Paul Graham Explains How to Start a Startup 423
woginuk writes "Paul Graham has posted a new essay on his website on how to start a startup. According to him '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. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.'
How difficult can that be? So go start them startups."
I'd rather hear the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are talking to VCs, and you want to keep the company your own - talk about going public or having a stock buyout program.
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you missed the point. The VC's thought an IPO would fetch more money, so it was $200 million now or $400 million in 6 months. VC's invest in companies that have big growth potential, Founder's only accept money from VC's if they need more than they can raise
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Emphasis on the word "plan". Many internet bubble start-ups had smart people, had something people wanted, and no matter how much money they saved, still would have failed. They just never had a plan for how to translate products and talent into profits. It's not enough to have the greatest product in the world- you've got to market it, manufacture it, distribute it, sell it, and at the end of the day, reap a profit. Look at Apple vs. Microsoft. Apple focused on "insanely great" products but traditionally has not been able to translate these products into sales, user base, and revenues(though they've been doing much better recently). Microsoft makes products which drive you insane, and instead focused on marketing, market share, and making insanely great profits.
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:2, Funny)
Was Step Two "????" by any chance?
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:5, Interesting)
John.
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:2)
A successful VC has to do this over and over again, which pretty much eliminates the possibility of "succeeding in spite of yourself".
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:3, Interesting)
if your goal is to become a multi billion dollar business person. ok, point taken.
if all you want is a few millions to live your life as you please, then one 50 million sell is more than enough.
by his essays, I dont think his target audience is the former, actually more like the later.
cheers
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'd rather hear the same (Score:2)
Missing item (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Missing item (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Missing item (Score:3, Insightful)
Making something customers want requires an understanding of what the customers want in the first place and good development to actually be able to make that product.
Getting customers requires good marketing to get word out about your product and good salesmen to tell people why your product is better than the rest.
Re:Missing item (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has some of the heaviest and most effective marketing to their particular segment you can possibly imagine. When was the last time you actually remembered an HP ad? But I bet you can flash at least three Apple ads through your head right now, iPod or not.
Word-of-mouth Apple most certainly is NOT. They were dying a slow painful death of irrelevance when word
Re:Missing item (Score:2)
Re:Missing item (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Missing item (Score:2, Insightful)
What about (Score:2, Insightful)
codohundo
Make sure you live frugally! (Score:5, Informative)
I know one guy who bought a house, Lamborghini, Ferrari, matching Range Rovers for he and his girlfriend and loaded the house with furniture and electronics. The scary thing was that all of these purchases were made from loans based on the value of his stock holdings (because presumably he did not want to sell his stock). When the stock dropped through the floor along with everybody else, he had to come due. It was an absolute firesale and the only thing he kept was the big empty house, for which he had to struggle to make the payments. Moral? Live frugally and don't buy much on credit, especially leveraged against your holdings in your company.
Re:Make sure you live frugally! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Make sure you live frugally! (Score:5, Insightful)
- they overestimated the size of the market.
- they overestimated the desire of their customers.
- They failed to execute.
I think these are the killer 3. I believe their plan was to have customers pay a small fee to pay a parking ticket online. If I already have to pay the city, why would I want to pay even more?
Even if that was not the case, I still remember a key portion of the film where they realized their product was inferior to their competitor's website. This was the killer right here... Since the business model was to put forth convenience, if you don't have the best user interface, then you are screwed. I suspect the root cause of their problems in this area was a lack of skilled individuals who could bring this particular area (UI) to perfect/fruition.
Good movie though.
Re:Make sure you live frugally! (Score:3)
Re:Make sure you live frugally! (Score:3, Informative)
It's unfortunate how they chose to run that company. A four man startup with ten times as less cash would have done a much better job, but in terms of doing something that had value they were
Re:Make sure you live frugally! (Score:3, Funny)
ABC's of BS (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:ABC's of BS (Score:2)
The beauty of this article was gathering all of this information into one place, especially if you have no idea how to go about creating a successful startup (and, as history shows, most people don't).
Re:ABC's of BS (Score:3)
Re:ABC's of BS (Score:3, Informative)
In reality, your article has quite a bit more content than that. My apologies.
Where are my Millions? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Where are my Millions? (Score:5, Funny)
There's your problem. If you want to succeed in business, and make your millions, you need excellent people fucking skills, not fucking people skills.
I hear Bill Gates gives classes. Pants not required. Or allowed.
