Lessons - startup

http://www.defmacro.org/2013/07/23/startup-lessons.html

1. Make most decisions by consensus, but have a single CEO whose decisions are final. Make it clear from day one.
2. Pick the initial team very carefully. Everyone should be pleasant to work with, have at least one skill relevant to the business they’re spectacular at, be extremely effective and pragmatic. Everyone should have product sense and a shared vision for the product and the company.
3. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Pick a small set of non-negotiable rules that matter to you most and enforce them ruthlessly.
4. Most investor advice is very good for optimizing and scaling a working business. Listen to it.
5. Most investor advice isn’t very good for building a magical product. Nobody can help you build a magical product — that’s your job.
6. Product sense is everything. Learn it as quickly as you can. Being good at engineering has nothing to do with being good at product management.
7. Product comes first. If people love your product, the tiniest announcements will get attention. If people don’t love your product, no amount of marketing effort will help.
8. Don’t guess. Measure.
9. Market to your users. Getting attention from people who won’t buy your product is a waste of time and money.
10. Product comes first. Selling a product everyone wants is easy and rewarding. Selling a product no one wants is an unpleasant game of numbers.
11. Inbound is easier than outbound. If possible, build the product in a way where customers reach out to you and ask to pay.
12. Minimize complexity. The simpler the product, the more likely you are to actually ship it, and the more likely you are to fix problems quickly.
13. Pick implementations that give 80% of the benefit with 20% of the work.
14. Every once in a while, get away. Go hiking, visit family in another city, go dancing, play chess, tennis, anything. It will make you more effective and make the people around you happier.
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