Startups in 13 Sentences

http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

by mqt • 17 years ago

322 101 17 years ago

staunch2• 17 years ago

> And understanding your users will even ensure your morale, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going.

I feel guilty that this just doesn't do all that much for me. I do get some satisfaction from making a user happy, but about as much as I get from eating quality ice cream. I get far more enjoyment out of solving a difficult technical problem.

ciscoriordan• 17 years ago

Well then get a co-founder / hire people who really enjoy customer service.

staunch2• 17 years ago

I have exactly that. Just pointing out that for me personally it's not particularly motivating.

mad44• 17 years ago

Great sentence: As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack.

vaksel• 17 years ago

seems like we've heard all of this before

brlewis2• 17 years ago

I've heard similar things, but not exactly that you should favor completely satisfying a small number of people over partially satisfying a large number. That directly affects decisions I'm making now.

veteran2• 17 years ago

careful..in getting carried away by this advice though..unless your product targets large enough market you would not get opportunity to experiment/fail and succeed so yes start the inferno by targeting small niche but don't be esoteric unless you are going to get premium for being exclusive..

pg3• 17 years ago

That wouldn't be surprising. This is kind of like an experimental result: if you optimally compress the advice for starting a startup down to around 10 sentences, what are they? It's the nature of compression that everything in the compressed version is in the original.

Even so there were several things that seemed new to me. Let me check.

I never quite realized till now that a version 1.0 was (or could be) nothing more than a pretext.

The rectangle metaphor and the point about one side being easier to change is new; I only thought of that a couple weeks ago.

The greater difficulty of lying to yourself when expanding userwise is something I don't think I've written about.

I don't think I've mentioned that founders' own standards for customer service are artificially low, or that customer service is mostly a way of studying users.

I don't think I realized before that being cheap was interchangeable with iterating, or mentioned that a culture of cheapness keeps companies young.

I don't think I've written about how paying distractions are so much worse than other kinds, or that it's specifically because they work like interrupts.

I didn't realize till recently that the right metaphor for a deal was a background process.

And I definitely didn't realize till I'd actually written out the list which would be the most important one, or that it was involved in half the others.

Not that bad for an essay only 2.5 pages long.

wheels2• 17 years ago

The 1.0 being a pretext really rang true for us. It was interesting noting comparing how what we thought was important with what people were actually the critical things in making a purchase decision were, but nobody tells you those things seriously until they can look at your product and see what it's not.

veteran2• 17 years ago

I agree..what will be useful is long thoughtful analysis, case studies around such points that expose nuances of decision making and evolution of ideas/business models and not copycat lists which assume there is some sort of formula in the start up success..

cperciva12• 17 years ago

I have check marks next to 8 of these, and I'm working on a 9th (ironically, #9 -- "Get ramen profitable"); but I've broken 4 of these rules, and I don't regret it in the slightest.

Rule #1 -- Pick good cofounders. I picked no cofounders, based largely on the fact that that I couldn't think of anyone who would be interested in joining me who wouldn't dramatically lower the average founder quality. (Ok, that's being a bit facetious -- but I'm working in an area where domain knowledge is extremely important, so there are lots of wonderfully talented people who would be utterly useless to me as cofounders.)

Rule #2 -- Launch fast; and Rule #3 -- Let your idea evolve. I started working on tarsnap in September 2006, and I didn't open tarsnap to the public until November 2008. Over that time I ironed out some technical details behind the scenes, but the largest change in my idea was going from planning to charge $0.25/GB to actually charging $0.30/GB. Since then, I've listened to my users and occasionally added an unplanned-for feature because of a request (or more often, several requests for the same thing from different people); but most of the ways that tarsnap has deviated from my original plan have simply been in the ordering of when I implemented which features. The vision behind tarsnap, from 2.5 years ago -- an online snapshotted backup service with a tar front-end, a heavy emphasis on security, and a linear pricing model -- hasn't changed at all.

Rule #10 -- Avoid distractions. I've remained as FreeBSD Security Officer while working on tarsnap, and I don't regret it in the slightest. Yes, it has taken time away from tarsnap on occasion; however, it has also allowed me to further enhance my domain knowledge, and has brought many people to tarsnap (one person recently described tarsnap as being a backup system with "a good pedigree", which I'm presuming refers to my open source security background).

