The Curious Engineer

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Venture Hacks

venturehacks.com

Advice for startups

Tech news / industry

’10’15’20’25
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383 from 1 Apr 2007 to 18 Jun 2025
Posting
now and then
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personal blog
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2025 1

  1. Notes on marketing

2019 4

  1. How to get rich
  2. How to write like the great entrepreneurs
  3. 11 angel investing lessons
  4. Venture Hacks goes rogue

2016 1

  1. Pixar President’s Wisdom

2014 1

  1. How to be an angel investor, Part 3

2013 11

  1. Designers at AngelList
  2. AngelList new employee reading list
  3. Things we care about at AngelList
  4. How much traction do I need to raise money?
  5. No email at AngelList
  6. 6-year vesting
  7. The Entrepreneurial Age
  8. No tradeoff between quality and scale
  9. 1-(wo)man startups
  10. Ask forgiveness, not permission
  11. Startups are here to save the world

2012 1

  1. How to make money with pro rata rights

2011 32

  1. You can be so bad at so many things
  2. The problem with the Internet startup craze
  3. 1.5 Years Of AngelList: 8000 Intros, 400 Investments And That's Just The Data We Can Tell You About
  4. Before product-market fit, find passion-market fit
  5. But I don't want to follow you on Twitter
  6. Anatomy of an (un)fundable startup
  7. Getting Leverage in Hostage Negotiations
  8. Reading your legal docs
  9. "A" players write the playbook
  10. AngelList startup wins TechCrunch Disrupt
  11. Are you selling your startup's shares door-to-door?
  12. So who is actually investing on AngelList?
  13. Launch: The AngelList Blog
  14. The first 1000x in valuation is the easiest
  15. Thoughts on Investing
  16. Mark Suster interviews AngelList survivor TODAY (Wednesday 5pm Pacific)
  17. AngelList Goes Global
  18. Taulia raises Series A from top performing VC fund of all time — via AngelList
  19. Fred Wilson's 5 rules for market fit
  20. Are founders really 1000x more valuable than employees?
  21. 4 types of scale
  22. Venture Hacks sucks now, all you talk about is AngelList
  23. VCs (slightly) more active than angels on AngelList
  24. VCs are generalists, and other lies
  25. AngelList Markets Tour, Part 2: The Details
  26. Tour: Markets on AngelList
  27. How does AngelList work?
  28. Raise a Series A on AngelList
  29. Sweat the details and corner cases
  30. Benefits, not features
  31. Why would a seasoned entrepreneur use AngelList?
  32. The Secret History of Venture Hacks

