Top all-time · #9012
Sachin Agarwal
Personal blog · sachinagarwal.comstartupseconomics
Sachin Agarwal's personal blog at sachinagarwal.com covers startups and economics. Since 2008, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “Setting Pricing for a Startup - The Rule of 80% ”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Constructive criticism and found delights
Most-linked posts?
- Setting Pricing for a Startup - The Rule of 80% 3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-10-05
- Quick Compare-and-Contrast of the Y Combinator and TechStars Series AA Documents3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-02-08
- Illinois's so-called tech leaders have failed the state2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-09-17
What Hacker News says?
I did a quick blog post with charts and comparisons to not only Dropbox but all the other major players: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/google-drive-charts
Comment linking /google-drive-charts
on “Introducing Google Drive... yes, really”Submitted Ten Steps To Ten Thousand Sign Ups Before We Even Launch Our Startup as a story · 139 points
HN discussionI wrote about pricing tiers many years ago: http://sachinagarwal.com/setting-pricing-for-a-startup-the-r...
Comment linking /setting-pricing-for-a-startup-the-rule-of-80
on “Ask HN: How do you set prices?”Submitted An Analysis of the YC "Open Sourced" Documents In Layman's Terms as a story · 69 points
HN discussion"... but this is a dupe from just 53 days ago ..." Thanks I'll kill it. There must be a bug somewhere or the url's have changed because they both resolve to ~ http://www.sachinagarwal.com/setting-pricing-for-a-startup-t... Pretty sure if you re-post something already on HN the post is redirected to the original. Now I see you changed the title "Setting Pricing For A Startup" to "Setting Pricing for a Startup - The R…
Comment linking /setting-pricing-for-a-startup-the-rule-of-80
on “Setting Pricing for a Startup - The Rule of 80% ”Submitted Setting Pricing for a Startup - The Rule of 80% as a story · 60 points
HN discussionIt's be great if you could. I just talked to Yokum this past Friday and he conceded that these docs aren't out there: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/how-to-legally-incorporate-your...
Comment linking /how-to-legally-incorporate-your-startup-quick
on “Ask PG: Can you paste paperwork used to get YC startups incorporated?”Submitted Setting Pricing For A Startup as a story · 38 points
HN discussionI hung out with Yokum on Friday and essentially went through the "how do I find and hire a lawyer" bit he refers to at the end of his essay: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/how-to-legally-incorporate-your...
Comment linking /how-to-legally-incorporate-your-startup-quick
on “What do you need to do before you quit your job to form a startup company?”Submitted Which States Have the Best Startup Environments? as a story · 38 points
HN discussionAh, fuck. Now I have to do a compare and contrast to the YC model docs. [EDIT] Here it is: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/quick-compare-and-contrast-of [EDIT 2]: Here's the HN thread on my submission of my analysis of the YC documents back when: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=283469
Comment linking /quick-compare-and-contrast-of
on “TechStars Model Seed Funding Documents”Submitted Illinois's so-called tech leaders have failed the state as a story · 31 points
HN discussionI'm a non-technical founder who's founded one startup, joined another, and am now an Advisor at TechStars - before I go back to B school to get an MBA. And that's after I did a business degree in undergrad. To me, getting an MBA is all about option value. If I want to go to a big company, it's a prerequisite. If I want to do startups, it's not. If I want to jump back and forth, then it's a prerequisite again. I'm wi…
Comment linking /why-this-startup-guy-is-going-back-to-busines
on “Is an MBA a Plus or a Minus in the Startup World?”Submitted Bring back the evening paper as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI'm non-technical and co-founded a startup. I would never do it again without a technical co-founder or learning to code myself. So I'm learning Ruby. You can do a full-on MSCS from Stanford, or you can just teach yourself how to code, but that's the path I'd take - and I'm going to business school to get an MBA in the fall : http://www.sachinagarwal.com/why-this-startup-guy-is-going-b...
Comment linking /why-this-startup-guy-is-going-back-to-busines
on “Ask HN: Start-up success as a non-technical?”Submitted Economic Advice from an Entrepreneur that is Actually Doable in this Congressional Session as a story · 10 points
HN discussionNo, these principles are an excellent distillation of lots of stuff I've seen elsewhere and gleaned from talking with founders and CEOs. (DISCLAIMER: if you're assuming a scale business like Facebook or Twitter, these are indeed terrible ideas. This is for business that make money by charging their users.) 1) "Anything given for free should only give a taste, at a clearly limited scale. Not all features should be gi…
Comment linking /setting-pricing-for-a-startup-the-rule-of-80
on “Principles behind a Freemium Pricing Model”Submitted Quick Compare-and-Contrast of the Y Combinator and TechStars Series AA Documents as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSo happy to have this - it was the biggest issue for using Posterous on a more regular basis. BTW, Posterous handles it just fine: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/testing-gmail-labs-new-insert-i...
Comment linking /testing-gmail-labs-new-insert-image-for-sachi
on “New in Gmail: Inserting images”Submitted Be Careful About Outsourcing Your Customer Acquisition as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIf you use your e-mail program as your post editor (I use Gmail web interface), you can make it work by throwing ((nogallery)) into your title. See my recent posts for how it works: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/ Disclosure: I'm not the Sachin Agarwal that co-founded Posterous, although he's threatened to hijack my domain and redirect it to his blog. (He's kidding. Sort of. I will stab him if he does.) Because of my…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: what hosted blogging solution would you recomend?”Submitted Compare-and-Contrast of the Y Combinator and TechStars Series AA Model Documents as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere are a number of us who love the city and shake their heads about how unsupportive it is for tech startups. (I examined the claim with data: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/illinois-so-called-tech-leaders... ) At the end of the day, if you can't get angel money - and I reiterate, there is no active angel money in Chicago , only a bunch of self-proclaimed angels that don't cut checks - a YC-style program won't work…
Comment linking /illinois-so-called-tech-leaders-have-failed-t
on “What Would A Chicago-style Y Combinator Look Like?”I button holed (read: stood up and asked a question of) Dan'l Lewis, the big muckety-muck at Microsoft in charge of the program, about BizSpark. The question was: "we're a LAMP shop, what do we get out of BizSpark?" His answer: "we can help you move to Microsoft tools when you have scaling issues. That's what we did for MySpace." More fail: http://www.sachinagarwal.com/microsoft-bizspark-is-a-joke
Comment linking /microsoft-bizspark-is-a-joke
on “How Microsoft BizSpark Is Doing With Startups, and How It Can Do Better”
