Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

For example, Friendster was famously vertically partitioned at one time in its growth curve. I normally recommend you just store this directory on your master database, but you could use a standalone vertical shard (or even a key-based partition!) This type of vertical partitioning sharding scheme wont work in most cases.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Ben's Blog

APRIL 28, 2010

Looking across these nearly 50 companies, the study finds that founding CEOs consistently beat the professional CEOs on a broad range of metrics ranging from capital efficiency (amount of funding raised), time to exit, exit valuations, and return on investment. He even added retail stores.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Palm in a New Market What makes this example really interesting is this: rewind the story 4 years earlier to 1996. In 1996 no potential customer had even heard of a Personal Digital Assistant. In 1996 Palm was selling a product that allowed users to do something they couldn’t do before. What do you think?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Occam's Razor

APRIL 25, 2011

That means I get to spend loads and loads of time across many industry verticals, see many many campaigns, translate many many foreign websites (thanks Google Chrome for auto-translate!) Making lame metrics the measures of success: Impressions, Click-throughs, Page Views. all stink worse than Amorphophallus Titanum. " 22. [via

Marketing 126

Marketing Flash Analytics Web 126