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Raised in South Africa. Educated in North America. Excited about building bridges and experimenting @Xfund

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Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the foul clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus ~ Unconquered

Book of Verses, Life and Death (Echoes) - William Ernest Henley


An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn’t work out, you had your head cut off.

Polaroid inventor Edwin Land on embracing failure, among other insights on what it takes to innovate.

Also see Land on the 5,000 steps to success.

(via explore-blog)

The rise of the Growth Hacker
The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.
…
The discipline of marketing is shifting from people-centric to API-centric activities
Written by Andrew Chen April 27th, 2012 at 8:30 am High-res

The rise of the Growth Hacker

The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.

  • The discipline of marketing is shifting from people-centric to API-centric activities

Written by Andrew Chen 
April 27th, 2012 at 8:30 am

Mr. Morin says he called Mr. Dunbar, a professor at the University of Oxford , to find out more about his research and theory. Mr. Dunbar told him that social networks resemble a set of concentric circles: 150 people constitute the outer boundary of friends, 50 is the limit for trusted friends, 15 for good friends, and 5 for best friends.

Social Networks, Small and Smaller

If you think of YC as a corporation or a company, it has these characteristics that every big company would love to have… It’s a bunch of smart people working on projects that they love and have upside in. But they are all linked together and get the benefits of being a part of a larger group. YC is effectively inventing a new form of organization.

Harj Tagger / YC, On the future of Federated Enterprise

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