Business ​

Learning to build startups.

Interesting companies ​

• Calico
• Formidable
• Apple
• Google
• DeepMind
• OpenAI
• Looker
• Tray
• SkyScanner
• GitBook
• Gatsby
• Otta
• Readdle
• Monzo
• Cloudflare
• Parity
• Framer X
• Mozilla
• Facebook
• Deliveroo
• Bloomberg
• Figma
• Digital Ocean
• TypeForm
• Apollo (Senior eng)
• Notion

Notes ​

• I don't care how successful you or your company becomes, the absolute worst founders are the ones that screw over their employees / teammates during any M&A. First rule is take care of everyone on your team first.
• Organizations should outgrow their founders.
• Product-market fit heals and forgives almost everything. The highest order bit is almost the only thing that matters by a long shot, to a dramatic and unintuitive degree.
• Business is just an elaborate excuse to make friends with interesting people.
• Having a flat company structure sounds great until you've lived it. Companies need structure and hierarchy to work.
• A small team of great engineers can make just a shocking amount of progress. This is one of the most unintuitive things for business people who tend to think more linearly in terms of team size vs. output.
• Most large companies are incompetent at doing or thinking about anything beyond their core competency.
• What matters is not so much size [of an organization] but the distance between employees and their customers.
• In corporate jobs, the best employees make their manager’s lives easier which encourages giving them more scope and responsibility. You get there by being autonomous instead of needing regular guidance, bringing solutions not problems and taking ownership when you don’t have to.
• The moment you initiate a business relationship with anyone outside of your company, you should be registering it, as the contracts should be between the corporate entity and the vendor rather than you (personally) with the vendor.
• As a principal engineer, sometimes my title intimidates people (at my job). I see it when people are sharing ideas or code. I’m thinking of ways to tackle this, but wanted to share that your title may carry weight. What are you doing to build inclusive and equitable environments?
• 40 hour workweek was established over a century ago. Since then, we've invented 5G networks, automation, 3D printing, AR/VR, and a computer that can fit in your pocket. Nearly all of the tools have changed, yet somehow people still think the way we work needs to stay the same.
• Checking items off a list feels productive but it’s not effective. Effectiveness is staying focused on tasks that drive customer value.
• Within a year or two, we will see the end of cliff vesting or vesting of any kind. We are already seeing some large companies front-load RSUs. One big factor is competition with web3 projects where people can be compensated in instantly liquid tokens.
• I don't want a new cryptocurrency i want a new type of business legal structure that incentivizes you to actually do good in the world while making money.
• Advice for making money: Sell to businesses. Not consumers.