Now, for all that I've broken these rules without regrets, I still think that they're good rules -- in most cases. But I think there should be a Rule #0: Realize that there are always exceptions, and understand why these rules are usually correct instead of applying them blindly.

rokhayakebe2• 17 years ago

Although I agree with your comment, I must say that everyone (and I mean everyone), who is a startup entrepreneur, knows about HN, and reads all PGs essays knows that these are advices, opinions based on the experience from funding over 100 startups. Not rules, advices.

And although I applaud your efforts and accomplishments at Tarsnap, I must say that you base your argument on significantly less than 100 startups.

cperciva12• 17 years ago

[everyone here knows that these are advice, not rules].

I wish I could agree with you here, but I'm afraid I've seen far too many comments along the lines of "you're violating pg's rule XYZ, so you must be doing something wrong". Yes, most people here probably understand that pg's guidance doesn't apply to every situation, but I still think it's worth reminding people occasionally.

patio112• 17 years ago

And although I applaud your efforts and accomplishments at Tarsnap, I must say that you base your argument on significantly less than 100 startups.

I don't believe this sort of comment is helpful. For one thing, "X works" and "Y can work, too" are not two bits of advice which are in opposition to each other, and shouldn't be treated as such. (Even when X = "Startups should have multiple founders" and Y = "Actually, you can get by with one person if...")

For another thing, evaluating expertise by weight of incomparable circumstances is not logical. If it were, we'd all be taking advice from McDonalds on how to sell software, as the sum total of all customers of every startup company which has ever been mentioned on this site would not equal the number of cups of coffee McDonalds sold worldwide yesterday. Now there are many things to learn from McDonalds, but willy-nilly application of their ideas because they have mass on their side is a bad idea. (The sweet spot for pricing is below $5. Advertising is less about motivating people to buy in the near future than building your brand image for life. Literacy is a nice attribute to have in an employee but is not necessary if you exercise proper management.)

alain940402• 17 years ago

I agree with the last sentence of your comment. As for the rest, maybe you should add: rule #-1: be modest :-)

I am trying to write a post on my blog about what I call the "solo entrepreneur blues", which has to do with one of the biggest mistakes I have seen by entrepreneur friends: start alone and trust no one. I'll post a link once I have the tone right.

cperciva12• 17 years ago

rule #-1: be modest

Touché!

start alone and trust no one

I'd say that's a bit strong to describe my situation. I started alone, yes; but it's more a matter of not needing anyone than it is of trusting no one.

greendestiny• 17 years ago

It's always important to hear about the counterpoints. As an outside observer I'm not sure its obvious that your company wouldn't have been better off with a cofounder and a quicker release schedule. All I'm saying is: there are exceptions where its best not to follow these rules and then there are successes despite not following the best course.

nostrademons4• 17 years ago

We followed 4 of these (3, 7, 8, 13) and broke 7 (1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12) and ultimately failed. The interesting part is that right up until failure, we had checkmarks besides #1, 11, and 12, making 7 yes and 4 no, and then they rapidly fell into the opposite column. It's amazing how quickly they can change.

Those 3 are also quite related - while I still had cofounders, we'd kinda prop each other up during the low points, so we didn't get demoralized, so we didn't give up. But when my last remaining cofounder quit, I tried to keep it going for 2 months, but the emotional burden was far too much. I couldn't do it - if you can, good for you, but I think that there's a lot of truth in these rules.

Also - I think there's too much wiggle room in "Understand your users." I don't have it listed in either column for my startup, which tells me that we probably didn't, but most startups won't have the emotional distance to realize that. Even now, I'm not sure whether we did or not: since getting out to Silicon Valley, everyone I've told about my startup says "Oh, that's a cool idea, I wish you'd been able to finish it." Maybe we should've moved out west before quitting. ;-)

cperciva12• 17 years ago

the emotional burden was far too much. I couldn't do [a startup without cofounders] - if you can, good for you, but I think that there's a lot of truth in these rules.

I think it would be very interesting to chart the success rates of sole-founder startups vs. whether or not the founder had a graduate degree: I get the feeling that the sort of struggles single founders often go through are very similar to the sort of struggles graduate students go through when they've been working for X years and still don't have a thesis in sight. If someone can work quietly in a corner and churn out a thesis after a few years, does that make them more likely to be able to churn out a startup by themselves?

