Top all-time · #2061
Ryan Carson
Personal blog · ryancarson.comstartupscareer
Ryan Carson is a personal blog at ryancarson.com about startups and career. Since 2009, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 64 times, most often “We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m (2012)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-16, and you can follow it by feed.
I’m Ryan Carson, and I’ve been a Founder CEO for 20 years, building, scaling and selling three companies.
Most-linked posts?
- We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m (2012)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-09-02
- You can do it alone4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-11-17
- Why we removed bosses at Treehouse4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-09-18
- /3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-04-10
- Dos and Don’ts for Founders3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-06-21
- How to set priorities, create budgets and do PM in a no-manager company2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-11
- When to kill your startup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-13
- The negative side of no-manager companies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-01-17
- How I manage 40 people remotely2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-11
What Hacker News says?
I also don't agree that working on a startup should mean no work-life balance. There's a limit to how productive you can be, and working 90 hours/week is not going to make you more productive than working 45 hours/week. If you work too much, you'll do more mistakes. Ryan Carson, founder of TeamTreeHouse, can teach us a lot about it. http://ryancarson.com/
Comment linking /
on “Lecture 1 – How to Start a Startup [video]”Submitted You can do it alone as a story · 534 points
HN discussionWell some companies can work with no managers http://ryancarson.com/post/73639971628/the-negative-side-of-...
Comment linking /post/73639971628/the-negative-side-of-nomanager-companies
on “What it is like being the only engineer in a meeting [video]”Submitted We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m (2012) as a story · 271 points
HN discussiondont treehouse do that? http://ryancarson.com/post/21708810513/4-day-week
Comment linking /post/21708810513/4-day-week
on “Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you”Submitted How I manage 40 people remotely as a story · 262 points
HN discussionWe implemented Trello, along with daily working/billing about a month ago, and I don't think we'll ever go back. Working on one project per day instead of trying to do 100 things at once cut my stress in half and doubled my productivity. Trello makes it easy to see what's getting done by whom, and who is available to work on the next item coming down the pipe. Client work gets done faster, and we have more time for…
Comment linking /post/24884883426/how-i-manage-40-people-remotely
on “Trello is now half million strong”Submitted When to kill your startup as a story · 146 points
HN discussionIf the challenge is to "think of successful entrepreneurs or CEOs who blog", I can think of a bunch off the top of my head: Leo W. at Buffer - http://blog.bufferapp.com/author/leo Ryan Carson at Treehouse - http://ryancarson.com/ Jason Fried & DHH - http://37signals.com/svn Matt Mullenweg - http://ma.tt/ Patio11 - http://www.kalzumeus.com/
Comment linking /
on “Few successful entrepreneurs blog”Submitted Living outside America as a story · 138 points
HN discussionThey call it "Open Allocation". "Holacracy" is similar as well. A few other companies doing it... * Zappos — http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-title... * Treehouse — http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-re... * WL Gore & Associates (parts of the company) — http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/nov/02/gore-tex-tex...
Comment linking /post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse
on “Ask HN: Do you know other firms like Valve or GitHub?”Submitted Selling your company doesn’t make you happy as a story · 134 points
HN discussionPart 2 discusses more about forming projects and clarifies that whilst there are no 'formal' managers to cajole people into doing things, there still need to be 'sticks' to hold groups together. http://ryancarson.com/post/61606695537/how-to-set-priorities... I think it's interesting that beneath the tagline of 'people work on whatever they want' there is actually an expectation that peer pressure will prevent this;…
Comment linking /post/61606695537/how-to-set-priorities-create-budgets-and-do-project
on “Why we removed bosses at Treehouse”Submitted Entrepreneurs think they’re badass as a story · 130 points
HN discussionWhen Ryan Carson's post made the rounds here not too long ago, I was really surprised by what got them thinking about removing their managers. http://ryancarson.com/post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-re... By 2013 we had grown to 60 people with seven managers and four executives. As we added more people to the team, we noticed something disconcerting: rumors, politics and complaints started appearing. If you have m…
Comment linking /post/61562761297/no-managers-why-we-removed-bosses-at-treehouse
on “First, Let's Fire All The Managers”Submitted Why we removed bosses at Treehouse as a story · 123 points
HN discussionGreat point. Read http://ryancarson.com/ for a very different point of view.
Comment linking /
on “Startups, Role Models, Risk, and Y Combinator”Submitted Mistakes I made as a young entrepreneur as a story · 112 points
HN discussionhttp://ryancarson.com/post/25580650719/7-dos-and-donts-for-f... some more info in there for you mate.
Comment linking /post/25580650719/7-dos-and-donts-for-founders
on “A day in the life of a CEO”Submitted A day in the life of a CEO as a story · 111 points
HN discussionHere's a better description of our reasoning: http://ryancarson.com/post/49494542970/how-to-use-a-reddit-c...
Comment linking /post/49494542970/how-to-use-a-reddit-clone-to-boost-company-culture
on “How to use a Reddit-clone to boost company culture”Submitted Dos and Don’ts for Founders as a story · 104 points
HN discussionHere's the explanation: http://ryancarson.com/post/49494542970/how-to-use-a-reddit-c...
Comment linking /post/49494542970/how-to-use-a-reddit-clone-to-boost-company-culture
on “How to use a Reddit-clone to boost company culture”Submitted How to use a Reddit-clone to boost company culture as a story · 93 points
HN discussionI know only one company that publicly has 4-day work week for all employees and that's Treehouse https://teamtreehouse.com/ and the founder Ryan Carson has good blog posts about the topic such as http://ryancarson.com/post/21708810513/4-day-week
Comment linking /post/21708810513/4-day-week
on “Four-day work week – Lessons learned”Submitted The 90 Day Plan as a story · 64 points
HN discussionI don't wear the hat any more: http://ryancarson.com/
Comment linking /
on “Treehouse gets $7M to bring learn-to-code programs to high schools”Submitted Hiring Employee #1 as a story · 49 points
HN discussion> Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY ), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone ) I just don't like the stupid hat ( http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ryan-car... ). I am probably more superficial than you.
Comment linking /post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone
on “Treehouse gets $7M to bring learn-to-code programs to high schools”Submitted Startups, you don’t need to be in Silicon Valley as a story · 46 points
HN discussion
