Best of Startup — November 2025

  1. 1
    Article
    Avatar of hnHacker News·28w

    Collaboration sucks

    Excessive collaboration slows down product development and reduces team effectiveness. The key is empowering individual ownership where one person drives decisions while selectively gathering specific feedback. Default to shipping code over discussing it, tag specific people for targeted input rather than broadcasting requests, and provide feedback after shipping instead of creating approval bottlenecks. Teams should actively reduce unnecessary collaboration by identifying clear owners and trusting them to execute independently.

  2. 2
    Article
    Avatar of convexConvex·28w

    Convex raises $24M to reinvent backends

    Convex announced a $24M Series A funding round led by a16z and Spark Capital to scale their backend platform. The company has grown 10x in customer base and revenue over nine months, with customers ranging from hackathon teams to enterprises. The funding will support hiring, developing new features like OLAP support and local-first sync, and building a sustainable, profitable business. Convex plans to enhance their component marketplace, improve their open-source self-hosted edition, and optimize infrastructure costs to ensure long-term viability for customers building on their platform.

  3. 3
    Article
    Avatar of colkgirlCode Like A Girl·28w

    I Overcame Inertia with a Weekend Project

    A developer shares their experience overcoming creative inertia by building a simple AI-powered meal planning tool in 4 hours. Using Streamlit, Python, and OpenAI, they created an MVP that generates weekly meal plans and grocery lists. The project served as a catalyst to break through mental resistance and reignite motivation for side projects, demonstrating how focusing on completion rather than effort can help overcome procrastination.

  4. 4
    Article
    Avatar of yegor256Yegor's Blog·25w

    You Are the Low-Hanging Fruit

    Employees naturally choose the easiest path to compensation. Sales reps and programmers can either overcome external obstacles (selling to customers, delivering code) or internal ones (convincing founders to pay for time regardless of results). Founders should make the internal path harder by implementing performance-based compensation tied to tangible outcomes like merged pull requests, not time spent. This forces teams to focus on solving real problems rather than selling excuses.

  5. 5
    Article
    Avatar of developingdevThe Developing Dev·25w

    Quitting Robinhood and Raising $35M for His Own Startup (Career Story)

    Jayendra Jog shares his journey from working at Facebook and Robinhood to founding Sei Labs, a crypto startup that raised $35 million. He discusses becoming disillusioned with corporate career ladders despite getting promoted, the GameStop trading saga from inside Robinhood, and why he believes engineers overestimate the risk of leaving stable jobs. Jog explains how high-growth environments accelerate learning, the fundraising process for crypto startups, and why he thinks the financial downside of starting a company is minimal for competent engineers who can always find work again.

  6. 6
    Video
    Avatar of t3dotggTheo - t3․gg·27w

    Chad IDE: like Cursor, but with brain rot

    A critical examination of Y Combinator's recent batch companies, particularly Chad IDE, exploring why rage-baiting and viral marketing strategies often fail as product strategies. The piece argues that building a social media following is largely ineffective for startup success, with data showing inverse correlation between follower count and company performance. Instead, strategic partnerships with established influencers and solving real problems deliver better results. The analysis includes case studies of Cluey's pivot from interview cheating tool to meeting assistant, demonstrating how companies can leverage controversy while ultimately focusing on product-market fit.

See all Startup archives