Re:Where are my Millions? (Score:3, Funny)
No. No one can. If you can't figure it out on your own, it's too complicated for you.
Trust me on this. I'm much smarter than you. After all, I got modded up to 5. And you didn't. Neener, neener, neneer.
Also requisite... (Score:5, Informative)
"Check with the Patent Office beforehand" should definitely be in there.
Re:Also requisite... (Score:4, Funny)
-A patent
-A lawyer
-Xerox paper and envelopes
Re:Also requisite... (Score:2)
Re:Also requisite... (Score:4, Informative)
A SLASHDOT READER... (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1. Read slashdot
Step 2. Take sarcasm at face value
Step 3. Give this suggestion to people as to how to make a startup
Step 4. ??
Step 5. Profit!!
Maybe he should include research into market share, how to get capital, how VC funding works, where to get these great people, etc. etc. The most important lesson in business came from Thomas Edison when he said "Get the money
Your "???" steps may vary. (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose that's one way to fill in the "???" that comes between "Obtain venture capital" and "Profit".
All that stuff sounds like way more work than making your money the old-fashioned way, namely the Big Three of "ensure continuous availability of blowjobs to investment analysts responsible for pumping of stock after the IPO", "sell everything the day the IPO lockup expires", and "avoid going into debtor's prison for underpayment of AMT".
I'll never understand this newfangled paradigm-shifting business models, but I'll give the article author this much: his newfangled method may be a lot more work than the traditional dot-com model, but it also sounds like a lot more fun.
Man last time I read something this positive (Score:5, Interesting)
and on the subject of NOTEs take a look at number 2 from his list of notes at the bottom of the article (I included only the first 2)
Notes
[1] Google's revenues are about two billion a year, but half comes from ads on other sites.
[2] One advantage startups have over established companies is that there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small children, or was likely to have them soon. But you're not allowed to ask prospective employees if they plan to have kids soon. Believe it or not, under current US law, you're not even allowed to discriminate on the basis of intelligence. Whereas when you're starting a company, you can discriminate on any basis you want about who you start it with.
Re:Man last time I read something this positive (Score:4, Funny)
"Hello, i'm Susan Johnson."
"I'm going to call you Suzy."
"Ummm, OK."
"Actually, lets call you Suzy McTitsfull."
"What??"
"Are you a breeder McTitsfull? Because we're trying to start a business and we can't have your water breaking all over our nice Aerons."
"That is none of your goddamn business."
"Well, then we have something in common, because THIS isn't YOUR business, McTitsfull. I knew I shouldn't have interviewed some random gash. GOOD-BYE."
Re:Man last time I read something this positive (Score:3)
The only problem here is that it's not really gender-specific, but just that men seem to be more often willing to be bad parents and live at the office. Other than that, he has a point. I would've loved to have been involved in a small startup environment like he described, but I was engaged at 19 and had a son at 21; there's no way I could put in that sort of hours and live with mys
Re:Man last time I read something this positive (Score:5, Informative)
Three Steps to internet success (Score:2, Funny)
1. Give something valuable away for free.
2. ???
3. Profit!
A good book... (Score:4, Informative)
Inspiring Article! (Score:2, Funny)
the secret (Score:3, Funny)
Ahhh, so that was the secret to Microsoft's success...
Re:the secret (Score:3, Informative)
I have done it and survived (Score:5, Informative)
But really, starting a company is the scarest thing i have ever done, I was lucky, im past the 10 year mark and past the daily effects of cash flow. which brings me to the secret of starting a business....
CASH FLOW - CASH FLOW - CASH FLOWYou need cash to start, you need to sell the product, you need people to actuall pay you for it so you can build or sell more product, so people will at some point actually pay for it....... and on and on..
It doesn't matter how good you or your people or your product or whatever. It matters how good you collect the debts owed to you so you can either reinvest it or pay off the bank interest rates.
CASH FLOW - CASH FLOW - CASH FLOW
Damn which reminds me, SEND CASH!
There is only one thing they need... (Score:5, Funny)
further reading (Score:5, Informative)
From Guy's website:
The Art of the StartWhen you get pregnant, you read What to Expect When You're Expecting. When you get laid off, you read What Color is Your Parachute?. When you get entrepreneurial, you read The Art of the Start.
This book is a weapon of mass construction. My goal was to provide the definitive guide for anyone starting anything. It builds upon my experience as an evangelist, entrepreneur, and most recently, as a venture capitalist who found, fixed, and funded startups.
