Investing — Foundry
Articles about investing from the best founders and investors.
73 articles
Marc Andreessen's 3-Part Test for Startup Investing
— Marc Andreessen
Ben Horowitz: Running Without a Board After Raising Money? That's the Most Dangerous Idea in the World.
— Ben Horowitz
Warren Buffett's Favorite Management Advice: You Can Always Tell Someone to Go to Hell Tomorrow
— Warren Buffett
The Advice John Doerr Gave Bezos That Defined Amazon's Early Strategy
— Jeff Bezos
Vinod Khosla: Your Business Plan Is BS. Here's the Right Way to Execute.
— Vinod Khosla
Marc Andreessen: A Top-Tier VC Is a Bridge Loan of Credibility
— Marc Andreessen
Larry Ellison: WhatsApp's $19 Billion Price Tag Shocked Us. Then We Did the Math.
— Larry Ellison
Vinod Khosla: 'Founder Friendly' VCs Are the Worst Thing That Can Happen to You
— Vinod Khosla
DoorDash Almost Died After a Football Game. Then Tony Xu Baked Cookies at 5 AM.
— Tony Xu
The Most Gangster Story in Silicon Valley: Steve Jobs Cutting Personal Checks to Keep Pixar Alive
— Steve Jobs
Warren Buffett: Pick a Classmate to Buy 10% Of. Now Look at Why You Chose Them.
— Warren Buffett
Marc Andreessen Uses a Homicide Detective's Trick to Spot Fake Founders
— Marc Andreessen
Vinod Khosla: An Investor Is an Employee You Can't Fire
— Vinod Khosla
Elad Gil: Too Many Founders Raise Money When They Shouldn't
— Elad Gil
Ben Horowitz Says the Biggest Mistake in a VC Pitch Is Playing It Safe
— Ben Horowitz
Robinhood's Founders Stopped Paying Themselves to Get Their First Check
— Baiju Bhatt
Bill Gurley Passed on Google's Series A and Has Thought About It 1,500 Times
— Bill Gurley
Chamath Killed Virality at Facebook. Then Facebook Took Over the World.
— Chamath Palihapitiya
Jensen Huang Could Not Write a Business Plan. He Got Funded Anyway.
— Jensen Huang
The PayPal Mafia Did Not Get Lucky. They Got Scrappy.
— Peter Thiel
Ben Horowitz Says Board Meetings Are the Best Thing Most Founders Waste
— Ben Horowitz
YC's Jessica Livingston Bet on Two Teenagers. They Built Stripe.
— Jessica Livingston
Jeff Bezos Took 60 Meetings to Raise $1 Million. 40 Said No.
— Jeff Bezos
Peter Thiel: Your Startup's Value Is a Discount to the Future, Not a Premium on the Past
— Peter Thiel
Elon Musk Chose $70M Over $50M From the Right VC. It Almost Killed Tesla.
— Elon Musk
Ben Horowitz: Business Week Called His IPO 'The IPO From Hell'
— Ben Horowitz
Elon Musk Used First Principles to Predict an 80% Drop in Battery Prices
— Elon Musk
Stewart Butterfield: If You're the Kind of Person Willing to Tilt Your Umbrella, There's a Whole World of Opportunity
— Stewart Butterfield
Pinterest Founder: Even Rich Investors Will Ditch You for Free Cookies
— Ben Silbermann
Keith Rabois: Never Name-Drop Investors Unless They've Offered You Money
— Keith Rabois
Marc Andreessen: Why You Should Always Take the Meeting With the Junior VC
— Marc Andreessen
Benchmark Founder: Most Founders Get Product/Market Fit Backwards
— Andy Rachleff
Vinod Khosla: 90% of Investors Add No Value. 70% Add Negative Value.
— Vinod Khosla
Twitter Cofounder Biz Stone: If You Don't Love It, Failure Is Guaranteed
— Biz Stone
Gusto Founder: Treat Fundraising Like Hiring and Watch Everything Change
— Josh Reeves
Keith Rabois: Stop Worrying About Runway. Start Worrying About Lift.
