March 20, 2023
A tale of two models: Blend vs. Blueprint & PointServ
Today I was doing research and came across Blend's latest stock price and financials. They're a mortgage software company that lets lenders take applications from customers online. They were huge during the pandemic, and are used by a lot of lenders. I've personally helped a company sign a contract and ramp up with them. Their software w...
March 17, 2023
A drop in startup fundraising was the primary driver of SVB's collapse
So here's yet another take on the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse. Hopefully this will be somewhat unique though. First, it seems the driver of all of this was SVB's deposits falling due to VC backed companies, in aggregate, burning more than they could replenish in fundraising. I hadn't heard folks mention this as the #1 issue here...
December 5, 2022
ChatGPL is impressive and hilarious
I'll skip a dive into the technology, ethics, or broader implications here, and just give you a tip: ChatGPL can tell some pretty entertaining stories. My personal favorite is to ask it to tell a story about a friend and give it all sorts of specific prompts and random requests. My second favorite (ranked solely by entertainment value), i...
October 21, 2022
Cloud profits at a cyclical peak
It's been a 10yr growth boom for cloud services, aka companies selling server space so their customers can host apps, databases, and store files, among other things. Revenues of the big three tech leads here last quarter were massive (Microsoft Azure: $25B, AWS: $20B, Google $6B) and it's not surprising. These services offer a lot of ben...
July 21, 2022
Creating a product strategy
It may be one of those vague, semi-annoying tasks but creating a product strategy is critical to the success of your company. Below I've outlined how to do this in Q&A format. Hope it's helpful! What's a product strategy? It's deciding what the product's focus and position is in the market vs. competitors, and defining how you'll monetize...
June 30, 2022
How I built this blog
I've benefited a lot from other developers sharing how they build things, so below is a summary of how I built this blog, and here's the code if you want to use it, extend it, or send suggestions. I'll explain how I built it with an example. When the user types mthurmond.org in their browser and hits enter, the request goes to the name ...
April 25, 2022
Why I built this blog
Here's why I built this passion side-project, along with a roadmap and longer-term vision. I summarize how I built it in this post. I was inspired by HEY's clean reading experience, and by Ghost, whose initial slogan was "just a blogging platform." So, like most web tinkerers, I decided to stake out my slice of the web and build this b...
March 10, 2020
Building a defensible business, the right way
After building businesses for ~15yrs and working at four startups, here are a few things I’ve learned about building a defensible business. First, some definitions: A competitive advantage gives you a temporary edge vs. competitors. It should let you find customers at a lower cost or charge more. Whether or not you’ll retain that compe...
August 29, 2019
A skeptical look at Peloton’s S-1
This was written pre-pandemic but is still interesting considering how the company soared in 2020 only to come crashing back for some of the reasons outlined below. Here’s the recently released S-1. I was inspired to dig into this a bit because it’s a fun company and I have some good friends that work there. I was also disappointed th...
May 31, 2019
18 thriving remote companies you’ve never heard of
This was written pre-pandemic, so there are *way* more remote companies now. That said, this is still a great list of mostly small, thriving, fully remove businesses. I love bookmarking fun, successful companies that have fully remote teams. They’re great examples of how fully remote teams can succeed in building something valuable. ...