The book is as relevant for two guys in a garage starting the next Google as social activists trying to save the world. GIST: cuts through the theoretical crap, theories and gets down to the real-world tactics of pitching, positioning, branding, recruiting, bootstrapping, and rainmaking.
It's even easier than that (Score:3, Interesting)
A startup that always does that will probably succeed. How difficult can that be?
Don't bother... (Score:3, Funny)
Smart people ... (Score:5, Insightful)
When nerds are unbearable it's usually because they're trying too hard to seem smart. But the smarter they are, the less pressure they feel to act smart. So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people by their ability to say things like "I don't know," "Maybe you're right," and "I don't understand x well enough."
This paragraph is one that some PHBs could study to their benefit. I once was associated (fortunately only in a consulting capacity) with a start-up boss who hired, as his marketing person, one of the most obnoxious people I have ever met. He (marketing guy) was constantly mentioning that he was a member of Mensa. For some odd reason, this did not go over too well with potential customers.
When someone makes a point of telling me how honest he is, I make sure to count my fingers after we shake hands. My reaction to people who tell me how smart they are is similar.
Re:Smart people ... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, when someone tells me how smart they are, I count my fingers afterwords, too, out of fear their stupidity might be contageous.
Wildly understates the importance of luck (Score:2, Insightful)
This is what happens when the engineers fallacy [I can use logic, therefore I can understand any other subject by just applying logic] meets up with survivorship bias. A wiser geek than me expressed it as follows:
People whose sense of self-worth has gone nonlinear, because when they look at their brokerage statement, they forget that, while skill was certainly a component of why they got to where they did, luck was also a huge component. Most of these people have never worked for a company that built
Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Often, even with a decent business plan, banks will require people to take out personal loans to get a small business started. With yesterdays new bill that benefits banks and credit card companies, people will have fewer opportunities to get out from the debt they created while trying to get a business off the ground.
With less of an incentive to create new opportunities, I feel that this will hurt the ability of America to be a leader in "innovation".
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
Maybe this will make America a leader in personal responsibility. All we need is to revamp the rest of the code.
(FWIW, I have a business loan I personally signed for in order to upfit my first office. You'd better believe I'm working my ass off to make sure I can pay for it)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Might I suggest (Score:2)
The book is much more detailed based on his experiences at Apple and as his job as CEO of Garage.com - a venture type firm which helps inventors do start ups.
The book is much more detailed than the 'basics' that Paul outlines. It is essentially the old stock market "wisdom" - "buy low sell high". But this is not an operating plan, or a philosophy of starting a bus
Competence vs. Brilliance (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to second this idea and expand on it. Customers, especially business customers, prize consistent performance above uber-brilliance and cutting-edge innovation. They (and I) would rather buy a reliable product/service and give up on a few cutting-edge features (compare Google's plain text to Yahoo's overloaded graphics).
Our company does well because we always deliver what we promise and try to under-promise/over-deliver if possible. The result is that we don't have to spend any money on marketing because referrals and word-of-mouth do the trick. The money not spent on marketing goes into doing a better job for our clients and so the cycle continues.
Competence beats brilliance when the product or service is too important to risk on the unknown. I'm not recommending mediocrity, only suggesting the quality of execution is more important than brilliance of ideas. Of course, if you have both a brilliant idea that is useful and that is flawlessly executed, then you can't help but win.
Luck: The most important element (Score:3, Insightful)
You need luck.
Being at the right place at the right time to have the right things happen.
Why is it that people attribte their successes to skill but their failures to bad luck?
Sounds like stock advice... (Score:2)
This is a load of crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Work with honest people. Honest people won't be lazy slackers.
2. Single founder is great if you can do it. If you are going to have multiple founders or board members the rule is "odd numbers" no tie votes. But honestly...if you can do it yourself you will be better off.
3. Investors are a bad idea. They will be in your business in a bad way. If things don't work out and 9 out of 10 start ups fail ... the guilt will eat you alive especially if you go the friends and families route that VC push hard on beginners.
4. VCs are morons. Look at their portfolios and they will expect to tell you how to run your business. They will have lots of highly educated people who have never built a successful business. VC dollars are the most expensive dollars you will ever find. You are better off not taking them... VCs set the objectives so high you'll pass up good ideas and plans for bad ones of bigger scope. VCs need to pay for their portfolios... honestly...look at those portfolios closely.
5. 9 out of 10 Start ups fail... that means you are certain to have 9 times where you probably should close your doors... If you manage to stay open through them your business will likely have adapted to the market and demand and will be the one in 10 that lives...