— Keith Rabois
Aaron Levie's Secret: Spend Time With Your Most Futuristic Customers
— Aaron Levie
Travis Kalanick's Fundraising Rule: Wait Until VCs Come Begging
— Travis Kalanick
Brian Chesky Hacked the Chicken-and-Egg Problem by Riding Obama's Coattails
— Brian Chesky
Peter Thiel: Steve Jobs Gets Too Little Credit, Not Too Much
— Peter Thiel
Joel Spolsky: The Biggest Problem With VC Is They Need You to Swing for the Fences
— Joel Spolsky
Perplexity's Aravind Srinivas: The User Is Never Wrong. Even When They Can't Type.
— Aravind Srinivas
Jensen Huang: VCs Don't Invest in Business Plans. They Invest in Great People.
— Jensen Huang
Pinterest is Founder Got Rejected by VCs Who Invented Yahoo. He Built a $40B Company Anyway.
— Ben Silbermann
Spotify is Founder Bet $10 Million of His Own Money at Age 23. From a Logical Point of View, It Was Terrible.
— Daniel Ek
Jack Dorsey's #1 Rule for Raising Venture Capital
— Jack Dorsey
Tobi Lutke: Most Founders Get This Dead Wrong
— Tobi Lutke
Apoorva Mehta's Playbook for Winning
— Apoorva Mehta
Jeff Bezos Raised Amazon's Seed Round: 60 Meetings, 40 Nos, 70% Chance of Failure
— Jeff Bezos
Balaji Srinivasan: The Founders With Titanium Skeletons
— Balaji Srinivasan
Naval Ravikant on the Curse of Venture Capital
— Naval Ravikant
Most Businesses Should Never Raise Venture Capital
Vinod Khosla: My Willingness to Fail Is Entirely Responsible for My Success
— Vinod Khosla
Scott Belsky: Kill Half Your Features. Your Product Will Get Better.
— Scott Belsky
Marc Andreessen: VCs Invest in Strength, Not Lack of Weakness
— Marc Andreessen
Quora's Adam D'Angelo: The Single Metric That Predicts Your Startup's Valuation
— Adam DAngelo
Jeff Bezos Took 60 Meetings to Raise One Million Dollars. 40 Said No.
— Jeff Bezos
Michael Seibel: Your Startup Pitch Should Take 30 Seconds. Not 30 Minutes.
— Michael Seibel
Ron Conway: The Fundraising Rules Nobody Tells You
— Ron Conway
Sam Altman: The Leading Causes of Co-Founder Conflict (And How to Prevent Them)
— Sam Altman
Tony Fadell: Choose a Startup Like You Choose a University — What Do You Want to Learn, and From Whom?
— Tony Fadell
Marc Andreessen and Parker Conrad: The Best Advice for Raising Venture Capital
— Marc Andreessen
Stripe and Pinterest Reveal Exactly What They Looked for in Their First 10 Hires
— Patrick Collison
Bill Gates on Work-Life Balance: There Is No Such Thing in Your 20s
— Bill Gates
Spencer Rascoff Sold His Company for $700M. Nobody Made Money. Here's Why.
— Spencer Rascoff
Naval Ravikant: What He Looks for in Every Founder Before Writing a Check
— Naval Ravikant
Balaji Srinivasan: The Features That Make Internet Startups Attractive to Investors
— Balaji Srinivasan
Pinterest Founder Ben Silbermann: What Surprised Him Most Was How Lonely It Is
— Ben Silbermann
Bill Gurley: TAM Conservatism Will Hurt You More Than It Helps You
— Bill Gurley
Marc Andreessen: The Onion Theory of Risk — Peel One Layer at a Time
— Marc Andreessen
Bill Gurley: How to Know If Your Internet Marketplace Idea Will Work
— Bill Gurley
Eric Schmidt: How He Uses 5-Year Plans to Predict the Next $100 Billion Company
— Eric Schmidt
Tony Fadell: Engineers Build the What. Then Call Marketing at the End. That's Why Products Fail.
— Tony Fadell