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

I couldn't think of anyone who would be interested in joining me who wouldn't dramatically lower the average founder quality.

Quality is a vector, not a scalar. What's the average of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? I don't think that's a meaningful question. But the vector sum of their skills was a startup with amazing technical and artistic skill, product focus, business aspirations, charisma, and salesmanship.

And I'd like to help you become ramen profitable, so let me demonstrate what I mean by putting on my Steve Jobs hat [1] and telling you a story.

I'm in the market for something like tarsnap, so i was very excited to hear about it, for the first time, in this random HN comment 23 days ago:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458793

...because the product sounds great. I may sign up any day now. But I distinctly remember that, after reading this enthusiastic blurb, I spent several minutes trying to figure out if tarsnap had any kind of decent security model. I remember this because I literally laughed out loud when I finally managed to figure out the answer, after clicking through more than one link and reading a few blog posts -- tarsnap was designed by a cryptographer! Indeed, now (but only now) I learn that it's even better than that: You're the FreeBSD Security Officer, which presumably involves a great deal of practical expertise in reviewing and fixing insecure software.

Why isn't this information on the tarsnap homepage, next to a "buy it now" button?

---

[1] It's not nice to go all Steve Jobs on someone without being asked, so I'm deliberately toning down my Jobs impression. This is like a 2 on the Steve Jobs bluntness scale.

cperciva12• 17 years ago

Why isn't this information on the tarsnap homepage

Because the tarsnap web site sucks. (Hey, you did ask!)

Until very recently the vast majority of people interested in tarsnap were people who knew who I was, had seen my work on FreeBSD, and read my blog -- so putting information about tarsnap onto my blog was only natural. Now tarsnap is starting to gain recognition as something beyond "that thing which Colin is doing", it's probably time to revisit where and how information about tarsnap is presented.

cperciva12• 17 years ago

What's the average of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak? I don't think that's a meaningful question.

I agree entirely. I did say that I was being a bit facetious. :-)

divia• 17 years ago

I learn that it's even better than that: You're the FreeBSD Security Officer, which presumably involves a great deal of practical expertise in reviewing and fixing insecure software.

cperciva has a bit of a history of surprising people with his credentials: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

rustartup• 17 years ago

There seems to be some confusion among the HN user about the actual starup definition. Many people call a startup even outside projects and websites made for fun.

PG says "The essential task in a startup is to create wealth", that pretty well rules tarsnap out as a startup, I guess.

cperciva12• 17 years ago

PG says "The essential task in a startup is to create wealth", that pretty well rules tarsnap out as a startup, I guess.

It does? That's weird -- I thought tarsnap was creating wealth.

jacquesm2• 17 years ago

Stating that the emperor has no clothes is not appreciated here.

I think plenty of the 'wannabe' startups here are a bit like kids 'playing house'. If you say hey, it's just a blanket and two couches they get mad at you for breaking the illusion.

webwright• 17 years ago

"...but I'm working in an area where domain knowledge is extremely important..."

If you had a design/marketing/seo cofounder that was willing to hunt for sales/bizdev opportunities, domain knowledge for that person doesn't have to be THAT deep and would bring huge benefits.

"The vision behind tarsnap, from 2.5 years ago -- an online snapshotted backup service with a tar front-end, a heavy emphasis on security, and a linear pricing model -- hasn't changed at all."

Is that a good thing, do you think? I'm not saying it isn't, but I think founders who don't experiment/explore generally succeed more than those that don't. (See the 17 out of 26 stat here) http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2007/11/why_early_stage.h...

I think your rule #0 is dead on-- there are lots of exceptions and there's no formula. But I'm pretty convinced that your startup would be more successful if you hadn't broken the "rules" that you did.

cperciva12• 17 years ago

If you had a design/marketing/seo cofounder that was willing to hunt for sales/bizdev opportunities, domain knowledge for that person doesn't have to be THAT deep and would bring huge benefits.

I think you might be overstating things here. I've found my domain knowledge to be very important when selling tarsnap -- being able to convincingly explain why tarsnap is secure and efficient (and why the competition isn't!) has gained me a lot of customers.

jfarmer2• 17 years ago

You're smart. Very smart. But you're also arrogant. It shows in a lot of your comments here on HN. That's no barrier to success, of course, but I've found arrogance to be counterproductive.