6. There are no rules...Its fear and greed and desire and comfort and popularity.... these are social forces no one can control or predict. Be diligent on open to adaptation. Thats the best you can do.
You're right, your post is a load of crap. (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, "VCs are morons" is rather sweeping. Obviously there are some staggeringly intelligent VCs out there. Perhaps you meant, "VCs are terrible investors", but that is of course also true only some of the time. Likewise "You are better off not taking their money..." etc. is hyperbolic. However:
- A lot of people jumped into the VC game starting in the late 90's who don't know what they are doing, so do your own due diligence. Many VC are former entrepreneurs/operators and can help you a lot. The best single thing you can do when choosing a VC is to ask for names and phone numbers for CEOs of ALL their investments of the last few years. Don't let the VC pick them for you; pick a few yourself and ask them what they think of the VC. Seriously...if you don't do this you're crazy.
- VCs are there to make money, not to make you rich. Hopefully those objectives will align but they don't always. For example, VCs will often negotiate for preferred stock so that if things go bad they get their money first. The entrepreneur thinks, "Hah! Even the worst case scenario in my business plan isn't THAT bad..." and signs the deal. Two years later, pain, anger, resentment, and knee-jerk posts to Slashdot. Lesson: go in with your eyes open.
- Raise money slowly. Raise just enough to get to the next milestone which gives you a much higher value, then raise just enough to get to the next milestone. This will both preserve your own equity and keep you focused. And try not to let any one investor get a controlling stake.
And, by the way, the fact that 90% (is that all?) of startups fail does not mean you are "certain" to fail the first 9 times. You may hit a home run with your first company.Re:This is a load of crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
Competent VC's can be valuable, but
Re:This is a load of crap. (Score:3, Interesting)
missing step (Score:5, Insightful)
1. started with good people
2. made something customers actually want
3. spent as little money as possible
But the missing step before profit is marketing and sales, which is not easy for engineers. I'd like to see a good guide on marketing and sales for a startup since we can't afford to spend a fortune on advertising.
Re:missing step (Score:3, Insightful)
Google and Advertising (Score:2)
I remember in 2001/2002, when Google truly became a household name, there was little in the way of ad programs, and far fewer ads in their pages. And there certainly wasn't any of this going on [slashdot.org].
Starting Up (Score:2)
what are his profitable companies? (Score:2)
age limit of 40??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who knows more good people? Someone who has had more time to meet them and see what they're like in the long haul and hard times.
Who knows what's bad in the market? People who have had to deal with the products and use then. People who have used something for 1 month know how to dumb it down for the new folks, but long term users understand all of the tasks that really need to get done using the product. They also understand the market dynamics and product pricing better.
Who knows how to handle money? If you had to give your money to someone to hold for you, would you pick the 23 year old or the 40+ year old? Like he said in the article, "If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal." You know that the 40+ year old is trying harder and has more money management experience.
Why VCs don't like NDAs (Score:3, Informative)
I know the founders of two startups, and some variety of this occurred in both cases. In one case the VC heard the idea and then brought in people from another venture he was funding who had a somewhat similar plan and basically said to my friend "convince me by arguing with these guys that your idea is better and that you can compete with their year-long lead." And then in the case of the second company, the VC ultimately funded my friend after merging them with another group that was seeking funding for a somewhat overlapping idea.
An NDA wouldn't have prohibited the VCs involved from doing the things they did, it simply would have required the permission of my friends. Which of course they would have granted provided they felt it was in their best interests to do so. But they weren't allowed the freedom to make that kind of decision.
Paul Graham says the reason VCs dismiss applicants who want NDAs is that it shows that the ideas involved are overvalued. Paul's explanation makes very little sense to me. What does make sense is that the VCs know they have a cartel, and that they can squeeze more money out of situations by forcing people to drop their drawers to even get an audience.
stupid formatting (Score:5, Funny)
If you don't
mind, I would
like to have
control over
how wide a
column of
text appears
in my web
browser
window.
Thanks,
Teh Intarweb
Why "start a startup"? (Score:3, Insightful)
The fourth thing (Score:3, Informative)
Or people with money you can convice will make more off your idea
Or a bussness plan that dosn't cost much to start, for example a friend of mine started the site sinfulshirts [sinfulshirts.com] with just the money for a t-shirt press, and hours and hours of coding.
