Read What Facebook’s Sandberg Calls Maybe ‘The Most important Document Ever To Come Out Of The Valley’ Facebook’s No. 2 top dog, COO Sheryl Sandberg, recently said that Netflix’s company culture document “may well be the most important document ever to come out of the Valley.” The document, a bullet-point-happy PowerPoint, has become a cultural manifesto for the Internet’s economic epicenter, amassing over 3.2 million views on Slideshare.net.
More than simply a management guide, it’s a window into a philosophy that thrives on uncertainty, creativity, and trust — a blinding contrast to the hierarchical culture that dominated much of the 20th century workplace. To the extent that innovation and the Internet play a role in the modern workplace, it is a crystal ball into the future of daily life. We’ve summarized the most telling principles below: Creativity is Most Important In procedural work, the best are 2x better than the average. The technology industry, especially, is haunted by the ever-present fear of obsolescence. Prioritize Discovery Over Job Security Unlimited Vacation.
How GitHub Works. Stop producing shit | Marius Andra's blog. A friend of mine is starting what can only be described as a combination of Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn and Foursquare. He’s super excited and hasn’t talked to any potential customers yet. I know a guy whose startup pivots twice a year, each time hoping to solve a problem that’s not really there. Now they’re cloning Yammer. Some other guys had an idea, received validation from two potential clients, raised funding, hired a lot of people, built a product and discovered nobody really wants to pay for it.
What’s going on? On the other side you have teams producing amazing products. They are not doing the impossible, yet somehow they’re different. To build a successful business you need a great team, a good idea and a lot of hard work. I’m sure the guys passionately producing crap have as many resources and as good of a team as the other ones. Luckily this can be easily avoided. I’ve written about this before, so I’ll just quickly quote my latest blogging hero, James Altucher: Try it.
Mad Libs For Pitches: How To Perfect The One Sentence Pitch. You’re the founder of a fledgling startup locked in a room with angel investor Ron Conway for exactly 30 seconds, what do you say? If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you fumble for the words to succinctly describe your startup in a sentence or two. That seems simple enough, what could go wrong in under a minute? According to the Founder Institute’s Adeo Ressi: a lot.
When it comes to the one sentence pitch, Ressi says “Most entrepreneurs manage to screw it up… How much better would the world be if every startup could explain their business well in one sentence?” To help entrepreneurs perfect the art of the micro pitch, he’s created a rudimentary template in Mad Libs style: My company, __(insert name of company)__, is developing __(a defined offering)__ to help __(a defined audience)__ __(solve a problem)__ with __(secret sauce)__. According to Ressi, “most entrepreneurs add useless adjectives, define their audience too vaguely and have a weak value proposition with no secret sauce.” First-Time Startup Entrepreneurs: Stop Fucking Around. Editor’s note: Paul Stamatiou is Co-founder of Picplum, a Y Combinator-backed photo printing service, where he obsesses over both design and development.
He also co-founded Notifo (YC W10) and Skribit. Follow him on his blog, PaulStamatiou.com, and on Twitter: @Stammy. Reminisce with me for a bit. Do you remember the first time you got an Internet connection? When I first visited California for my Yahoo! Every time I drive into San Francisco and see the skyline, it’s a strong reminder that I’m fortunate to be in a time and place where I have wanted to be for so long, with such a vibrant and strong tech community.
This is all started with a tweet of mine. I’m going to teach a course for first-time startup entrepreneurs called stop fucking around and get back to work.— Paul Stamatiou (@Stammy) April 23, 2012 We are in an amazing time right now — perhaps the perfect time to build companies. Your workdays are sacred Think about the opportunity cost here. I will make one exception though. 15 Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting My First Company. 12 Rules For Building Your First Profitable Startup | Layered Thoughts. I’ve been obsessed with Internet Startups for almost a decade now, and I still find myself consuming as much content as possible about the best way to startup a company that is setup for success. As luck would have it, I am actually running a profitable startup now, so I figured I would assemble a set of rules I wish someone had given me when I was trying to start my first few companies.
Now, I know for every rule in this list, you can name exceptions. I get that. And I don’t care. This list is for someone looking to start their first Internet Startup who is interested in bootstrapping a reliably profitable company that can then open the door to the next big project. That’s my plan; I am running a profitable company, and I plan to use it and the experiences and capital I am getting from it to slingshot myself into the next, probably riskier project. I firmly believe first time startup founders shouldn’t be trying to build the next Reddit or Facebook. I have two main goals for this post: Startup Lifecycle. Starting and Launching a company. Patrick Robin: Ne dites pas à ma mère que j'étais un entrepreneur de gauche. ...elle croit que je suis devenu un salaud de riche. Patrick Robin PS: Nous aurions été des milliers d'entrepreneurs à pouvoir écrire ces quelques lignes. Un de mes amis, célèbre et talentueux entrepreneur lui, en réponse à la question d'un journaliste qui lui demandait s'il était de gauche ou de droite eut cet réponse juste et pleine d'ironie: "quand on a ma fortune et qu'on reste en France, c'est déjà etre un peu de gauche, non?
". Patrick Robin : "Nous, entrepreneurs vilipendés " Moi, entrepreneur, j'ai mis 2 ans à oser me verser mon premier salaire. Moi, entrepreneur, j'ai épuisé mes maigres économies pour investir dans mon premier projet. Moi, entrepreneur, durant plusieurs années j'étais le moins bien payé de mon entreprise. Moi, entrepreneur, il m'a fallu attendre 8 ans avant de prendre mes premières vacances.
Moi, entrepreneur, je travaille 6 jours sur 7 et ne parlons pas des horaires. Moi, entrepreneur, j'ai sacrifié des amis et des amours. Moi, entrepreneur, si je dépose le bilan, je suis marqué au fer rouge. PS : Nous aurions été des milliers d'entrepreneurs à pouvoir écrire ces quelques lignes. "Quand on a ma fortune et qu'on reste en France, c'est déjà être un peu de gauche, non ? " Dollar Shave Club Launches Razor Subscription Service, Raises $1M From Kleiner (And Others) There are few things in my life that seem less exciting than razors, but a new startup called The Dollar Shave Club thinks it’s time for a little disruption.
And some of the big names in the venture world, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, are backing its vision. Dollar Shave Club was first founded in April 2011 by Michael Dubin and Mark Levine, and it’s relaunching today and announcing that it’s the latest company to emerge from Science, Inc., the incubator whose partners include former MySpace CEO Mike Jones and Color co-founder Peter Pham.
The basic model is simple — at pricing that starts at $1 per month (plus $2 for shipping and handling), customers get a monthly shipment of razors delivered to their home. Michael Dubin, who’s also the company’s CEO, argues that the high-end of the market has gotten ridiculously overpriced, with “a vibrating handle, a back-scratcher, and all of that stuff.”