Startups

Three ingredients

• Good people• Make something that customers want• Spend as little money as possible

Good Team

• Ideas are worthless• It’s the execution that matters• Ideas mutate• Startups always mutate• Good people can fix bad ideas, mediocre team

won’t execute even on a good idea.

Good team - II

• Hackers• People who understand what customers want

Give customers what they want

• Most biz fail since they don’t give customers what they want

• Get v1 of your product out as soon as you can. • Get a prototype out, refine based on customer

needs

Generally

• Always trade stock for odds of success

Cofounders

• Be careful with people• Company owns the IP• Have you created something together before?• Don’t have a sales guy running to company

Startup == growth

• Difference between Google and barbershop• To grow rapidly, you need to make something

you can sell to a big market.• A barbershop doesn't scale.• If you start a barbershop, you only have to

compete with other local barbers.• If you start a search engine you have to

compete with the whole world.

Startup == growth

• A startup has to make something it can deliver to a large market, and ideas of that type are so valuable that all the obvious ones are already taken.

Growth rate

• The best thing to measure the growth rate of is revenue. The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users.

Startup lessons

• Release early• Release often - make your system better at

least in some small way every day• Even better when you improve in response to

customer feedback – they’ll become evangelists

• Fear not the incumbents, but other startups you’ve not heard of.

Startups get killed…

• Way more startups hose themselves than get crushed by competitors.

• There are a lot of ways to do it, but the three main ones are – internal disputes, – inertia, and – ignoring users.

Startups in a few sentences• Pick good co-founders• Launch fast• Let your idea evolve• Understand your users• Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.• Your improve what you can measure• Spend little• Avoid distractions• Persistence - don't give up• Things fall through all the time• Focused on growth• Get stuff done• Move fast