Links ​

• Cloudflare S-1 (HN)
• Patagonia: Yvon Chouinard (2016)
• Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (2020)
• Search for trademark
• Patio11’s Law
• progression.fyi - Collection of open source frameworks for helping designers and engineers to grow at work.
• Building an Engineering Ladder at Glossier (2020)
• Ask HN: Best ways to retain qualified employees? (2020)
• XOLO - Forget any worries about your solo business setup, accounting and getting a bank account. We do it for you, 100% online.
• Most Interesting Business Essay You’ve Read? (2020)
• Fire & Fawning (2020)
• Ask HN: Is a SaaS provider expected to have a trademark in every country? (2020)
• Ask HN: Any well funded tech companies tackling big, meaningful problems? (2020)
• Ask HN: What did you do to improve your company? (2020)
• Gumroad Public Wiki
• Buttondown Running Costs
• What is Amazon? (2019) (HN)
• Complete List Of Unicorn Companies
• Europe’s startup unicorns (HN)
• Awesome Social Enterprise - Resources to dive into the world of social enterprises.
• Largest tech companies by market cap
• Ask HN: Where can I buy SaaS businesses? (2021)
• What are the most impactful non-profits in startups and tech? (2021)
• How James Clear runs his business
• A solo journey to $100k (2021) (HN)
• How to Buy, Grow, and Sell Small Companies
• The best apps today are games in disguise (2021)
• Lessons from Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke: what he learned from scaling Shopify through the pandemic (2021)
• Blook - Register Your Company In The U.S globally.
• How much it costs to incorporate (2021)
• What is the highest margin business you've ever seen? (2021)
• Gaps - Online business analysis & opportunities.
• Learnings from Jeff Bezos's 23 years of Amazon shareholder letters (2021)
• Career Ladders - Sample of career ladders I use for my organization, open sourced for anyone. (Code) (Article)
• Ask HN: I'd like to start a company, where should I begin? (2021)
• How Tech Loses Out over at Companies, Countries and Continents (2021) (Lobsters)
• What's Salesforce? (2019) (HN)
• Great banks for business (2021)
• Eight ways to make money (2021)
• Trends - Your next business idea, delivered weekly.
• Netflix's strategy of managing "complexity" and "creativity"
• Profit Sharing (2020) - How to compensate employees.
• Decision making framework businesses and startups
• Colossus - Best information on business building and investing.
• Ask HN: Where would you incorporate in 2021?
• The six principles of lifestyle businesses (2021)
• Businesses at Work (2021)
• Actionable Steps for Building the Right Business with Arvid Kahl (2021)
• What happens in an IPO? – A beginner's guide (2021) (HN)
• 700+ $1B+ private companies in one chart (2021)
• Stripe Atlas: the first five years and 20k startups (2021) (HN)
• Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business
• Ask HN: Anyone here built successful SaaS/startup just for money? (2021)
• Google engineer who criticized company in viral comics on why he finally quit (2021) (HN)
• Building Paid Communities, Brainstorming Membership Site Ideas, Quitting Your Job (2021)
• Ask HN: How do you know when to sell your business? (2021)
• Apple is now an antifragile company (2021) (HN)
• Economics of Bundling and Unbundling (2021)
• Bernard Arnault's LVMH business (2021)
• 2013 Elon email to employees on why he wants to keep SpaceX private
• As More Workers Go Solo, the Software Stack Is the New Firm (2021)
• α-Indirect Control in Onion-like Networks (2021) - Algorithm that detects the ultimate controlling owners of companies. (Article) (HN)
• Cloudflare’s Pace of Innovation (2021) (HN)
• The Skill of Org Design (2021) (HN)
• Business Wire - Press release distribution, EDGAR filing, XBRL, regulatory filings.
• The Death and Birth of Technological Revolutions (2021) (HN) (Tweet)
• Companies that started as spreadsheets (2021)
• Steve Jobs on Starting A Business
• trademarks - Small service that helps to check if there was already a registered trademark.
• Leaving Google (2021) (HN)
• Influence Explorer - Tool for browsing an integrated stream of multinational procurement, lobbying, and labor relations data feeds. (Code)
• HashiCorp – S1 (2021) (HN)
• What acquisition (one company buying another) would make the most sense to you? (2021)
• Elon Musk on why tech patents are not great
• Firstbase - Start your business in the US from anywhere. (Twitter)
• I started a paper website business (2021) (HN)
• Reinventing Organizations (2014)
• Underrated institutions (2021)
• Companies that had successful pivots (HN)
• Ask HN: How do I manage the profit of a successful website? (2022)
• Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead? (2022)
• Top 10 business books (2022)
• I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months. (2021) (HN)
• Don't forget Microsoft (2022) (HN)
• Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier? (2022)
• Why do corporations repurchase shares? What benefit does this have? (2022)
• 10 Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A (2022)
• Y Combinator Top Companies List
• AdminLeo: OnlyFans Owner's Dubious Financial History (2022) (Tweet)
• Businesses you know of that are owned 100% by 1 person
• A new kind of equity program (2022) (HN)
• Accounting for SaaS and swords (2022)
• Ask HN: What do you do when competition signs up for your service? (2022)
• Your First Business Should Be A Spreadsheet (2021)
• What are some lesser-known industries that's dominated by just 1-3 companies? (2022)
• The 5 Dumbest Company Buyouts in History (2021)
• What was the smartest Corporate Buyout of All Time? (2020)
• Success and Failure at Pebble (2022)
• Elon Musks' bid on Twitter explained (2022)
• Default Alive or Default Dead? (2015) (Tweet)
• Ask HN: 6-hour workdays more important than 4-day workweeks IMO (2022)
• Ask HN: What is the best jurisdiction for internationally distributed teams? (2022)
• Lessons learned from selling a startup
• Ask HN: Examples of large acquisitions that did not ruin the acquired company? (2022)
• How to drive away your best engineers (2021) (HN) (HN)
• Ask HN: What are examples of companies dying due to many people quitting? (2022)
• Ask HN: Companies of one, how do you ensure business continuity? (2022)
• How to best start a Personal Holding Company (PHC) (2022)
• Robinhood lists
• How The Pandora Papers Actually Work
• Ask HN: How to learn business being a software engineer (2023)
• Ask HN: Role-model companies with the best dev culture in 2023
• Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? (2023)