From a personal perspective arrogance blinds you to opportunities and your own shortcomings. From an interpersonal perspective it makes otherwise excellent people less interested in working with you.

Who would you work with?

cperciva12• 17 years ago

Who would you work with?

Someone who is smart; who doesn't hesitate to tell me if I'm wrong; and who doesn't get offended if I tell him that he is wrong.

If arrogance makes people more likely to speak up when they see something which is wrong or could be improved, I'd say that's a net positive. False modesty has merits in some circumstances; but a startup is not such a circumstance.

ralph• 17 years ago

Hi Colin, I referred to tarsnap and said it had a "good pedigree" on JWZ's blog. Yes, I was referring to your background and domain knowledge as FreeBSD Secuirity Officer. http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007641.html#comment-...

jacktang• 17 years ago

> 9. Get ramen profitable. > 10. Avoid distractions.

Someone I knew they launched startup and the guys also have some part-time jobs. What's your idea?

tokenadult• 17 years ago

My favorite: "So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly," followed up in footnote 4 with "They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still. Since they don't, working twice as fast is better than having twice as much time."

mfhughes• 17 years ago

> 13. Deals fall through.

Yeah, sometimes silently, as in the counter-party just stops calling you back one day. Not unlike the dating scene.

user• 17 years ago

I have a great admiration for PG. But PG sometimes creates a false reality for those young kids of becoming millionaires some day with their startup. But the truth is most of them would be heartbroken when they realize that is not always possible. I hope some of you realize this and don't waste precious life and be happy. I hope I made sense.

pg3• 17 years ago

It would be easier to accuse me of being repetitive than not warning people.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+%22most...

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+%22prob...

etc

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

The question is whether trying and failing to become a millionaire by doing something interesting makes you more unhappy than not trying.

If the difference between expectations and reality is what makes us unhappy, then lowering aspirations to zero is what would make everybody happiest. I don't believe that it would.

Creating the impression that it is possible to be sucessful with your own startup cannot be false reality. Possibility is never reality, and founding a startup isn't taking part in a ponzi scheme. Some people being successful doesn't lower the odds of others to be successful as well.

omnivore3• 17 years ago

And it's a hell of a lot better than working for someone else and letting them take ALL of the credit, while maintaining the inefficient status quo of their existence.

gstar• 17 years ago

Why do you need to be a millionaire though? I think working for yourself, on (mostly) your own terms on your own product that you're passionate about is more meaningful than the box you might one day tick next to millionaire.

There's no risk in failure either, you can always go and work for someone else, and personal bankruptcy isn't _THAT_ bad.

I don't think PG is giving anyone false hope that they'll hit the lottery - he's just offering an alternative. And as everyone has said tons of times before, your chances of making a million by starting your own business are orders of magnitude higher than winning the lottery.

mannicken• 17 years ago

It's not that the chances are bigger. Consumers want you to win but lottery companies don't. You can apply more work to enhance the result in consumers' world than in lotteries' world because you will work together with consumers unlike loterry companies.

ivankirigin• 17 years ago

  most of them would be heartbroken

That's a pretty bold statement. Do you know most of them? I know a lot of them, and they are smarter than that. A few failed startups come to mind where the founders immediately started another.

And the average age in YC is 25. These aren't young kids.

briancooley• 17 years ago

> don't waste precious life

Funny, but this is how I feel about my 11 year career spent with 3 huge corporations - that it has been largely a waste of 40-50 hours of my life every week. I've made 6 figures most of my career, and I've had plenty of time for my family. I'd trade the salary and benefits for something I was passionate about if I felt I could do it without being irresponsible to my wife and child.

I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side.

My sentiment is that it's worth trying when you're young because you might not get a shot when you're older.

fleaflicker• 17 years ago

Everything on that list is true.

It's not false hope.

jayp• 17 years ago

This list is deceptively compact.. so many experiences summarized in so little space. Yes, I agree: nothing really unheard of...but all presented succinctly in one place by one cogent voice.

Absolutely superfluous comment: I heart pg.

