Trust Your Network, Not Your Pitch, to Raise Fast
Your network matters more than any pitch. Capital raising starts with trust, not tactics. Built-in audiences already trust your judgment. Doctors invest with doctors. Dentists invest with dentists. Relationships shorten the fundraising curve dramatically. That’s why some raise fast, right out the gate. 🎥 Watch the full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZFNw6cPFW0
Great Cofounders Turn Startup Journey Into Play
having cofounders you admire and love working and spending time with means everything startup becomes enjoyable. the highs, the lows, the steady. it’s like getting to build legos with your friends as a kid every day. blessed to be building...
Silence Hinders Visibility: Build Your Business Out Loud
“moving in silence like lasagna” is not a good path for building a visible business in my experience
Ryan Builds Real Vessels While Others Make Dinghies
While the majority of VC funded “shipbuilders” are busy manufacturing dinghies, BWA’s @rylanhamilton is building properly sized vessels. Be like Ryan.
Domain Mastery Beats Coding in Startup Success
you need to tattoo this Boris Cherny quote into your brain: "coding is the easy part, it's knowing the domain that's the hard part" every week a new startup drops a launch video saying they "killed influencer marketing" or something but they don't...
Choosing: Start, Buy, or Franchise Your Business
Premiere Live Today- Start, Buy, or Franchise? Best Way to Get Into Business What’s the best way to get into business — start from scratch, buy an existing business, or open a franchise? Rocky Lalvani, Giuseppe Grammatico, & Henry...
Zero Revenue Is the New Success Metric
Forget making money, that's small potatoes. The real hustle? Showing ZERO revenue. Pre-revenue is the most brilliant hack in corporate history. This clip nails markets of the last decade. https://t.co/ns03qncFYA
Name Owners, Deadlines, and Outcomes—Then Step Back
Everyone owns everything. Which means no one owns anything. Agreement without accountability is just a meeting. Name who owns it. Name the deadline. Name what done looks like. Then get out of the way. @askdrbrown
Growth Rate Is Startup’s Vital Pulse—Launch First
By default my first question to any startup is "What's your growth rate?" That's the patient's pulse. Which is why we push startups to launch. Till then you have no pulse; till then you have no idea if you're doing...
Bootstrapping a Startup: Lessons From Year One
1 year ago this week, Mattia and I started building BlackTwist. No team. No audience. No hype. Here's what I learned the hard way.
Moms' 17‑Hour Week Sparks AI‑Powered Solution Challenge
Most moms spend 17 hours a week just coordinating family life. Nori, the world's first Family AI, is doing something about it this Mother's Day. The challenge is called "Mom Dreams It, We Create It with AI." Here's how it works: Moms post the...
Launch Useful, Iterate Fast;
Your product does not need to be perfect. It needs to be useful enough to start learning. Google Maps launched in 2005 without full global coverage. No Asia. No Africa. Half the planet was missing. And yet, it still became the most-used map in history. The...
Even YC Veterans Discover Fresh Insights From New Report
I've been following YCombinator since the very beginning. Have interviewed many of its companies. Was at a YC party last week. I thought I knew most of the things about it. But I learned a lot from this report.
Entrepreneurs Should Pilot Risks, Not Gamble Returns
Successful entrepreneurs don't think like gamblers. They think like pilots. They don't ask "what's the expected return?" They ask "what's the most I can afford to lose — and can I live with that?" The bold risk-taker is a story survivors...
Hiring: Creative Builders and Deep Systems Experts Needed
Claude Code eng leader @Nerdi_Yogi on the two profiles she's hiring for now: 1. Creative builders with product sense 2. Deep systems experts (for the hard parts) https://t.co/ntkN1Y1JJL
Glooby Raises $500M to Disrupt Paper Clip Market
hello our name is glooby. we are disrupting the paper clip industry. we are post-idea, pre-product. we raised $500M
Hanover Park's 10th Hub Hiring NYC Engineers, Designers, Sales
.@hanoverpark is the 10th one Hiring engineers, design, ops, sales, and fund accountants in NYC
VC Concentration Surge Raises Questions for 2026 Founders
Is venture capital dead? Many argue that the concentration of capital, like we’re seeing right now, could mean the end of the industry. 5 firms committed 73% of all LP commits in Q1 this year… What does this mean for...
