Sixty five years ago today, Captain Charles Yeager became the first man to travel faster than the speed of sound in his X-1 aircraft. Daredevil Felix Baumgartner just became the first man to accomplish the same feat without a plane — or indeed any assistance at all. In an almost unimaginable stunt,…

10/25/2012 This is my talk from 2012 Startup School, pretty much exactly as delivered. It's been more than 7 years since we started YC. In that time, we've funded 467 startups so I've seen a lot of patterns. There's a talk I always want to give at the beginning of each batch, warning everyone about…

Pat Kinsella for The Chronicle Review T he U.S. military-service academies—at West Point (Army), Annapolis (Navy), Colorado Springs (Air Force), and New London (Coast Guard)—are at the center of several debates, both military and civilian. The military is downsizing, and the federal budget is under…

Resources Best Of Free Marketing Toolkit About Can I be real with you? Real real? (A note from Zuck) I’m TIRED of answering this question so I’d rather write it out and just point people to this post. Let me start in reverse. I can tell you every detail of the day I got fired aka “let go” aka…

Q: I've been fairly successful in my career. I have great rapport with the people who work for me and almost always get along well and work well with my peers. But more than once I have been told that I need to learn how to "manage up." What, exactly, does that mean? A. When someone tells you that…

When Jonathan Goldman arrived for work in June 2006 at LinkedIn, the business networking site, the place still felt like a start-up. The company had just under 8 million accounts, and the number was growing quickly as existing members invited their friends and colleagues to join. But users weren’t…

August 9, 2012 The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day) TL;DR1: I believe you can raise a $200M hedge fun, why not a seed round? TL;DR2: You have the rest of your life to be a “fat and happy” finance guy on the fringes of the financial industry (or run any lifestyle business, like our…

Lots of entrepreneurs struggle with pricing. How much to charge? It’s clear that the right price can make all the difference – too low and you miss out on profit; too high and you miss out on sales. Don’t ask, can’t tell Asking people what they’d pay for and how much rarely works. [Tweet It!] For…

Editor’s note: Paul Stamatiou is Co-founder of Picplum , a Y Combinator-backed photo printing service, where he obsesses over both design and development. He also co-founded Notifo (YC W10) and Skribit. Follow him on his blog, PaulStamatiou.com , and on Twitter: @Stammy . Reminisce with me for a…

July 17, 2012 The Value of Time My co-founders and I have run our startup with religious frugality. When first looking for an office, we found a shared workspace that allowed us pay by the area, and we squeezed in folks for $160/mo per person. When traveling for business, I take the…

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Last weekend, I began packing for the annual summer pilgrimage to our family's house in the Lakes region of New Hampshire, about a three-hour drive from our home. ...

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of…

This interview with Phil Libin , chief executive of Evernote, a provider of note-taking and archiving technology, based in Mountain View, Calif., was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss? A. I’m a programmer by training. I just worked as…

After decades of searching, physicists have solved one of the mysteries of the universe HISTORICAL events recede in importance with every passing decade. Crises, political and financial, can be seen for the blips on the path of progress that they usually are. Even the horrors of war acquire a patina…

On a bright May afternoon in 2007, a German artist and printmaker named Hans-Jürgen Kuhl took a seat at an outdoor café directly opposite the colossal facade of the Cologne Cathedral. He ordered an espresso and a slice of plum cake, lit a Lucky Strike, and watched for the buyer. She was due any…

WASTE But Frankel, the original creator of Winamp and Gnutella, wasn't out of ideas. Unfortunately, his ideas all made AOL furious. Just as the RIAA was prepping lawsuits against Gnutella users , Frankel kept butting heads with AOL corporate headquarters in Dulles, Virginia—trying to get Nullsoft…

Braeburn Capital, an Apple subsidiary in Reno, Nev., manages and invests the company’s cash. Nevada has a corporate tax rate of zero, as opposed to the 8.84 percent levied in California, where Apple has its headquarters. David Calvert for The New York Times RENO, Nev. — Apple , the world’s most…

Mary Meeker speaks at the "All Things D" conference. (HANDOUT/REUTERS) Think of it as a State of the Union address, but for the Web. The report, co-authored by Kleiner digital team member Liang Wu, is an in-depth exploration of the global population online: what they’re doing, where they’re going…

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to…

Apr 29 Introducing Level Ups - A replacement for the dreaded Yearly Salary Review Everyone hates yearly reviews. You have no idea if your boss is going to give you a raise and if so, how much. The boss usually has unspoken frustration with you, but never clearly communicated their expectations and…

Thank goodness that's over. The Facebook IPO could have been a major disaster for millions of individual investors. If the stock had "popped" to a truly ludicrous level on IPO day, millions of investors would likely have piled into it, hoping for further gains. And then, eventually, the hype would…

Cattias Photos Ahead of Facebook's $15 billion IPO later this week, Billionaire Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his US citizenship in order to avoid a boatload of taxes. One reason this is possible: Saverin no longer works at Facebook. He hasn't since 2005, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg…

May 5, 2012 Two brilliant moves that helped create the Apple iOS powerhouse Most new announcements by Apple are digested and understood by the tech press instantaneously. Great products are great products, and it doesn’t take much time to realize how exciting things like the iPad or Retina displays…