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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

It says that selling an airplane ticket for $500 and getting paid a $5 fees by the airlines (1% gross margin) is not the same thing as selling $500 of software that you built (>90% gross margin). Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money.

Startup 150
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How the Seed-Stage VC Trend Began, The Downsides of Unicorns & Much More

Both Sides of the Table

If you are a 20-something tech entrepreneur you could be forgiven for thinking that seed-stage investors, Angellist Syndicates and widely available angel money always existed. Let me take you back just 10 years ago to 2005 in Silicon Valley where I returned after 11 years of living in Europe. But not many others.

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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator. Thats nonsense.

Startup 105
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How to Fund a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes throughseveral rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take justenough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the nextgear. It wasnt because they werent accredited investors that I didntask my parents for seed money, though.

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From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

There’s an uglier side to all this business that is making it hard for a lot of folks to get psyched by articles like this anymore, even though its right on the money… Joe Johnson Is software the only kind of startup that is interesting to anyone anymore? get to know each other first, etc.