Business success is mostly about timing. In technology, an underlying innovation drives a decade-long wave of business outcomes built on that innovation. The internet became generally available in 1991 and drove a wave of Internet 1.0 outcomes that accelerated until the 2001 crash. The iPhone launched in 2007 and| Harry Glaser
As your startup scales from the dozens into the hundreds and more, it starts to grow into a real organizational structure. Before this transition, you probably have some notion of “teams” and “managers” but it’s pretty loose. Everyone sits in a room with the founders, and everyone knows who’| Harry Glaser
My favorite Silicon Valley truism is: The team you build is the company you build. (Credit to Vinod Khosla.) Very soon after founding, most of the work at the company will be done by people who are not you. You will succeed or fail based on the quality of their| Harry Glaser
For years it’s been fashionable for investors to compete on the basis of being “founder friendly.” This is of course a messaging strategy: Investors succeed by returning lots of money to their LPs, and a subset of investors do so by winning deals on the basis of having a| Harry Glaser
Far and away, the most common question I get is about my partnership with Tom. It’s flattering, especially when founders you admire want to hear about how two old east coast friends with one B+ exit to their names do things. It has its moments of agony too: “They’| Harry Glaser
In Startup = Growth, Paul Graham plots the life of a startup as an S-curve. In the first phase, you are exploring to find product market fit. Then you find it, and start growing exponentially. Finally, at some point, growth tapers and becomes linear or even flat. As PG explains, the| Harry Glaser