How to Start a Startup
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Saved by 78 people (24 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-03-02
- Pootz1 on 2008-08-01 - Tags no_tag
- Matthewbennett on 2008-07-23 - Tags entrepreneurship , innovation
- Inspirat on 2008-07-19 - Tags startup
Public Sticky notes
the market price is less than the inconvenience of signing an nda.
Highlighted by liuyong
People
What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
Highlighted by wade
For programmers we had three additional tests. Was the person
genuinely smart? If so, could they actually get things done? And
finally, since a few good hackers have unbearable personalities,
could we stand to have them around?
Highlighted by wade
don't have a lot
of meetings; don't have chunks of code that multiple people own;
don't have a sales guy running the company; don't make a high-end
product; don't let your code get too big; don't leave finding bugs
to QA people; don't go too long between releases; don't isolate
developers from users; don't move from Cambridge to Route 128;
Highlighted by alixorus
the number of your employees is a choice
between seeming impressive, and being impressive
Highlighted by alixorus
A 10% improvement in ease of use doesn't just increase
your sales 10%. It's more likely to double your sales.
Highlighted by wade
People
What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
Highlighted by pootz1
You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with
good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend
as little money as possible.
Highlighted by mck134
Highlighted by mck134
If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups,
that's it. There is no magically difficult step that requires
brilliance to solve.
Highlighted by prakashswami
Customers
loved us. And we loved them, because when you're growing slow by
word of mouth, your first batch of users are the ones who were smart
enough to find you by themselves. There is nothing more valuable,
in the early stages of a startup, than smart users. If you listen
to them, they'll tell you exactly how to make a winning product.
And not only will they give you this advice for free, they'll pay
you.
Highlighted by eyalnow
Customers
loved us. And we loved them, because when you're growing slow by
>
word of mouth, your first batch of users are the ones who were smart
>
enough to find you by themselves. There is nothing more valuable,
>
in the early stages of a startup, than smart users. If you listen
>
to them, they'll tell you exactly how to make a winning product.
>
And not only will they give you this advice for free, they'll pay
>
you.
>
Highlighted by eyalnow
There is no magically difficult step that requires
brilliance to solve.
Highlighted by mck134
They had three new ideas: index more of the Web, use
links to rank search results, and have clean, simple web pages with
unintrusive keyword-based ads
Highlighted by prakashswami
Above all, they were determined to
make a site that was good to use
Highlighted by prakashswami
No doubt there are great technical
tricks within Google, but the overall plan was straightforward.
Highlighted by mck134
I can think of several heuristics for generating
ideas for startups, but most reduce to this: look at something
people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that
doesn't suck.
Highlighted by mck134
Online dating is a valuable
business now, and it might be worth a hundred times as much if it
worked.
Highlighted by prakashswami
An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning. A lot of
would-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is the
initial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute.
Venture capitalists know better.
Highlighted by mck134
What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good
people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people.
Highlighted by mck134
There are plenty of other areas that are just as backward as search
was before Google. I can think of several heuristics for generating
ideas for startups, but most reduce to this: look at something
people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that
doesn't suck.
Highlighted by eyalnow
What it means specifically depends on the job: a salesperson who just won't take no for an answer; a hacker who will stay up till 4:00 AM rather than go to bed leaving code with a bug in it; a PR person who will cold-call New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place.
Highlighted by matthewbennett
If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each
person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school. You
don't even hit an MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. There are
only four MBAs in the top 50. What you notice in the Forbes 400 are a lot of
people with technical backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison,
Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the technology business
tend to come from technology, not business. So if you want to invest two years
in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you'd
do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA.
Highlighted by pootz1
Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what. A
restaurant with great food can be expensive, crowded, noisy, dingy,
out of the way, and even have bad service, and people will keep
coming.
Highlighted by matthewbennett
Financially, a startup is like a pass/fail course. The way to get
rich from a startup is to maximize the company's chances of succeeding,
not to maximize the amount of stock you retain. So if you can trade
stock for something that improves your odds, it's probably a smart
move.
Highlighted by suhit_a
I learned something valuable from that. It's worth trying very,
very hard to make technology easy to use. Hackers are so used to
computers that they have no idea how horrifying software seems to
normal people. Stephen Hawking's editor told him that every equation
he included in his book would cut sales in half. When you work on
making technology easier to use, you're riding that curve up instead
of down. A 10% improvement in ease of use doesn't just increase
your sales 10%. It's more likely to double your sales.
Highlighted by eyalnow
"if the people lead, the
leaders will follow."
Highlighted by suhit_a
. Customers
loved us. And we loved them, because when you're growing slow by
>
>
word of mouth, your first batch of users are the ones who were smart
>
>
enough to find you by themselves. There is nothing more valuable,
>
>
in the early stages of a startup, than smart users. If you listen
>
>
to them, they'll tell you exactly how to make a winning product.
>
>
And not only will they give you this advice for free, they'll pay
>
>
you.
>
Highlighted by eyalnow
Google understands a few other things most Web companies still
don't. The most important is that you should put users before
advertisers, even though the advertisers are paying and users aren't.
One of my favorite bumper stickers reads "if the people lead, the
leaders will follow." Paraphrased for the Web, this becomes "get
all the users, and the advertisers will follow." More generally,
design your product to please users first, and then think about how
to make money from it. If you don't put users first, you leave a
gap for competitors who do.
Highlighted by eyalnow
If you want to do it, do it. Starting a startup is not the great
mystery it seems from outside. It's not something you have to know
about "business" to do. Build something users love, and spend less
than you make. How hard is that?
Highlighted by eyalnow
Public Comment
on 2006-04-28 by dolphin278
on 2006-07-25 by billthemarmet
on 2006-07-31 by wenxin