Execution Beats New Ideas: Focus on What You're Doing
Daily reminder to self: You don't need any new business ideas You need to better execute the ideas you're already working on
Anduril's Success Credits Brian Schimpf and Friendship
Anduril wouldn’t work without @SchimpfBrian. It is truly the privilege of a lifetime to get to build this company with three of my best friends. @mttgrmm @PalmerLuckey
Fund Size Drives Strategy: Align with Investor Goals
Fund size determines strategy. A $50M fund needs different outcomes than a $500M fund. Know what your investors are optimizing for before you take their check.
Boom's Blake Scholl to Speak at Startup School 2026
Blake Scholl is speaking at Startup School 2026. @bscholl founded Boom Supersonic with a goal of bringing back commercial supersonic flight. And in 2025, XB-1 broke the sound barrier — the first privately developed supersonic jet to do so. https://t.co/xPMlKo90FS https://t.co/j1vqKGf67u
Saying Yes More Often Unlocks Success
It's super important that people start saying yes more often. Way too many of you say no without ever even trying. People defaulting into no or that I won't like this or this won't work for me is the biggest...
Own Equity, Earn Wealth While You Sleep
Salary is for expenses. Wealth is making money when you sleep. Equity is wealth. Do not spend your entire career renting your time. Be an owner.
Building Companies Requires Grit, Not Overnight Glamour
While everyone's posting about 'overnight success,' here's what actually builds companies (the less glamorous version)... Because there’s a version of entrepreneurship people post about… And then there’s the version that actually builds companies.👇
Professional Website Crucial for Enterprise‑focused Early Startups
Most early stage don't bother spending money on professionally looking web site. A lot of times, especially if they sell into enterprise, healthcare, fintech, etc. it maybe a mistake. This is not to say that web site is the only way they...
AI Lets Solo Founders Launch Billion‑dollar Startups
A GLP-1 telehealth company reportedly did $401M in 2025 and could hit $1.8B in 2026 with one employee. That’s the signal. Matthew Gallagher allegedly started with $20K, used AI to write code, produce website copy, generate ads, and scale the operation with...
AI Founders Race Against Time, Sacrificing Durability
Being a founder in an AI world feels like needing to build the future before someone else creates an alternative future first. Much more time pressure than in past cycles. You used to be able to take all the time...
80x Growth Drives Aggressive Compute Acquisition Strategy
Dario: “We saw 80x growth earlier this year on usage and revenue” “That’s why we are going to keep acquiring as much compute as we can” https://t.co/Hwj18IV7KB
HubSpot Leverages Crunchbase to Spot High-Potential Startups
@HubSpot for Startups, a program designed to help early-stage companies access tools and resources to grow, needed a smarter way to identify and prioritize high-potential startups beyond existing partner networks. Here's how they did it with Crunchbase. 🔗: https://t.co/nmnuoSZr7i
Open APIs, Easy Paid Services Drive Market Dominance
An enlightened digital ecosystem company would offer all store features to all developers without obstructions, and profit by offering optional services that are so easy to use and priced so attractively that they gain large market share.
Missing
My goal was $1M in revenue by age 21 but I missed it by 18 days. It still led to a $169M exit. Here's the story👇 At 16, I was making $4k a year building websites in Bradenton, Florida. I...
Backing UseCorgi's Series B to Revolutionize Insurance
we are excited to continue supporting @UseCorgi with their Series B as they work to transform insurance. Insurance is 12% of GDP, the largest words-based industry on earth, and incredibly hard to start-up in, given regulatory and operating complexity. https://t.co/E15YUJOf82
Founders' Real Issue: Lack of Clarity, Not Growth
Most founders don't have a growth problem. They have a clarity problem they keep funding.
