the U.S. Small Business Administration purports that “roughly 50 percent of…
How To Be Successful
I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up...
When to Fold: The Cost of Failing Slow in a Startup
Failing Slow: Why One Founder Regretted Keeping His Startup Alive
Nearly half as many people are launching businesses as 20 years ago
According to a study conducted by BDC in collaboration with the Université de Montréal, not enough people are starting businesses to replace those closing their doors
Build the thing you wish to see in the world
For most of my career, I've been confusing building products with building businesses—and that confusion kept me from pursuing a lot of ideas. Two weeks off helped me realize that not everything needs to be a startup, and some of the best things we build are the ones we build just because we want them to exist.
Hitting the High Notes
In March, 2000, I launched this site with the shaky claim that most people are wrong in thinking you need an idea to make a successful software company: The common belief is that when you’re …
My startup failed, and this is what it feels like…
We had users and traction, then we fell off a cliff. My 4 year emotional rollercoaster just came to an end.
Project vs. Product, Startup vs. Business
A couple of weeks ago I dropped into a thread by Mosh Lee, about how ATproto has too many projects and too few businesses. Yes!
Five ways to build a $100 million business
Some time ago my friend (and co-investor in Clio , Jobber and Unbounce ) Boris Wertz wrote a great blog post about "the only 2 ways to bui...
The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2018
We've rounded up 30 of the best insights from the articles we published over the last year. Read on for a time-capsule-like toolkit, full of the best tactical wisdom that seasoned company builders had to offer in 2018.
Why Marketing Flywheels Work - SparkToro
The first few years of my career were awful. Drowning in debt, losing nine out of ten pitches for new business, failing to earn clients. It felt like