DenisM• 17 years ago

I like this taxonomy, almost "the startup testaments". :) To turn this into a work of classics one needs to add a bit of detail to each of 13 sentences (from all the material that is already out there):

a short essay

three anecdotes illustrating the point

one anecdote providing a counter-example (to provide context and also remind readers about fallability of generic rules)

a short list of literature (e.g. pointers to specific chapter of "founder@work", "4 steps to the epiphany etc")

For each aspiring hacker this could easily replace days worth of reading of assorted stuff out there, just trying to get up to speed. In turn, more hackers will jump in.

c00p3r2• 17 years ago

Why not write/compile and publish Carnegie-style book about hackers and startups? =) Like 'How to stop reading websites and start doing things.'

vyrotek• 17 years ago

I could use a book like that

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

If you want to "stop reading websites and start doing things" though, you should be, you know, doing things, and not reading books. :-)

c00p3r2• 17 years ago

books is different - you can feel them.

Jaggu• 17 years ago

I agree with checklist. This list is perfect for most startups but launch quick is not good enough. We need to launch and need to get good feedback so we can fix those issues. Sometime it is hard to get feedback. In that case we need someone who can market our product or who has good contacts to get the word out. Technical people like me has hard time to sell the product or idea. So for me (14) Hire or find co-founder with marketing skills.

omnivore3• 17 years ago

The problem with these posts -- and I liked it -- is that it always simplifies the path to all of this. I think a lot of folks are always missing something. Either they're decent hackers, but don't have partners. Or they're bad hackers and can't find a hacker to work with the build what they're gonna sell. Or they have a team and don't have a good enough idea to sell something.

I just think there are a lot of barriers to entry for folks who didn't go to Top 25 schools (or drop out of one) and as a result, they read stuff like this, get excited and think "I can make it!" without realizing the folly of their poor pursuits.

wensing• 17 years ago

Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.

This explains why someone like myself can start a startup and not feel embarrassed when they meet real wunderkinds (specifically CS gurus) along the way. On the other hand, maybe this means that good hackers aren't necessarily CS geniuses? http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

dmh2000• 17 years ago

>10. Avoid distractions.

hacker news, reddit etc

petercooper• 17 years ago

The words "sales" or "sell" aren't mentioned once. The ideas of launching fast to learn what to really build is a great suggestion but really one of sales. You need to launch fast to know what will sell (and what won't) so you can develop something that will sell.

So.. 14. Sell as soon as possible. Find out what people will buy for. Never stop selling.

Mistone• 17 years ago

maybe the best PG ever? So short and sweet. Follow these simple rules and you can succeed, don't and your startup will die. The customer service one was a surprise for some reason, not that it does not make complete sense but not something I would immediately associate with HN/YC. Its just so important to be above and beyond with early customers, helping customers is the best way for founders to stay connected with what matters and learn what they should be doing. its a godsend of insight for making something people want.

martinzwilling• 17 years ago

This is a great post! To amplify the first point, the question I often hear is "What are the right attributes for co-founders or CEOs?" I think you will find my summary http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/2009/02/ideal-credentia... helpful for picking co-founders.

Skeletor• 17 years ago

Inspirational advice from Paul Graham yet again! Reading his essays is what truly inspired me to start my own company. I think this type of essay still gets me psyched up. I'm definitely trying to follow rule #11 right now and not get demoralized as we start to hit our first few obstacles as a real company.

liubinskas• 17 years ago

Great post Paul.

I'm pushing premium over freemium.

It relates to point 5 heavily and we're getting the startups we work with to stop trying to be a freemium company and start with premium first. I've outlined my arguments here;

http://www.pollenizer.com/content/premiree-more-premium-less...

jumpidea• 17 years ago

Russian version -- http://spring.jumpidea.com/post/80938207/paul-graham-13sente...

michaelsprague• 17 years ago

Great post.

Compliments the article I read just prior to this:

"Working For Somebody Else Never Amounted To Anything - Wayne Huizenga "

http://tinyurl.com/c6fg47

ashwin• 17 years ago

Selecting good co founders is valid however I believe trusting them in tough times is even more important.

pbachmann• 17 years ago

Thanks to Paul Graham for his encouragement and instruction - without it I might not have even got this far. (I've just launched a startup at http://www.straighttointerview.com).

While I have done my best to abide by PG's rules there are some habits I just can't give up. I could easily ruin whatever prospects my startup has by my pig-headed determination to give people what I feel they need rather than what they say they want.

kirubakaran• 17 years ago

"Is your StartUp rated PG-13?" :-)

jasonkester• 17 years ago

Self assessing... have:[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,11,12,13],missing[9,10]

9 is a transient, since we only started charging last week. 10 is partially a result of 9, as we do consulting to fund ourselves.

