Startups

The Airbnbs

December 2020To celebrate Airbnb's IPO and to help future founders, I thought it might be useful to explain what was special about Airbnb.What was special...

New series: Planning your 2026 customer service organization

Like many support leaders right now, I’m deep in 2026 planning. I imagine this cycle is bringing a big question into focus for most: if...

ISPs more likely to throttle CGNAT traffic: Cloudflare • The Register

Before the potential of the internet was appreciated around the world, nations that understood its importance managed to scoop outsized allocations of IPv4 addresses,...

Enshitification – Feld Thoughts

I’ve been a long-time Cory Doctorow fan. His new book Enshitification is delicious. Yup – I understand that a shit emoji doesn’t inspire deliciousness.Now...

Grok 4.1 Fast's compelling dev access and Agent Tools API overshadowed by Musk glazing

Elon Musk's frontier generative AI startup xAI formally opened developer access to its Grok 4.1 Fast models last night and introduced a new Agent...

The Startup Junkies Podcast | 2: The Transship Story: A Journey from Cold Storage to AI-Powered Shipping with Amit Hasak

SummaryIn this episode of the Fuel Podcast, Grace Gill sits down with...

Steve Blank The Department of War Just Shot the Accountants and Opted for Speed

Last week the Department of War finally killed the last vestiges of Robert McNamara’s 1962 Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS).  The DoW has pivoted...

How Victoria Moll Built a Six-Figure Brand in a Small Niche

Here at SPI, we talk a lot about how the riches are in the niches—and Victoria Moll of Contempo Coding is living, breathing proof...

What Is a Referral Rewards Program and How Does It Work?

A Referral Rewards Program is a strategic marketing tool designed to encourage your existing customers to bring in new clients. By offering rewards, such...

Which Ones Actually Ship a Decent Site?

AI website builders promise a lot: “Describe your business in a sentence and we’ll generate a beautiful, high-converting site in 30 seconds.” Sometimes you actually...

Billionaires Build

December 2020As I was deciding what to write about next, I was surprised to find that two separate essays I'd been planning to write were...

Hollywood demos vs. real-world demos

There are two types of AI demos: the “Hollywood demo,” which is highly produced, polished, and looks pretty perfect; and the “real-world demo,” which...

NeoClerks-partnership.md · GitHub

How I spent 18 months building an AI avatar platform through war, economic collapse, and 120-hour weeks—and why I'm now looking for a partner...

The Bear Roars: Dan and Brad

I recently joined Dan Caruso on The Bear Roars podcast, and our conversation brought one thing into focus: we’re living through a shift that’s...

What could possibly go wrong if an enterprise replaces all its engineers with AI?

AI coding, vibe coding and agentic swarm have made a dramatic and astonishing recent market entrance, with the AI Code Tools market valued at...

The Startup Junkies Podcast | 27: De ONG a Startup: El viaje emprendedor de Diego Angarita

SummaryEn este inspirador episodio de Querido Emprendedor, Ignacio Balderrama conversa con Diego...