A brother’s text message about Hillary Clinton recording a podcast doesn’t usually turn into a case study. But that’s exactly what happened with Riverside. I’ve watched a lot of companies…
Most founders bury their worst day. Sahil Lavingia put his on TechCrunch’s homepage and then, four years later, wrote three thousand more words about it. That decision is the whole…
Jack Conte spent three months and maxed out his credit cards on a music video that pulled in millions of views. It made him almost nothing. That’s not a failure…
Evan Williams had already reshaped how the internet communicates. Twice. Blogger gave anyone a printing press. Twitter compressed thought into a sprint. By 2012, he’d spotted the flaw in both.…
Tyler Denk had $2.50 in his bank account and $120,000 in student debt. He was living in his parents’ basement. Six years later, he’d built a company generating $15 million…
Two guys getting fired from their own company usually isn’t the origin story of a multi-billion-dollar business. But that’s exactly what happened to Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri after Oracle…
Nobody at Y Combinator in 2019 thought international payroll was a hot idea. Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang pitched it anyway. Seven years later, that “boring” idea is worth $17.3…
Two friends splitting a currency swap over Skype is not how most billion-dollar companies start. But that’s exactly how Wise began. I’ve spent years building marketing programs for companies trying…
Eighteen years old, $800 in sales, and a business he’d been talking up for months. That was Christian Owens two months into Paddle. Most founders would have called that a…
A customer once emailed a struggling startup asking for help resizing a logo. That’s it. That’s the origin story of one of the most consequential companies in internet history. The…