2010 107

  1. Control which investors see your startup
  2. Before you raise money
  3. Always assume competition
  4. How much money should I raise?
  5. AngelList in real time
  6. "Intros from AngelList were responsible for 54.5% of the $1M we raised"
  7. Primo essay on team building
  8. Free the Firehose
  9. Which startups have been funded via AngelList?
  10. The Venture Hacks Newsletter is back
  11. What you can learn from The Social Network
  12. The rise of the angels
  13. Vinod Khosla: "I was much more of a glorified recruiter."
  14. Welcoming the Kauffman Foundation
  15. If only we could raise money
  16. Blogging on Quora
  17. How Udemy got oversubscribed
  18. AngelList Scouts
  19. How we're recruiting a product designer for AngelList
  20. Xconomy covers AngelList
  21. Quora Marketing
  22. 7 angel investing tips in 7 minutes
  23. Tracking testimonials — the lazy way
  24. How to raise money with no lead
  25. LearnBoost raises money with AngelList
  26. Thumbtack raises money with AngelList
  27. Fred Wilson: "Angels love to share deals with each other"
  28. If you’ve run out of ideas, buy gold
  29. A conflict of interests
  30. This fortnight in Twitter
  31. Where we office
  32. A tale of 3 financings
  33. The WSJ reports on AngelList
  34. Local startup BlockChalk raises national money with AngelList
  35. The Startup Game
  36. Ads for startups
  37. This fortnight in Twitter
  38. This Week in Venture Capital
  39. Resiliency
  40. This fortnight in Twitter
  41. John Doerr: The salesman for nerds
  42. Angel Boot Camp coming to Cambridge
  43. Why startups should train their people
  44. Venture Hacks TV
  45. This week in Twitter
  46. Steve Ballmer from the Microsoft Corporation with an iPad review
  47. Naval on GigaOm TV
  48. If this is your first time raising money…
  49. NYC startup raises money with AngelList
  50. VCs in seed clothing: Chris Dixon, Mark Suster, and Naval Ravikant interviewed
  51. Hello vh.co
  52. The Wilson bump
  53. Where to find the best startup advice
  54. Two great talks from SLLConf
  55. One way to start a startup
  56. Our Inc. interview about angels
  57. Startup Lessons Learned: I wish this conference was around five years ago
  58. How much traction do I need?
  59. Presentation Hacks
  60. Who has time for meetings?
  61. Facebook acquires AngelList startup
  62. "AngelList is the real deal"
  63. Interview: How to close an angel round
  64. Can I send my pitch to just some of the angels on AngelList?
  65. Top heavy startups
  66. "Being open early worked well for us"
  67. Postling gets funded with AngelList
  68. Where's the demo?
  69. What's the vision?
  70. Which angels have taken meetings from AngelList?
  71. What happens at SXSW gets published right here
  72. Our most popular links
  73. How to schedule meetings with investors
  74. Solvate is simple outsourcing for startups
  75. The only reason investors say ‘no’
  76. I'm speaking at SXSW + Holding a SXSW MEETUP
  77. Give tweet a chance
  78. It takes more than one intro to get a meeting
  79. More diligence and less capital coming for startups (and their investors)
  80. [Startup Digest]: "The best startup events in 27 cities"
  81. StartupList: The first startup gets funded
  82. How to optimize web apps with KISSmetrics
  83. My experiments in lean pricing
  84. "He has no clue whether it will be another Google, yet he has to make promises that only hucksters can make."
  85. A brief history of your investors (and their investors)
  86. In a board room, somewhere in Silicon Valley…
  87. StartupList: Day 1 — Thank You
  88. Launch: AngelList, a curated list of angel investors
  89. When you're raising money, the competition isn't the competition
  90. Most inspiring speech ever
  91. When to fire your co-founders
  92. 10 skills I look for before writing a check, Part 3: Detail Orientation, Competitiveness, Decisiveness
  93. Comments of the week: Legal fees, financial projections, and fit
  94. Launch: Sponsor Posts — ads that rule
  95. How to raise money without lying to investors
  96. Get Venture Hacks on Facebook
  97. A list of social startup lawyers
  98. I'm speaking at The Future of Funding
  99. Bram Cohen: "Lawyers can’t tell you you can’t do something"
  100. Top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs hate lawyers
  101. How to bring a product to market, Part 2 — after product/market fit
  102. No ocean boiling please
  103. 5 New Year's resolutions for closing deals in 2010
  104. 10 skills I look for before writing a check, Part 2: Perspiration and Appetite for Risk
  105. Emotions at work
  106. How to re-negotiate with your customers — and not lose a single one
  107. The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs, Part 2

