Astro Nano is a minimal and lightweight blog and portfolio.https://hsukenooi.com/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-ai-pilled-advantage/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-ai-pilled-advantage/At the moment, being AI-pilled is the biggest competitive advantage a founder can have. Someone could be 2x better at making decisions about their startup but iThu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/should-you-stop-working-on-your-startup/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/should-you-stop-working-on-your-startup/This is the toughest question founders face, and given the current funding environment, I get it a lot. When I was a founder, I never had a good way to think aboutThu, 06 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/dogmatic-vs-scientific-founders/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/dogmatic-vs-scientific-founders/All founders are optimists. If you don't think things can improve, you wouldn't build anything new. Unfortunately, optimism is necessary but insufficient to beWed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/5-reasons-why-office-hours-are-so-effective/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/5-reasons-why-office-hours-are-so-effective/At the end of every batch, we ask founders "What was the most valuable part of the program?" The answer is always Office Hours. If you've experienced it, it's oThu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-5-most-common-startup-pitch-mistakes-and-what-to-do/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-5-most-common-startup-pitch-mistakes-and-what-to-do/Iterative Winter 2024 is having its Demo Day on tomorrow (Wednesday, 8 May). To help companies prepare, we've hosted pitch practices every few days where companiThu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/projects/project-2/https://hsukenooi.com/projects/project-2/Minimal portfolio and blog build with astro and no frameworks.Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/projects/project-1/https://hsukenooi.com/projects/project-1/Portfolio and blog build with astro.Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/what-to-look-for-in-your-first-technical-hire/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/what-to-look-for-in-your-first-technical-hire/I’m looking for a technical co-founder or hiring my first engineer. Since I’m not technical, I don’t know what qualities to look for. Any advice?Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/top-posts-of-2023/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/top-posts-of-2023/It's the end of the year and everyone's doing it so I thought I'd share my top 10 posts of 2023 and my top 5 book recommendations. Top 10 Posts I wrote roughlyTue, 02 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/convincing-people-to-work-at-your-startup/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/convincing-people-to-work-at-your-startup/A significant portion of a founder’s time and energy is spent convincing people of things. They could be investors, potential users or prospective hires. I’ve tMon, 11 Sep 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/is-your-startup-solving-an-important-problem/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/is-your-startup-solving-an-important-problem/A startup exists to solve a problem. The problem the startup is trying to solve is the most important thing about the startup. It dictates the market size, theTue, 18 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-3-things-we-look-for-in-founders/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-3-things-we-look-for-in-founders/Maybe the most common question I get is what do we look for when deciding to invest in startups? The answer is surprisingly simple at a high level but exceedinglyThu, 25 May 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-difference-between-bad-good-and-great-startup-engineers/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-difference-between-bad-good-and-great-startup-engineers/Given something that needs to be built.. A bad startup engineer will immediately start to build it. There’s very little consideration for how it should be builtFri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/should-you-continue-working-on-your-startup/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/should-you-continue-working-on-your-startup/[Update] I wrote a new post on this topic here . A persistent question founders ask themselves and probably the most difficult to answer. Here are the 3 questioMon, 06 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/whats-more-important-when-fundraising-a-strong-story-or-strong-traction/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/whats-more-important-when-fundraising-a-strong-story-or-strong-traction/Fundraising is one of the most difficult things a founder has to do. And I suspect, given the current market conditions, it’s even more difficult now than in thThu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/learnings/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/learnings/Things that compound are significantly more valuable than things that don't. For startups, when you learn something about your users, that learning helps you evSat, 06 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/founder-simulations/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/founder-simulations/Great founders have this uncanny ability to run highly accurate, localized simulations about their business in their heads. What's surprising is none of them coWed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/increasing-a-startups-chances-of-being-successful/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/increasing-a-startups-chances-of-being-successful/For a startup to win, it needs a sufficient number of successes along the way. The obvious question then becomes: how does a startup generate the maximum numberWed, 06 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/how-to-think-about-product/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/how-to-think-about-product/For many, being a founder is the first time they've had to think about product strategy. Here's how I think about it. All products can be broken down into growtFri, 06 May 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-importance-of-slope/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/the-importance-of-slope/A benefit of studying mathematics is that you learn how to describe things and their relationships. For example, if you want to describe a line, you can with theSat, 13 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/starting-iterative/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/starting-iterative/Brian , Hsu Han , and I are starting a YC-style accelerator called Iterative, focused exclusively on Southeast Asia. The first batch starts on 1 June 2020. If yFri, 27 Mar 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/origin-story-of-a-venture-backed-acquired-startup/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/origin-story-of-a-venture-backed-acquired-startup/Decide.com was acquired by eBay on September 6, 2013. For those unfamiliar with Decide, we invented technology that predicted the future price of consumer goodsTue, 14 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMThttps://hsukenooi.com/blog/postmortem-of-a-venture-backed-acquired-startup/https://hsukenooi.com/blog/postmortem-of-a-venture-backed-acquired-startup/Decide.com was acquired by eBay on September 6, 2013. For those unfamiliar with Decide, we invented technology that predicted the future price of consumer goodsThu, 17 Oct 2013 00:00:00 GMT