Many people view venture capital as the top of Silicon Valley’s career food chain. But the reality is far less glamorous: intensely competitive, performance-driven, and transactional. Happiness, it turns out, is not found at the top of any career hierarchy, but in the present.
Harsh Truths About the VC Culture in San Francisco Learned So Far Read More »
My passions keep flipping over time, each one growing out of the wounds left by the last. Here is what that cycle of burnout, doubt, and rebirth has taught me about staying in the game for the long run.
So what happens when agentic AI interacts with humans? Your Pokemon represents you, mine represents me, and the bigger one usually wins. Thus begins the reputation game: the measure of reputation is not your follower count, it is who opens your emails. Here is what you can do about it.
I’d dare to say that in every working environment, there is some “great lie.” That one thing they tell you to control you. My feeling is that, in the startup world, the great lie is ”get yourself funded.” Getting funding in itself is often treated as success in itself, and taken as a stamp of quality.
Business development is a never-ending series of wins and losses, golden shots and crude mistakes, shiny peaks and dark valleys. I made many small mistakes along the way because I was simply green. It’s my first company, after all. However, today, I’d like to talk about one crude mistake that almost killed all my business ventures.
We all use heuristics in our professional lives as they help us offset the energy costs associated with decision-making and better navigate our complex world. While some heuristics might be productive, others prove to be a trap (for instance, mind a long list of human cognitive errors). I recently started contemplating one heuristic that always seemed a no-brainer for me: follow the people. Was is a good bet after all?
Question: Is earning ten million dollars a success? Answer: it is, or it is not — depending on the structure of your company. In this article, I’d like to say a few words about why I chose bootstrapping as my business model and why I’d recommend considering this model for anyone who is building a SaaS or consulting / education business.
To Bootstrap or Not To Bootstrap? On The Unbeatable Power of Starting Small and Smart Read More »
Twenty-five hard-won lessons on networking in San Francisco: how to find the hubs, adjust to the tribe, net-weave at meetups, make yourself useful, protect your reputation, and play the long game. Plus a few brutal truths about extractors, void communities, and why the city rewards those who stay different.
If You Are Going To San Francisco… My 25 Tips and Tricks on Networking in the City Read More »
Admission to Y Combinator is a dream for thousands of SaaS founders, but the acceptance rate is under 2%. I analyzed 32 successful YC applications to find out what separates the founders who get in from those who don’t.
In the Netherlands, coffee verkeerd means coffee the wrong way. Natalia shares the unorthodox personal rules behind how she runs her business, from rejecting fast growth to embracing emotional openness.
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