There is a really good book out there on one person startups called the $100 startup by Chris Guillebeau - it gives loads of examples of startups around the world, which were started by one person (http://amzn.to/1Kb63VH)

I have read that book; Its definition of a startup was affiliate marketing or selling courses on selling. There was few examples of real businesses like Coffeeshops or a Photographer but I don't think we consider those startups.

I would say it kind of depends on where you live. While this would be totally o.k. in the U.S. and pretty much no problem at all in the Silicon Valley, it would look fairly bad to a European employer.

thank you.. they look really good. Will give them a try.

You should check out the Growth Hacking class at onemonth.com - I have taken the class and totally love it. It walks you through a full product launch from building a landing page, writing perfect copy to selling. Lots of great advice in there but it does cost $49 per month (and one month is honestly all you need). Also check out this startup community: https://startups.blnkk.com Lots of fellow founders sharing new products and getting feedback from the community.

Thanks! This is precisely the sort of thing I'm looking for.

+1 for that course, great primer on the subject.

My CTO send me a link to a good article on HN

After these awesome videos, you now know how to start a startup. Next up: grow the startup. There is lots of good reading on growth (like this post by Paul Graham from 2012, which is still super valid: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html). But since you are looking for videos, you should check out the free video on Growth Hacking by Mattan Griffel on onemonth (also a Y-Combinator company - http://mbsy.co/cs72Z).

I had to do this many times and the advice from steven2012 is gold. Do it personally, do it with dignity. It is important for those who stay as most likely you will be laying off some of their friends. Do everything you can to allow those who need to go to save their face.

I am not sure I understand the reason for doing this? Why not set a calendar reminder, which then pops up at the desired time? I find mail more and more useless as all the important stuff gets overrun by spam.

Thank you for the feedback. I really do appreciate it.

The app allows you to create a living document that is accessible for viewing and editing behind an easy-to-remember URL. No login is required. For your convenience, the system sends a snapshot of it to your inbox every morning.

You may want to use this to track your progress on your goals for the week.

A future version will support multiple recipients, so a group can coordinate on an activity.

I regularly email myself reminders for things. I am almost always logged into email when at work. I am not always logged into a calendar app.

(I do both, but its usually quicker to send an email than log into google calendar and do it that way).

I use emails for reminders too! Also, I'm usually logged in. This is what inspired MailYou.

I have hired hundreds of people throughout my career - both for startups hiring employee number 2 and also for big corporates. Also, I am normally hiring in Europe. Some of the stuff I mention below may be totally illegal in the U.S.

The questions you ask differ a bit depending on where you are in the company life cycle. As you mentioned interviewing for start ups above, let's focus on that. When hiring employee number 2 to 10 I tend to focus on personality and cultural fit. Instead of the typical job interview, I tend to take long lunches, dinners and walks with the people to find out if we would get along. After all, in a startup you tend to spend more time with your co-workers than with your spouse. So hiring at this stage is more like dating. Of course I ask about their past but some common questions I am interest in are:

- why do you want to join a startup? What is your main goal? This is to find out if they have hopes for lots of stock options and to make it big or if they have been frustrated in their old job for not being able to make decisions. Money focus usually is fine but they need at least one more key motivation as most startups will hit a rough patch where money becomes tight. If they join because they want to have big influence, only hire them if you are willing to give up control.

- are you willing to work very long hours and give up weekends if needed? How does your family life fit into this and how will you make sure that your family life does not suffer and in return impact your work performance.

- I tend to throw in a random question to test their problem solving skills like "how many bakeries are in New York". Even though I find these kind of questions pretty common, they throw of most people. If they answer too fast, you know they have faced this kind of question before and you can ignore the answer. If they stall and look at you like you are crazy, then the answer is important. I tend to give them one or two hints and then just watch how they attempt to solve the problem.

- lastly, depending on the role I hire for, I give them some real life examples and ask them to provide answers. For a coder this will be a coding test for a sales guy I will describe a difficult sales situation etc.

hope this helps :)

What is the most creative answer you've gotten from the bakery question?

Someone figuring out how many customers a bakery needs to survive and then guessing the number of people who live in New York and deducting the number of bakeries from that. Not bad :)

Thanks so much for the in-depth response! One of my best interviews was over coffee with 2 startup founders, so I agree that can be more effective than a typical job interview.

Have you ever hired someone who was great in the interview and on paper but didn't work out? Any idea why?

Two thoughts. First, if your startup requires people to give up nights and weekends and you need to ask potential candidates how they will mitigate that situation with their family life, then you need to rethink how your business and software development run. Work life balance is exceptionally important and should not be ruined for the sake of building a business. I realize you didn't bring up the question about giving up nights and weekends. But since the poster above you did, I thought it important that I bring up that requirements like that are absolutely absurd. If you regularly take away peoples personal time for your business, rethink how you run a business.

Second, on to your question. I have hired quite a lot of people and occasionally they are amazing in interviews and on paper and don't work out in real world situations. Over time you get better at spotting these people but it is a risk you take. As with many things, interviewing is a skill and some people are quite good at it. Often times it is not a technical or job skill mismatch, it is a personality or a team fit match. That can take weeks or months to uncover. The best thing to do is to have a clear exit strategy for each person you bring in if they don't seem to work out.

Yes, I had it happen that people are great on paper and in the interview and did not work out. In each case it was a sales hire. The people in question were excellent sales reps. They knew how to sell themselves as well. However, one of the reasons I hired them for (a big and super relevant rolodex of C-Level contacts in our industry) turned out to be the main reason they totally failed. These guys valued their contacts overall. They would never hard sell any of their contact if they had even the slightest doubt that the product would work 100% as expected. Well, we all know how startup products get build and how they often fail before they excel. So these top notch sales guys would keep on setting up all these great meetings with big names but never close. First they tell you that closing a deal with a blue chip company takes forever (true, they often do take forever). So they could ride along for quite some time without getting caught. Then when pushed, they would make up fair excuses, why their contact would not buy our stuff. This happened to me in my early days as a GM and it took me about a year and a half to see through this.

Now I never hire a sales person based on his rolodex anymore. I find out if the sales person is truly passionate about the product.

Also, on that note, stay away from the sales guy who tells you that he will sell anything to anyone. My best sales hires in the past years have always been people who think that they are not sales people at all :)

In her interview, just over a year ago, my girlfriend was asked: "How many coffees are sold in London each week?".

I can't remember her derivation, but I remember her saying the interviewer was taken aback by her answer. Later that day, when she reiterated the question to me, I didn’t even know where to start. Predictably, I’d interpreted the question literally. It was demonstrating your reasoning and decomposition of the problem that was most important.

[She got the job.]

Which questions would be illegal in the US?

I believe any question that relates to your life outside work such as your marital status, your kids or how your relationship would endure a startup job can get you in trouble in the U.S. - but I am not a U.S. HR pro. However, I learned that it is safest to just focus on job related things in the U.S., while in Germany people will put things like their picture, marital status, religious affiliation, age, etc. on their resume - all of which will send a U.S. HR manager into shock :)