05

Joi Ito on No Shop Agreements: “[I]f you decide that you like each other and REALLY want to work together but that it will take a lot of work before the actual transaction happens, a no-shop allows both parties to focus on building the business.”

John Ludwig: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone at our firm telling a startup to spend more, faster.”

Zimran Ahmed: “…those ‘sure things’ that Joel mentions exist more often in the mind of the entrepreneur than in reality.”

Eric Sink : “… most VC firms don’t have much to offer people who want to build solid, long-lived companies.”

About the author.

In 2000 I co-founded Fog Creek Software, where we created lots of cool things like the FogBugz bug tracker, Trello, and Glitch. I also worked with Jeff Atwood to create Stack Overflow and served as CEO of Stack Overflow from 2010-2019. Today I serve as the chairman of the board for Stack Overflow, Glitch, and HASH.