This is a great list though. I can think of real-world examples from the last year that reinforced each of those things on the "have" list.

pramit• 17 years ago

#12 Don't give up. That is what I have ticked. If you believe in what you are doing, that's all you need, especially during the hard times.

bart• 17 years ago

Rule #10 -- Avoid distractions.

This is the real startup killer for our last startup. But it goes with other problems like get ramen profitable. Since you are not profitable and you need to eat, you will be very easy to be distracted..

Do you know, what are living expenses in SFO? There are about USD 500/month in Czech Republic :)

djahng• 17 years ago

Rule #1 could read along the lines of: "Is the [potential] cofounder an animal?"

I think this is one of the most difficult rules to abide by because a lot of very talented people say they would like to start a company, but never will. When it comes down to it, they'd rather be unhappy at their job and receive a steady paycheck than take a risk and start their own company. Do you lower your standards and start a company with someone who may be talented, but may jump ship at the first job offer elsewhere?

It takes time to find out what people are really made of. From my experience, people who say they want to start their own business or be their own boss really just want to be a mid-level manager. Other people have the "Entrepreneurial ADD" and will never be able to stick to one idea from beginning to end. Others get scared of the prospects of late-night coding and early mornings, and decide to go to grad school instead (how does that make any sense????).

What's the solution for finding good cofounders? I think at some point everyone comes across someone who would be a perfect business partner, but has different ideas. Start working to form a business with that person regardless. It's likely that the business will evolve into something that neither cofounder originally anticipated. So getting everyone on board with the same idea may not be all that important, you just need to be able to work together.

continuestory2• 17 years ago

This is what happened with me. Has been working fine since. 'Start working together regardless, just be able to work together'!

thepanister• 17 years ago

hmmmmmm

launch it fast... launch it early. This article is... perfect?

psugar2• 17 years ago

As always great post. On footnote 4 where you say being cheap and iterating are almost the same but the reason why they are not is markets move.

I would point out that sometimes they move away from you (competitors come in, new ideas, etc)

BUT, sometimes they move towards you, and that is the classic where the media says "they were an overnight success" but you see they had been working at it for ten years.

continuestory2• 17 years ago

You've said it in a nutshell. Exactly how it really is. PG should include this some where. Many people are blinded by the ways media portray stories and the reality behind them!

psugar2• 17 years ago

It really is true. Look at the medical "startup" Walmart partnered with. They've been around for more than ten years.

I'm sure they're cheap. The problem with "going big or going home" is that in many cases you are going home. The one thing I've learned is that in the vast majority of cases, the market moves much slower than you expect.

If you find yourself in the case of a market moving faster that's usually the problem to have....then you hire and spend like a maniac but it doesn't matter because if the market is truly moving that fast you're making money hand over fist.

The problem comes when you are spending like that and the market isn't growing that fast.....then you flame out.

wyclif• 17 years ago

#2: "Till you know that you're wasting your time."

Until you know that...

tiergarten• 17 years ago

My partner and I are launching a new business and have adopted your "13 sentences" as our bible. FWIW, I learned your #1 rule about the choice of partners many years ago at my first startup. Partnering with a dummy for short-term benefits (e.g. connections to investors in the case I saw) will be the death of a startup.

Thanks for posting this.

guglanisam• 17 years ago

I believe this list can be brought down to just two basic (not just one):

- Customers: Understand them, improve their lives, get them to pay regularly, get them to spread the word - Costs: Keep them as near to zero as possible. That will enable you to be profitable even with minimum number of customers

During the first year of your startup don;t worry about anything other than the above two. Special warning: Dont spend anytime on external fund raising, fund raising is the most distracting thing for startups and something where you have least control and very low odds, unless you accomplish something "of value".

If you can get thru the first year with a complete focus on Customers & Costs and hit break even by the end of first year. I can guarantee that you on the way to build a successful company (not just a good startup)

sambayer• 17 years ago

I've been searching for a term to describe our most recent milestone (15 months into our venture). "Ramen profitable" is it! Thanks a bunch for that.

Sam www.b2b2dot0.com

Startups in 13 Sentences

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