This link has been bookmarked by 224 people . It was first bookmarked on 23 Feb 2009, by Little Wonder.
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06 Oct 19
Quynh Vu DoPaul Graham's article which was the base for infographics 13 Rules for Startup survival
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04 Sep 17
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it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy.
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1. Pick good cofounders.
Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. -
the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.
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2. Launch fast.
The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you're wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users. -
3. Let your idea evolve.
This is the second half of launching fast. Launch fast and iterate. It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. -
4. Understand your users.
You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives. [2] The second dimension is the one you have most control over. And indeed, the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second. -
the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
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5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. -
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. -
In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
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7. You make what you measure.
I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. -
Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
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8. Spend little.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is for a startup to be cheap. Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly. -
9. Get ramen profitable.
"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. -
10. Avoid distractions.
Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money -
Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.
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11. Don't get demoralized.
Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company is run by stupid people (which can't be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized. Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it -
12. Don't give up.
Even if you get demoralized, don't give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. -
But startups aren't like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.
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13. Deals fall through.
One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. -
It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.
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Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
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working twice as fast is better than having twice as much time.
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17 Aug 16
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16 Aug 16
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15 Aug 16
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Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator.
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Javier PastorStartups in 13 Sentences https://t.co/OpgwvXuqYg Mola.
— Javier Pastor (@javipas) August 15, 2016 -
21 Apr 16
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Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
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Understanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy.
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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.
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03 Mar 16
C.H. Lee"
Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator.
Watch how this essay was written.
February 2009
One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
When I made the list there turned out to be 13:
1. Pick good cofounders.
Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.
2. Launch fast.
The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you're wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users.
3. Let your idea evolve.
This is the second half of launching fast. Launch fast and iterate. It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.
4. Understand your users.
You can envision the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives. [2] The second dimension is the one you have most control over. And indeed, the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second. As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them: the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that. That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. And perhaps more importantly, it's harder to lie to yourself. If you think you're 85% of the way to a great product, how do you know it's not 70%? Or 10%? Whereas it's easy to know how many users you have.
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
Customers are used to being maltreated. Most of the companies they deal with are quasi-monopolies that get away with atrocious customer service. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences. Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good. Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
7. You make what you measure.
I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
8. Spend little.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is for a startup to be cheap. Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly. [4] But it's more than that. A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.
9. Get ramen profitable.
"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It's also great for morale.
10. Avoid distractions.
Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.
11. Don't get demoralized.
Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus. Either the company is run by stupid people (which can't be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized. Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it, just as you'd be careful to bend at the knees when picking up a heavy box.
12. Don't give up.
Even if you get demoralized, don't give up. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. There are a lot of people who couldn't become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. But startups aren't like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.
13. Deals fall through.
One of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. It's very dangerous to morale to start to depend on deals closing, not just because they so often don't, but because it makes them less likely to.
Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only keep one.
Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
Understanding your users is part of half the principles in this list. That's the reason to launch early, to understand your users. Evolving your idea is the embodiment of understanding your users. Understanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy. The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users. 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.
Notes
[1] Strictly speaking it's impossible without a time machine.
[2] In practice it's more like a ragged comb.
[3] Joe thinks one of the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but he doesn't remember which.
[4] They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still. Since they don't, working twice as fast is better than having twice as much time." -
13 Aug 15
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04 Aug 15
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13 Apr 15
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it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy
-
Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate
-
but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched.
-
Launch fast and iterate
-
the wealth created by a startup as a rectangle, where one side is the number of users and the other is how much you improve their lives.
-
As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them:
-
satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users
-
It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise.
-
Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it
-
every day plot the number of users.
-
So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly.
-
Nothing kills startups like distractions.
-
Though the immediate cause of death in a startup tends to be running out of money, the underlying cause is usually lack of focus.
-
Starting a startup is a huge moral weight
-
Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea
-
After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated.
-
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08 Dec 14
Jordan GoldmanOne of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 ...
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11 Nov 14
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14 Oct 14
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pretext
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quasi
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atrocious
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23 Oct 13
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One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
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22 Oct 13
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01 Aug 13
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ruary
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February 2009
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ry 2009
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Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.
-
Ideally you want to make large numbers of users love you, but you can't expect to hit that right away. Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise. And perhaps more importantly, it's harder to lie to yourself. If you think you're 85% of the way to a great product, how do you know it's not 70%? Or 10%? Whereas it's easy to know how many users you have
-
A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.
-
Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects. The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now.
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16 Jul 13
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7. You make what you measure.
