A Newbie’s Guide to Startup Benchmarking

A newb's Guide to Startups by Benjamin Hoffman

Or, advice to my tech friends who want to work at a startup. A close friend recently asked me if I had any “general questions to help gauge how well a start up is doing.” Below are my free-flowing thoughts and back-of-the-napkin math to help answer this question. What makes me qualified to know this […]

So You Want to Learn More About Startups

My curated list of blogs, podcasts, and email newsletters that I personally recommend to anyone passionate about product, growth, analytics, and startup investing. I have a passion for working with startups and have an insatiable appetite for content in this space. I read, watch, or listen to anything I can get my hands on, particularly […]

From Zero to Product in 14 Days

Engineer hacker coding on his Mac laptop

We gave ourselves two weeks to build a feature-rich MVP for the VC community. Here’s how we did it. My roommate and I are super passionate about startups and enjoy building software. We wanted a project to build together. This post chronicles our journey. Why build an app within only two weeks? Simple, building software […]

Four Billion-Dollar Startups That Were Told Their Idea Was Stupid

Checkout These Hilarious Comments on the TechCrunch Launch Articles of Twitter, Instagram, Uber, and Pinterest. Every early stage startup has doubters, naysayers, and skeptics. These people will tell you that you can’t do it, that you shouldn’t do it, that you are wasting your time. They will tell you that your idea is stupid and […]

That Time When Ashton Kutcher Hunted Neighborly to Product Hunt

Neighborly.com homepage on producthunt.com for june 24, 2015

This is our story; these are our metrics. Exactly a month ago (June 24), Ashton Kutcher hunted Neighborly on Product Hunt. Our team at Neighborly loves data so we took special care to track our metrics, funnel, and conversion rate(s). As a growth marketer, I live and die by my numbers and thought you too […]

Why Anonymous Social Networks Will Never Become Billion Dollar Businesses

Much of what I theorize below I learned from @JimScheinman of Maven Ventures. To be clear, these words are mine only and I do not speak for Jim. That said, he taught me a lot and I wouldn’t be able to write this post without our many lengthy conversations about consumer startups. Anonymous Social Networks Earlier this […]

What if You Could Create Artwork in Virtual Reality then Print it with a 3D Printer?!

I had a very inspirational conversation with my friend Eric. We are both really into VR. He is also an artist. Last week we chatted about future technologies and the amazement of possibilities. While thinking outload, he blurted, ‘what if you could design something in VR then later print it in 3D!‘ ** I thought […]

AngelList Syndicates Explained for Real Estate Investors

My friend asked me to explain to him what AngelList syndicates are. He invests in commercial real estate. The principles of investing in real estate and startups are almost polar opposites. I am proud of him for wanting to learn. Instead of emailing the answer, I figured I’d share my answer here. If anything below […]

5 Products I Hope Come to Fruition in 2015

Over the past couple of weeks I created a list of products I’d like to see in the world. These ideas come from my own daily pain points, reflective business chats I’ve had with friends over coffee, or sometimes even dreams that I still remember in the morning. I was going to save this post for later but I […]

Hello World

'Aha' Moment - Find What Makes Your Product Sticky

Why I (Finally) Decided to Start a Blog This post, and blog in general, is LONG overdue. I should have started this years ago. This begs the question why didn’t I? I guess the answer can be summed up in two words: laziness and fear. I was too lazy to write and keep my blog […]