On Starting a Business

Innovation Africa & Water Availability Bring in Israeli solar panels and drip irrigation. Pump water from the large reservoirs below. Cost $7,000. Adapting to community: 6-8 weeks on committees, bank accounts; mobile charging stations and barbershops using solar panels for sustainability. Can’t sell the water, but you can subsidize it with complementary products. Set up remote monitoring with real time stats in order to schedule maintenance. Honorable Mentions Push Party by MSCHF is valued at $200m, led by The Founders Fund....

How to Get Startup Ideas Err on the side of having competitors, but make sure that you have a thesis that everyone else is overlooking, e.g. Google wasn’t averse to users leaving google.com ASAP. The Startup Idea Matrix, ( B2B Edition , B2C Edition ) is a good start for knowing who to google. Big companies tend to be slow at changing their approach....

20 years later, JetBrains is valued at $7b without taking VC money. HN users praise JetBrains for being user-focused, and the prevailing argument is that VC money comes with growth-hacking attached. Is the Lean Startup Dead? Katzenberg (Paramount, Disney Studios & DreamWorks) has raised $1.75b for NewTV, a startup banking on consumers wanting a subscription for 10-minute programs on mobile. They renamed to quibi.com/ . At least that makes them more searchable on Google....

Startups tend to fail more often than they succeed. However, a lot of startup advice is given by those who made it, and therefore prone to survivorship bias. Hearing from founders that gave it their all but never succeeded should be enlightening. I expect reasons like misunderstanding the customer, sunk costs, running out of money (especially with societal pressures like a family to fend for), wrong time, etc. I’d categorize my flashcards web app as a project that never made it....