Tweet I just responded to that question on Quora, and since many people ask me the same question during co-founders meetups, I might as well post my answer here once and for all. Q: I just met someone who looks like a potential co-founder for me. What should I ask to tell if he is [...]

Tweet This week has been very productive (and it’s only Tuesday morning): First on Monday, VentureBeat published my guest column on the winning pitch at the Founder Conference. It’s worth watching the video and reading the analysis, if you ever wondered why no one calls you back after you pitch your idea. Then this morning [...]

Tweet There are lots of myths and dreams attached to starting a company. Will you be the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg? Will you negotiate million dollars rounds of financing with cool VCs? This is what starting a company really means: e-mailing 100 strangers a day, every day. For the foreseeable future. That’s it. [...]

Tweet Yesterday night at the Microsoft campus was a great edition of the Founder Showcase. The evening started with a tell-all keynote on freemium business models from Phil Libin, the founder of Evernote. He candidly shared information that is usually impossible to get, such as how many users convert to paying customers or how much [...]

Tweet I was on the Paris subway, returning from one of the first sessions of the Founder Institute there. Sitting next to me was one of the founders. Something was bothering him. He finally asked: “why do you put so much emphasis on market size? The team, and surely other aspects must be equally important [...]

Tweet Yesterday was the third Co-Founders MeetUp of Silicon Valley, which set a new attendance record of 120 people. 12 startups pitched their idea with the goal to attract co-founders. The quality of the ideas was very high. Another thing I liked is that this MeetUp truly opens my mind: it’s like a giant idea [...]

Tweet If you have been reading startup advice long enough, you surely noticed two trends repeated ad nauseum. Iterate Quickly Also known as “kill ideas fast”, this advice is saying that your idea is probably not worth the pixels it’s displayed on. Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution matters. You’d be better off with [...]

Tweet Aucadia.com is a community website aimed at musicians and fans where the fans can get involved with the bands they love. It’s such a cool project, we had to find out more from Robin and Owen Spottiswoode, the two co-founders. Alain: Tell us about your product and maybe where the idea came from, or [...]

Tweet Yesterday Steve Mathers posted a project on FairSoftware that looks pretty exciting: It’s a Facebook game called despots. I asked Steve for some more info. The interview is below: Alain: Tell us about your product and maybe where the idea came from, or why you think this is important Steve: I’m an avid strategy [...]

Tweet At an iPhone developer Meetup a few nights ago, an iPhone developer asked me a key question: “how much equity in my project should I offer to the technical writer that I need to finish my app?” His gut feeling was that as the main developer, he of course should keep most of the [...]