Something Interesting

“ When I first meet founders and ask what their growth rate is, sometimes they tell me “we get about a hundred new customers a month.” That’s not a rate. What matters is not the abolute number of new customers, but the ratio of new customers to existing ones. If you’re really getting a constant number of new customers every month, you’re in trouble, because that means your growth rate is decreasing.

During Y Combinator we measure growth rate per week, partly because there is so little time before Demo Day, and partly because startups early on need frequent feedback from their users to tweak what they’re doing. [6]

A good growth rate during YC is 5-7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you’re doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it’s a sign you haven’t yet figured out what you’re doing.

The best thing to measure the growth rate of is revenue. The next best, for startups that aren’t charging initially, is active users. That’s a reasonable proxy for revenue growth because whenever the startup does start trying to make money, their revenues will probably be a constant multiple of active users. [7] ” - Startup = Growth

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I want all of the data on GitHub to be open. We recently made our wiki system Git-backed so that users could get their data. I want to do the same for Issues and comments and everything else. These things take time. ” - Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010. | Hacker News

“
It took three months to go from inception to private beta. We used an invite only system to introduce artificial scarcity and drive buzz on Twitter (each new signup got five invites to use). After six months we launched to the public and started charging for private repos. Because we had such a great beta period, we converted a large number of users that day and were making money immediately! For the next several months we put every dollar that we made into the company bank account and let it accrue.

One year after inception I was faced with a choice: take a full time position at Microsoft (Powerset had been acquired) or quit and go full time at GitHub. We were making enough money at GitHub to pay low salaries for the three cofounders and we decided to Hire Scott Chacon at the same time. So we went from zero to four full time salaries in one day, a year after starting it on the side.

Over the next six months we incrementally raised salaries for everyone as we hit specific revenue goals. So about 18 months after inception we were making decent salaries. We also hired Tekkub to do full time tech support in this timeframe. Our next hire was Melissa, our office manager a few months later.

As far as revenue at these milestones, we were always profitable. We only hired when we had the money to do so. For the first 18 months we didn’t carry much balance in the bank account. We used it to hire great people.

Being a subscription service means that recurring revenue is extremely predictable. We’ve never had a month where revenue has dropped, and we can predict the increase in monthly revenue quite accurately as well. Growth has been surprisingly smooth (not spikey).

We now make money from GitHub.com, GitHub FI, Training, the Job Board, and merchandise.

” - Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010. | Hacker News

“ Since we don’t have set work hours, there’s a lot of variety to my daily routine. If I’m in SF, I’ll usually get out of bed around 9am, roll over to my desk and deal with email and catch up on tech news. I’ll head into the office around 11am and do any of a million different things there. Between 6pm and 8pm I’ll think about heading home. Maybe a few of us will hit a bar first or grab dinner at a close restaurant. Right now it’s 10:15pm and I’m coordinating with vendors via email and talking with some of the GitHub guys in Campfire.

It’s rare that a day will go by that I don’t work on GitHub in some fashion. I like to get out into nature on weekends to refresh my creative energy and get some exercise, but I’ll still be checking email and maybe writing some code or jotting down ideas I had on the ride.

” - Ask Tom Preston-Werner, cofounder of GitHub, anything Today, Mon 18 Oct 2010. | Hacker News

“ 『孤独、憂鬱、怒り、それを３つ足してもはるかに上回る希望』 ” - 起業家１０周年｜渋谷ではたらく社長のアメブロ

“ ダメなアウトプットを恥ずかしがって出そうとしないから何にも前に進まないんじゃないでしょうか？　そういう人には「考える」って頭を使うことじゃなく手を使うことですよって言いたい。「考える」のは頭じゃなくて、目の前の紙と手の組み合わせなんだって。 ” - Fw：本当に考えたの？（それは「考えた」と言わない。）: DESIGN IT! w/LOVE

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「道程力」とは聞き慣れない言葉だが、石井氏の表現によれば、「100mトラックを人より速く走る事は真の競創ではない。誰も分け入った事の無い原野を一人切り拓き、まだ生まれていない道を一人全力疾走すること、それが競創だ。そこには観客も審判もストップウォッチも存在しない」

” - 伊藤穰一氏、石井裕氏が日本企業トップと語り合った日｜【Tech総研】

“ 　中央管理型イノベーションと、分散型イノベーションの競争で、分散型が勝利した。かつて中央研究所の奥深い部屋で議論され、独占されるのが常だった技術が、こうして小さなベンチャー企業や学生にも参加できるような形でオープンにされていく。
「中央管理型は、あらゆるリスク、あらゆる可能性を設計しながらものを作っていく。そうではなく、とりあえず作ってやりながら考えるというのがインターネットの流儀。MITの同僚、デビッド・クラークの言葉に『Rough Consensus, Running Code=（ゆるやかな合意でとにかくソフトウェアを書け）』というのがあるが、まさにこれはインターネットにおけるイノベーションのあり方を示している。インターネットで本当に影響のあるサービスや技術は、少人数で開発されていることが多い。Webブラウザ、TCP/IP、そしてTwitter然りだ。大学やベンチャー企業の中の少人数のチームが、オープンなプロトコルの中でゆるやかに育っている」 ” - 伊藤穰一氏、石井裕氏が日本企業トップと語り合った日｜【Tech総研】

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スタートアップがスタートアップとだけ付き合っても意味はない。もっと戦略的に自分の時間を使うべきで、あらゆる手段を使い、今は誰と会うか、半年後に必要な人といま会って関係性をつくる意識をしながら人と会うことで自分自身を日々成長させていくべき。

そして、誰に相談したり聞いたとしても最終的には自分自身が判断をする、という覚悟で事業を進めていってほしい。

” - 【企画】「スタートアップとだけ付き合っても意味はない」ーーノボット小林清剛氏が語る創業に大切な8つのヒント | Startup Dating [スタートアップ・デイティング]