Bootstrapped Founders Keep Millions as ARR Scales
This is what bootstrapped ownership actually pays: At $5M ARR: hundreds of thousands. At $10M ARR: a million. At $15M ARR: more millions. At $25M ARR: more and more millions. No investors or dilution. Every dollar yours.
Match Group Pauses Hiring to Fund AI Expansion
Tinder owner Match Group is slowing hiring to pay for its increased use of AI tools https://t.co/J34RDl1kHn
Even After Early Struggle, I'd Build Again
“Knowing what you know today, would you still build your business?” Someone on my team asked me this question recently. My first few years of running entrepreneurship, I was miserable. I wasn’t making much money and I was jealous of my...
From Missed Flight to Nostalgic Reminder of Humble Beginnings
I was a hot, sweaty mess sprinting through the SLC airport. Trying to make my connection to Palm Springs to host eCom Camp — @ecomfuelco’s 8 and 9-figure store owner event. I missed it by 60 seconds. Stuck overnight in Salt Lake, I...
YC Seeks Fintech Innovators at NYC Live Pitch Event
YC is coming to NYC on May 21! Calling all fintech builders. We're hosting live interviews for the S26 batch. We're interested in tokenization, stablecoins, prediction markets, AI trading, and more. Come pitch us the future of finance. Apply at https://t.co/9hUZ0buEiU https://t.co/z1qZFOJIxj
Annual Rocket Ship List: 900 Top Startup Employers, 35 Supernovas
pleased to share my annual rocket ship list -- the ~ 900 companies startup joiners should work for, including 35 insane "supernovas" https://t.co/5rtGTmasBJ
Bundle Sponsorships Across Platforms for Steady $10K Income
The approach I take that has turned sponsorship revenue into a (fairly consistent) $7-10k/mo stream: Multiple touch points. My channel is small (31.6k), but I have my mailing list, my socials, and my website with a fairly high domain authority. Combine that with...
30‑Minute Validation Saves Millions on Projects
I lost millions on a video game. (Project Kyzen. Still building it. Won't launch again until late 2027.) The mistake that's costing me this much? I should've caught it on day one. Here's what I do now to validate every business...
Container‑Sized Chip Fabs Offer Affordable Specialty Manufacturing
Okay this is genuinely cool: there's a startup selling shipping-container-sized chip fabs for $5–15M that can train a semiconductor workforce and compete on price with major foundries for specialty applications. started because an MIT grad student was sick of using...
Risking Family Savings to Disrupt Amazon’s Dominance
This is what it looks like to quit your comfy corporate job, take your family's generational savings, and bet it all -- and hard work -- on a vision. He's freedom to spend it however he wants ensures the eventual destruction...
From Near-Death to $180B: Razorpay’s Founder Lessons
.@Razorpay is India's largest payments platform, processing over $180 billion annually. They were also the first Indian company YC ever invested in, and went through the W15 batch. In this fireside at Startup School India, co-founder and CEO @harshilmathur sat down...
Ego Blocks Growth: Delegate to Unlock Success
Delegation is fighting the ego. "I can do this job better so get out of my way and I'll do it." It is the natural tendency of so many owners. But it holds them back from growth because they become the bottleneck inside...
First Believers Unlock Potential Before You See It
everybody needs a "first believer" someone who sees something in you, before you fully believe it yourself mine was @mickbirch and I'm forever thankful ! who was yours?
Ferrari's Founder Launched Icon at 50 After Setbacks
Enzo Ferrari didn't found Ferrari until 1947. He was almost 50. Before that he was: - a kid with limited education whose dad and brother both died when he was 18. - rejected for a job with fiat - which he famously cried over -...
A Persistent Insight Shaping How We Build Companies
Also don’t remember. But it’s been living rent free in my head ever since. Puts a very important truth that you intuit when building companies in a very accessible form.
India's Deep-Tech Startup Crafts Next-Gen Sleep System
This is wild. Look at how seriously the Indian deep-tech scene is taking sleep now: > bed senses your sleep stage in real time > auto-cools when you hit deep sleep > auto-elevates when it detects snoring > tracks HRV, RHR, breathing without a wearable >...