2009 82

  1. The Billy Mays method of picking startups
  2. Chris Dixon: How much seed money should I raise?
  3. Our top 10 posts of 2009 — dominated by customer development
  4. The Arrogant VC: Why VCs are disliked by entrepreneurs
  5. When the cost of customer acquisition exceeds your ability to monetize them
  6. Get our interviews on the Venture Hacks Podcast
  7. "NDAs up the wazoo"
  8. Marketing science Q&A with Sean Ellis
  9. "Angel investors are becoming the dominant force in consumer internet venture capital"
  10. Take guidance from VCs, not orders
  11. How to measure product/market fit with survey.io
  12. How to bring a product to market / A very rare interview with Sean Ellis
  13. Pitching Hacks, in paperback
  14. Just Say No: VC terms that can really hurt (Part 2)
  15. 10 skills I look for before writing a check, Part 1
  16. Startup News, the first 2 weeks
  17. Sometimes the feature is the product
  18. Home improvement
  19. Just Say No: VC terms that can really hurt
  20. Morale, distribution, profit, and games
  21. Interview: How to pick a co-founder
  22. Thanking our supporters
  23. How to share secrets in a negotiation
  24. Venture Hacks Bookstore
  25. Get the best of the startup blogs
  26. 3 customer development case studies
  27. Weekend reading
  28. The ignorant VC
  29. The sultans of startup marketing
  30. Extrapolating computing
  31. How to pick a co-founder
  32. The long tail of VC twitterers
  33. The long tail of VC blogs
  34. Startup Boy is back
  35. Best of the startup blogs
  36. Lean startups aren’t Cheap Startups
  37. Customer development by the book
  38. Our first online workshop: How to pitch investors
  39. Notes from Startup School 2009
  40. The problem with VC motivation
  41. 10 examples of minimum viable products
  42. "Real wealth creation will take founding, seniority, or staggeringly large exits."
  43. "Your next feature won't save you"
  44. Put your tweets on your blog
  45. Take our Twitter Survey
  46. Get drunk with VCs and help charity
  47. New York Meetup was awesome
  48. Customer Development Patterns
  49. New York Meetup
  50. Term sheet tune-up
  51. Twitter updates
  52. Steve Jobs does customer development: No new features
  53. Steve Jobs does customer development
  54. Hey, have you heard of Twitter?
  55. How to close a term sheet quickly
  56. Customer Development, Class 5: IMVU
  57. Pitching Hacks at Stanford
  58. The Startup MBA
  59. We teach entrepreneurship like every vertical market has the same set of rules
  60. How we encourage word of mouth for Pitching Hacks
  61. It's very easy to underprice your product
  62. Sell it before you build it
  63. Opening board meetings to the entire company
  64. Customer Development, Classes 3 and 4
  65. What is the minimum viable product?
  66. The king of customer development starts a blog (and tweets too)
  67. Don't launch? But the New York Times is on the phone!
  68. How to be an angel investor, Part 2
  69. The Venture Hacks Podcast
  70. Mike Maples: "My opinion is interesting, but irrelevant."
  71. Take a course from the king of customer development
  72. Launch: Pitching Hacks, The Book
  73. How IMVU learned its way to $10M a year
  74. Paul Buchheit: "Consider spending less time talking, and more time prototyping"
  75. Pitching Hacks: Beta test update
  76. (A bit of) Decision-making for startups
  77. Pitching Hacks is almost here / Calling all testers
  78. Lowering the water level: Do bad economies spur innovation?
  79. The Human Equation: How to organize people for profit
  80. The spontaneous optimism that drives startups
  81. We don't pay you to work here
  82. My visit to American Apparel

2008 93

  1. Extraordinary Organizations: $170M company with no titles except "plant" manager
  2. Steve Jobs: "Apple is only its ideas"
  3. Our new archives
  4. How to moderate (and write) comments
  5. Raising money is a black swan
  6. Sponsor: Charles River Ventures
  7. Books for Entrepreneurs: Extreme Programming Explained
  8. Robert Heinlein: "Specialization is for insects"
  9. The OODA Loop: Playing chess with half the pieces
  10. Five whys, Part 3: Legacy startups
  11. Five whys, Part 2: How to get started
  12. "It ain't about right, it's about money."
  13. Five whys, Part 1: The startup immune system
  14. Pivotal Tracker: The iPod of project management software
  15. Updated: A quick and dirty guide to starting up
  16. Updated: Our top 10 term sheet hacks
  17. Dharmesh Shah: "Write a blog, not a business plan"
  18. Our Sponsor: Charles River Ventures
  19. "Agile methods and startup companies… go perfectly together."
  20. Customer Development: How to develop your customers like you develop your product
  21. Books for Entrepreneurs: Agile Software Development
  22. Coming Soon: Pitching Hacks, The Book
  23. Why startup pitches fail (and how to fix them)
  24. FBI Negotiator: "If they’re talking to you, you have leverage"
  25. When investors try to re-negotiate a term sheet
  26. A quick and dirty guide to starting up
  27. How should I format my deck?
  28. Lean startups find their moment
  29. How Steve Jobs pitches a startup
  30. How do I lay people off?
  31. Paul Graham: "Look in the mirror"
  32. Vinod Khosla: "Big opportunities are changing the structure of society"
  33. "They blew an opportunity to remain optimistic"
  34. "Financings are blowing up"
  35. Sequoia’s advice is good advice anytime
  36. Eric Ries: "In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown"
  37. Discuss your plans before signing a term sheet
  38. Get Venture Hacks via email
  39. Startup Lessons Learned
  40. The Laws of Productivity
  41. Elevator pitches with bullets
  42. Who makes the best introductions to investors?
  43. What does an employee offer letter look like?
  44. What do investors look for in a startup?
  45. (Not so) Scary terms in offer letters
  46. How common is accelerated vesting on change in control?
  47. Our top 10 term sheet hacks
  48. "Delay decisions until the last responsible moment"
  49. I have a job offer at a startup, am I getting a good deal? Part 2: The company
  50. I have a job offer at a startup, am I getting a good deal? Part 1: The offer
  51. Books for Entrepreneurs: Bargaining for Advantage
  52. Randy Komisar’s 'The Monk and the Riddle'
  53. Randy Komisar on the Rocket Ship investment model
  54. Ideas need not apply
  55. Do you know any idea investors?
  56. Daddy, what's a soft circle?
  57. Advice is for learning, not copying
  58. A Hollywood for startups
  59. Lawyers are referees, not coaches
  60. Kent Beck: "If you’re having trouble succeeding, fail"
  61. Mike Cassidy: Speed as THE primary business strategy
  62. Control is a one way street
  63. High concept pitch: Feedburner for iPhones
  64. Free ideas. Just add execution.
  65. O'Reilly Startup Camp
  66. From incoherent to high concept pitch
  67. High concept pitches for startups
  68. Lijit's CEO on raising money from angels
  69. Venture Hacks: "Competitors copy success, not ideas"
  70. How do we set the valuation for a seed round?
  71. New investors on Venture Hacks
  72. Tips from a ex-VC who helps entrepreneurs raise money
  73. How much money should we raise?
  74. Vinod Khosla: "How would you compete against yourself?"
  75. Entrepreneurs: Missionaries, not mercenaries
  76. Reactions to Recommended
  77. Marc Andreessen on cognitive bias
  78. John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins on building Intuit
  79. Getting Recommended
  80. Half-Assed Startup: Start your company and keep your day job
  81. Comments: Startup founders speak
  82. Everything you ever wanted to know about advisors, Part 2
  83. Mark Cuban: "Most businesses don’t need more cash, they need more brains"
  84. T-Shirts for VCs
  85. Everything you ever wanted to know about advisors, Part 1
  86. Trust, but verify: Why investors want control
  87. How do I find a lead investor? Part 3
  88. How do I find a lead investor? Part 2
  89. How do I find a lead investor? Part 1
  90. Tom Perkins of Kleiner Perkins Interviewed
  91. How well do investors recruit?
  92. Terminating Cisco's founders
  93. The top 3 hacks of the year

