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.​

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)​