The Human Condition is a Winning Bet By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read Betting against the human condition and spirit has been basically a losing trade, since the beginning of humanity. I don’t think 2016 is the point where you go short. And so a lot of it makes for great headlines, and you can prognosticate either extreme right libertarianism, or tree-hugging, leftist nonsense… neither are true. The... More
Money is a Lagging Indicator By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read It’s a lagging indicator of progress. It’s a lagging indicator of change. It’s a lagging indicator of value. But the key word there is lagging. So when you create something that’s structurally important and changes something for the better, it has an inherent value. Some of that is expressed in monetary terms: revenue and profits.... More
The Startup Dream Team By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read You need probably two or three really, really, really, sick developers, you need one quasi-developer who’s more of an organizing layer, and you need one person who’s just a maniac and just a bundle of energy. Ideally, those people are also as different as possible. When you’re forced to find commonalities beyond the superficial commonalities,... More
The Journey of a Startup By editor on February 20, 2018 — 2 mins read My dad is in renal failure, he’s in end-stage renal failure. Three times a week, he has to go to the hospital, they drain his blood, they clean his blood, they pump the blood back into his body. He’s had diabetes for 30 years. He’s 75, so he’s had it since his mid-40s. 10 years... More
Three Characteristics to a Good Investor By editor on February 20, 2018 — 5 mins read Picking a good investor. There are, I think, four things that matter, and you should do your own diligence because these things are critical, especially when times are tough. The first is, are they good pickers? And there’s now exceptional data from places like CB Insights and Mattermark. They will go and literally rank every... More
Hail Mary and Ambition By editor on February 20, 2018 — 4 mins read Anything you start: it could be a pretzel business, it could be a home printing business, or it could be Facebook, probably has a 1% chance of success. It really just doesn’t matter what it is. If you have a 1% chance of success, why aren’t you throwing the Hail Mary on something crazy? By... More
A Platform’s Economic Model By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read Bill Gates said to us once, “This will be successful when the economic value of Facebook platform exceeds the economic, or is exceeded by, the economic value of those participants within it.” And that’s what Microsoft did, right? If you sum up all the folks that live in the Windows world, their economic value is... More
Three Steps Before Virality By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read I had a rule at Facebook, which is that we are not allowed to talk about virality, until those other three things are done. Until we’ve acquired true users who love it, until we’ve given them that “aha moment,” and until we then give them that “aha moment” repetitively, over and over again. Only then... More
Dogfooding By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read People always say, “How do I know if I have product value? How do I know if I have leverage in the product?” And my answer is always simple: use the product yourself. You are the best customer, because when you react positively to your product, or another product that you use, you are demonstrating... More
Facebook, Friendster, and Myspace By editor on February 20, 2018 — 1 min read [Facebook] should not have won, because we figured out [the relationship between an engaged user and the number of friends they had] in 2010, 2009. Friendster had almost 100 million users, well before us. Myspace had 150 million users well before us, and they both lost. Why? I think it’s because they had a similar... More
