how to build an unsuccessful start-up
DESCRIPTION
Some lessons from starting Collectik.TRANSCRIPT
how to run an unsuccessful startup
some lessons
practicalities
incorporate $1000 corporationcentre.ca
domain name $10godaddy.com
hosting $10-50/month dreamhost.com
building blocks
idea
back-end developer
designer
integrator
integrator
≠designer
business plan:
is it useful?
LESSONS
get the core right
it will take waaaaaaaaaay
longer
don't fix it with more
fix it with less
THE BIG LESSON:
CLARITY
1. clarity of:PURPOSE
wikipedia: “The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”
librivox: "LibriVox volunteers records chapters of books in the public
domain and publish the audio files on the
internet."
collectik: “like mixtapes for
podcasts”
what?
problems:
what is a mixtape?
what is a podcast?
what does it do?
why do I want to use this?
2. clarity of:LANGUAGE
words to avoid:
aggregate
RSS
web 2.0
social software
social network
user-generated content
tagging
mash-up
feeds
dynamically generated
ruby on rails
python
good language rule:
would hugh’s mum understand?
3. clarity of: PARTICIPATION
what does it do for me?
right now I use:
flickr
del.icio.us
wikitravel
collectik
wikipedia
blogs (x 5)
cursor.org
email (x 7)
linked-in
libirvox
apple help forums
technorati
youtube
vox
… etc.
LESSON:
i don't want another social network.
i want to solve a problem.
if you solve it, you will succeed.
maybe.
hughmcguire.net