This week Paul Graham (co-founder of Y Combinator) tweeted “When you describe what your startup does, describe it in the most matter-of-fact way possible. Professional investors hate having to decode marketing-speak. Describing your startup in grandiose terms is the mark of a noob”. I laughed to myself, thinking of all…

An updated primer on the formula, for startup founders. — I’ve taught CAC<LTV to my students at Stanford for more than a decade. In that time, it’s gone from being a little-known concept to being an often-misunderstood concept. So here are a few updated thoughts. A quick review of the concept: A business is an engine that attracts customers, delivers something…

Have you ever gone to Costco, seen a great price on a case of shampoo, but thought to yourself, “This would be a great deal, but I don’t need that much shampoo!” With Groop, a new startup in Mexico City, you can get the benefits of a group price even…

Just last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about how there is a lot of overstock in supply chains right now. …

Did you know that you can ask Amazon to give you all the personal data they have associated with your account? What they will give you is a bunch of geeky JSON files that will make your head hurt, but you’ll be amazed at how much they know about you. …

If you look-up the search data on Google Trends, you’ll see that consumer searches for “Plant-based diet” have increased 100x in the past ten years. That’s pretty remarkable. All over the globe, more and more people are gravitating toward vegan and vegetarian food choices. This trend is especially strong in…

Influencer marketing has become a big thing. Content creators today are building millions of followers on Instagram and Tik Tok, and global brands are discovering that influencers endorsing their products can be highly effective at driving sales. But what about smaller e-commerce retailers? There are 1.75 million Shopify merchants and…

I’ve written before about how grey markets often provide opportunity for new startups. Rafiki, a new venture in Mexico City, is an excellent example. It turns out that raffles are very popular throughout Mexico. If someone wants to sell a car, for example, they might hold a raffle (called a…

Rent is expensive — we all know that. And many tenants have skills they could offer other tenants. An innovative new startup, RentZero, is focused on helping renters to monetize their skills and reduce their rent cost. Peer-to-peer skills marketplaces have been huge success stories, from Taskrabbit to Upwork, from…