i've helped over 100 founders raise their first round from vcs their most common question? how to find the right valuation for their startup here's the 5 step framework i share with them:

most founders focus on maximizing their valuation instead, they should think about: - how much capital they need - how much of the company they're willing to sell - the current state of the markets and work backwards from their next round

elon musk has built companies worth over $800 billion and he credits his success to first principles thinking here's his framework for coming up with new ideas:

first — what is first principles thinking? it's a way of approaching problem solving used at many of the most successful tech companies it says to base your ideas on undeniable truths you've identified a first principle is the answer to the question "what do we know for sure?"

i've helped hundreds of founders raise their first round of capital their most common question? what their startup's valuation should be here's my 5 step framework for how to value early stage startups:

most founders focus on maximizing their valuation instead, they should think about: - how much capital they need - how much of the company they're willing to sell - the current state of the markets and work backwards from their next round

these 15 YouTube channels will teach you more about startups than any university:

garry tan (@garrytan) ceo of y combinator, exited founder, cofounder of initialized... and youtuber garry's built his channel to 200K subscribers by making great videos over 2 years recommended video: level up your friends like billionaires do

i've reviewed hundreds of startup pitch decks this year but i've only invested in 14 here are the 9 most common pitch deck red flags:

🚩 early stage financial projections here's a secret — vcs know you made them up and that they won't be accurate what they don't know is if YOU know that they'll be concerned if they think you believe everything will go as planned instead, share some revenue napkin math

big news 🔥 i've launched a newsletter! it's full of quick, actionable advice for founders i'm sharing what i've learned co-founding @launchhouse and raising from @a16z here's the first weekly post 👇

my goal? help founders make better decisions and grow their startups faster over 3,000 are already signed up try it here 👇 https://www.houck.news

at 21 i didn't know what a startup was at 31 now i've raised $15M for my startup here are 10 lessons i learned over the last 10 years:

money is a tool: many people are taught that money is the root of all evil but it's simply a tool that reveals who you are as a person used well, it unlocks faster progress and greater success

it's taken san francisco 20 years to build a single bus lane but many incredible things get built surprisingly quickly stripe's founder patrick collison wrote an article highlighting 9:

ipod went from hiring a product manager to launch in ~290 days for a product that reached 1 billion people look at the timeline: • jan: tony fadell hired to lead the project • mar: steve jobs gives it the green light • oct: product announced • nov: delivered to users

Airbnb is worth $70 billion when i worked there i learned how it almost failed here’s the story of how it was saved by cereal:

in 2008 a young Airbnb was in need of cash on an NPR podcast, co-founder @jgebbia said: “You know those binders where you keep baseball cards? I had one of those except there weren’t baseball cards in it, they were credit cards.”

hot take — San Francisco is still the center of the startup world since the pandemic started people have been saying SF is dead but rent is lower and a whole new wave of young, ambitious builders are moving there here are 7 reasons i'm bullish on SF: