HN user
We are working on something similar in Australia - http://www.startup-australia.org/thevalley. I am moving to SV early next year. I'll try to add to the SVstartup wiki based on few bits of information I have gathered.
For books, get a Kindle. I did that 2 weeks ago. Since then I have sold or given away most of my books. It took 1 more thing away.
Summary: scale sales and marketing team with no repeatable sales model.
Personal experience: learned same lesson using other people's money. CEO hired 15 marketing and 10 sales people without a working product. Burn millions of dollar. Fired everyone after 3 years. 1 marketing and 1 sales left.
Giving upon on the idea or entrepreneurship? I am curious to learn on when should pivot and when to stick with an idea. Thx!
I find the other video about finding 'great stories' from Ira is equally interesting.
It resonates well with me after running my own startup for few months. Finding 'great startup ideas' seems require the same approach as finding great stories.
Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qmtwa1yZRM
Hmm .. maybe this will catch Virgin attention if all of us do it?
Clickable link: http://go-test.it/hackernews
Appoint them very carefully.
Understand that it feels good to have an 'advisory board' but at the end of the day, the only person who's going to get your biz off the ground is you.
[EDIT: My own experience: most people are more than happy to give advice without being formal advisers]
Agree here. Never see anyone find a co-founder by networking. And, probably not suggest it as well since it takes time to know if someone is a GREAT cofounder.
In Australia, we had 'Bootup Camp' http://www.bootupcamp.com/. In 2 weeks, they went from idea to auctioning the business. In this event, i have seen people that eventually become friends and continue to build their next startup.
No. I read somewhere, median age of founders are 40. Use your experience to your advantage. Get yourself a great cofounder and start kick some ass.
Anyclip?
Watching it for first few minutes ... but feel there is not enough focus on Garry. It feels more like about TC50 and other things Jason + Mike are doing with Garry as the advertisement.
As i am reading into this whole "raising money" topic recently, this is what i came across in Venture Hacks.
My understanding is, shop around, but, don't say it as "shop around". Use other languages or excuses.
http://venturehacks.com/articles/shop-around
This is the summary:
Summary: A deal is only as good as its best alternative. Keep improving your alternatives until you have a signed term sheet. And keep developing your current offers or they will die. Finally, don’t say "shopping around", it puts investors off their stroke.
Apparently, i just posted this yesterday:
Clickable links:
Thanks about "there is no universal answer". I was thinking if there is some "average" equity that people are giving out for 100k. Example, in YC, it's 2% - 8%.
Reading dhouston (founder of DropBox) application - http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html, i think it's okay to continue working solo rather than settle for less than ideal when you apply for YC.
From my personal experience, i also recommend the same. It's like having a relationship. Great relationship > solo > lousy relationship. You spend much more energy and stress with less-than-ideal cofounder compare with going solo.
Optimist Prime at Blindoptimists
And save some times to read it?
1. Do you believe you have what it takes?
2. Are you able to let other people down?
3. How do you handle setbacks?
4. Are you really an inventor, rather than an entrepreneur?
5. Can you accept that your company may outgrow you?
6. When you look in the mirror, does an entrepreneur look back?
Most of those questions are not answerable before you make the jump. Just do it then you'll find out most of the answers.
Great work. I think it would be great when you guys start cover the region, like Indonesia. I hardly can find any Indonesian startups so far. Unfortunately, i don't live in the country.
I am in Sydney. Feel free to drop me a line.
Our startups actually work in some of the area that you described (haven't launched yet).
But, i agree with other comments, research around ...most of the time, it won't be unique. But, you'll learn more and more as you do more iteration of releases.
So far, i only read about 35% of the content. I think what makes it unique is the language that it used is quite casual and it gives a lot of example per cases. It emphasized a lot about validating your assumptions. All in all, i highly recommended it too.
That's what makes technology industry interesting. Things are quite unpredictable and like it or not, none of us knows exactly how things will pan out.
Google's strength is obviously in brand penetration when it comes to search engine. After all, most people outside us hardly even know about "Google Chrome" after making such a huge splash all over the place. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ).
So, i wouldn't expect them to type in www.cuil.com or WolframAlpha without something is changing in the landscape that alter user behavior.
Sure. I can understand that. I am no expert in legal system, but, is it illegal to send out something that is legally correct AND/OR maybe accompany by another letter that practically is more human-readable?
After all, what's the point of the letter if no one is reading it?
Totally agree with you here. I wonder if any of the management team read Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany" book. Cuil sounds like the exact example being outlined there.
They definitely deserve some merits.
IMHO, though, i think the normal search engine becomes more like a marketing game now. Same as "most people prefer something other than Coca-Cola in blind test", yet they are still the biggest seller by far.
Unless something is changing in the landscape that affect users behavior (like social web - led by FB, Twitter etc), i wouldn't expect anyone can win against Google in this game without MUCH higher value propositions.
Reading this email or the one by Autodesk's founder (http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_22.html) sometimes leave me with questions on why most people can't take this more "like-a-person" approach in communication.
Most letters from top management that i know of are usually boring and i rarely understand the whole information (usually i ditched it far before i can get through the whole formal languages)
I second this. It makes the team much harder in coming up with innovative solution. Instead of taking 3 days, it might takes 2 weeks.
The thing that i don't like about outsourcing is that it loses that brainstorming-creativity of the team.
From experience, outsourcing is good for work that don't require innovation (populating content etc). If you're startup though, you're pretty much unknown problem looking for unknown solution and that's when u want to keep the team close together and everyone cares about "doing the hard thinking".
I think, what he is saying is... since he has done most of the reading and experiments, that actually save us having to go through the same amount of literature.
I know personally, when i do those type of reading, they all give a very conflicting opinion. Example: Vitamin C. Some say 250mg, another say you need 3000mg/day (or even as far as 20000mg/day). Almost every piece of medical advice that i read always have counter-argument. It's so hard to know which one is working without experiment. Even then, i'm not sure how long u need to carry the experiment.