2007 50

  1. Should I give my lawyers equity?
  2. Burt Rutan: "Confidence in nonsense is required"
  3. Is it safe to send my deck to investors?
  4. Should I pay my investor's legal fees?
  5. Should I shop around?
  6. Complete business diligence before you sign a term sheet
  7. Investors might share your plans with the competition
  8. Grockit's founder on pitching investors
  9. What should I send investors? Part 3: Business Plans, NDAs, and Traction
  10. What should I send investors? Part 2: Deck
  11. What should I send investors? Part 1: Elevator Pitch
  12. What's the difference between smart money and dumb money?
  13. Ask Venture Hacks
  14. M&A Hacks
  15. Raise money from VCs or angels?
  16. Should I sell my company or raise capital?
  17. Is the VC Industry Doomed?
  18. What's the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make?
  19. How is raising money like buying a car?
  20. Create a market for your shares
  21. Potpourri: Introductions, Auctions, Tranches, and Co-Investors
  22. Why investors don't always do the right thing
  23. Why do investors want protective provisions?
  24. The Equity Equation
  25. A few hacks from our personal blogs
  26. We're Hiring: One (Wo)man Developer Army
  27. How to make a cap table
  28. What are supra pro rata rights?
  29. Office Hours: Technical Error Edition
  30. Venture Hacks Office Hours
  31. HubSpot's founder on negotiating with investors
  32. Supersize your debt with these microhacks
  33. Comments: Convertible debt
  34. Make your debt attractive to investors
  35. What are the benefits of debt in a seed round?
  36. Keep your Series A options open if you raise debt
  37. Comments: Convertible debt and vesting
  38. Venture Hacks: The Mug
  39. Should I raise debt or equity?
  40. Supersize your vesting with these microhacks
  41. Comments: Legal fees, options pools, and vesting
  42. Accelerate your vesting upon a sale
  43. Accelerate your vesting upon termination
  44. Get vested for time served
  45. Focus on your share price, not your valuation
  46. The Option Pool Shuffle
  47. Reactions to Venture Hacks
  48. Make a new board seat for a new CEO
  49. Create a board that reflects the ownership of the company
  50. Term Sheet Hacks: Get a Great Deal