I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
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11 Jan 13
Andrei Stoica"4. Understand your users."
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05 Dec 12
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hat's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
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Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users.
-
Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise.
-
Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
-
Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it.
-
Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
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24 Sep 12
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1. Pick good cofounders.
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2. Launch fast.
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but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched.
-
Let your idea evolve.
-
Launch fast and iterate.
-
As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing.
-
Understand your users.
-
As in science, the hard part is not answering questions but asking them
-
the hard part is seeing something new that users lack.
-
Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
-
nitially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users.
-
Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise
-
Offer surprisingly good customer service.
-
Try making your customer service not merely good, but surprisingly good
-
hey'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
-
You make what you measure.
-
Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it
-
If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users.
-
You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down.
-
Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
-
Spend little.
-
I can't emphasize enough how important it is for a startup to be cheap
-
So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly
-
A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young.
-
Get ramen profitable.
-
Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses
-
10. Avoid distractions.
-
Nothing kills startups like distractions
-
The worst type are those that pay money
-
The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Paradoxically, fundraising is this type of distraction, so try to minimize that too.
-
day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects
-
Don't get demoralized.
-
the underlying cause is usually lack of focus.
-
Don't give up.
-
Deals fall through.
-
The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives
-
Understand your users. That's the key
-
and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them
-
Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
-
nderstanding your users well will tend to push you toward making something that makes a few people deeply happy. The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users.
-
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.
-
-
30 Dec 11
Peter Deitz+13 cc @peterdeitz @dvitanov RT @VenessaMiemis: Startups in 13 Sentences via @paulg http://t.co/XjprmgaP
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09 Nov 11
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16 Oct 11
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29 Aug 11
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you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard
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17 Jul 11
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17 Jun 11
Laurent AssouadOne of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
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24 May 11
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18 Jan 11
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29 Aug 10
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25 Aug 10
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7. You make what you measure.
I learned this one from Joe Kraus. [3] Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.
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11 May 10
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23 Apr 10
CASUDI ~ Caroline Di DiegoCofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.
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09 Feb 10
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27 Oct 09
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11 Aug 09
Alberto Saavedra13 consejos de Paul Graham a no olvidar cuando se está pensando en un emprendimiento
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it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy
-
In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard
-
Launching teaches you what you should have been building
-
It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise
-
Go out of your way to make people happy
-
be careful what you measure
-
A culture of cheapness keeps companies young in something like the way exercise keeps people young
-
Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expense
-
Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it
-
the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives
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31 Jul 09
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23 Jun 09
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05 Jun 09
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25 May 09
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11 May 09
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16 Apr 09
Fabio de MirandaOne of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
When I made the list there turned out to be 13:startup startups business computing computerScience entrepreneurship
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ne of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
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12 Apr 09
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11 Apr 09
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04 Apr 09
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02 Apr 09
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23 Mar 09
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22 Mar 09
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18 Mar 09
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17 Mar 09
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it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy.
-
the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders
-
Launching teaches you what you should have been building
-
Launch fast and iterate
-
the hard part is seeing something new that users lack. The better you understand them the better the odds of doing that
-
the growth in the first will be driven by how well you do in the second
-
That's why so many successful startups make something the founders needed.
-
Initially you have to choose between satisfying all the needs of a subset of potential users, or satisfying a subset of the needs of all potential users. Take the first. It's easier to expand userwise than satisfactionwise
-
Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see. In the earliest stages of a startup, it pays to offer customer service on a level that wouldn't scale, because it's a way of learning about your users.
-
put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that
-
"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses.
-
Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money
-
Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It's also great for morale.
-
Nothing kills startups like distractions.
-
The startup may have more long-term potential, but you'll always interrupt working on it to answer calls from people paying you now.
-
the underlying cause is usually lack of focus.
-
Either the company is run by stupid people (which can't be fixed with advice) or the people are smart but got demoralized.
-
You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields.
-
Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea
-
Understand your users. That's the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it's mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
-
The most important reason for having surprisingly good customer service is that it helps you understand your users. 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.
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15 Mar 09
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11 Mar 09
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06 Mar 09
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05 Mar 09
nathan arnoldGood stuff -- i like #5: Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
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04 Mar 09
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02 Mar 09
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01 Mar 09
Greg LinchExcerpt from intro: "One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy." (via @danielbachhuber)
Business startup tips reference inspiration development article list articles entrepreneurship freelance howto advice guide startups entrepreneur success diy
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One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?
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Jack AndersonOne of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things,
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