People are the hardest part (Score:5, Interesting)
I definitely think it keeps things much simpler for a startup to be owned by a single person, it also creates a significant hurdle to people being dedicated to your cause. There's little for them to gain, much to risk, and the pay won't be great until you're cashflow positive somewhere down the road.
The other problematic aspect of finding the right people is that most people lack the required drive for excellence. They want crude effectiveness, and nothing more. In a smaller company, you need more perfectionists, because there is no bureaucratic padding between your work and the customer, which means that things have to be done right the first time. From my experience, excellence is getting harder and harder to find, and I believe our societal and educational structures are the cause of this condition. But that's waxing philosophical, so I'll refrain, in this post at least.
And number 4. PAY THE STAFF WELL!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
What would one suggest as a minimum for the key engineer/developers? 10% equity? 20%? 1%?
If theres 3 core engineers, then split 25% between them I say.
Re:And number 4. PAY THE STAFF WELL!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been on both sides of the fence here. I've been employed by a startup consulting firm, and I've been part-owner of a startup software company. I've worked for nothing for months at a time, trying to get a product out the door. I've also got a partner who's been employed by a startup tech firm for the past few years.
Remember that, during those times when the company was bringing in ~$0, staff/employees were getting paid, their health insurance was getting paid, their mortgages and car leases were getting paid, their kids' school fees were getting paid, etc. The sole risk they were taking was that the company might not succeed, and they may need to go get another job.
The owners were getting nothing coming in, but were paying staff anyway. How? Either out of their pockets, or via VC/angel cash that they have had to raise by selling bits of their company. The risk the owners have taken on is much greater; the company has to actually *sell something* for them to get even $1 in their pockets. This is worth repeating; if the company never sells anything, and lots of software companies founder on that one point, then the owners have essentially funded the lifestyles of the employees for the entire period of their employment.
Next time you're commuting to work, look at the guy standing next to you and imagine what it would take to pay his salary out of your pocket for several months.
I've got no problem with giving key people equity, but you're living in a dream world if you expect the proceeds from the sale of a startup company to be split on some sort of even vaguely equal basis.
More risk = more reward
US LAW (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not exactly correct. It is illegal to discriminate on a number of things, but intelligence is not one of them--provided that hiring based on intelligence is related to the job and you can prove it. The other stipulation is that it cannot serve as a proxy for discriminating against a protected class. This is where many companies get into trouble.
Can you use intelligence as a hiring tool? Certainly, but be careful! Don't be stupid, hire an expert (I'll take the job), and make sure that you aren't accidentally discriminating against a protected group (gender, race, ethnicity, religion, etc), and you'll be fine.
All that said, overall, I think he's fairly close to the mark with his ideas. Essentially, people matter, money matters, and hard work matters. Like one person told me--kiss your family/SO goodbye and tell them you love them. Three to four years later, you can breathe again, and they'll get to know you again.
There are other ways, but it takes a LOT of work.
Rule 1: Start Small (Score:3)
We all had mutual interests and people already owned all the needed hardware and software (which is proably about $25000 between the three of us). The other two have worked in video production for 5 - 8 years each and I've done some work in 3D studio and blende along with final cut pro plus I have 5 years of being a Unix system admin. So building a rendering farm is up my ally. Plus I also had the business skills from helping start 3 other companies, 2 of which saw sucesss.
I preached to them two simple rules: start small and pay with cash. We started by doing free work for a couple larger churches for their sunday morning broadcasts on the local access channel. Then we saved money from our day jobs and filed LLC status and opened a business checking account. From the church job we got three referal jobs and things started building from there. Last week we placed an order for 5 Mac Minis to start our rendering farm all paid for in cash and next month we'll start placing 3 ads in the local business journal.
Hopefully by this summer at least one of us can quit their full time job, although one is working contract basis now and not getting the hours he needs, and our goal is by March of 2006 to all be working full time for our business.
one shoe does not fit everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
But, in the end, startup implies money in to generate sales in the future. So, you have to always be asking yourself, what problem am i solving for the customer, because if I am not solving a problem, why are they giving me money ? Once you frame the question that way, your options usually narrow.
I do not know about software, but in my field, biotech, it is almost imposssible to overestimat the amount of work requried to actually bring a product to market - QC studies, labels for the boxes, checking that the plastic bags dont outgass something that discolors your product, etc etc. This stuff takes a lot of time and effort, and you need not brilliance but people who come in and do this 9/5 - dont knock those people, they make the world go round.
If you want to sell widgets to customers, don't underestimate marketing. I know it looks stupid - and it is stupid. But , look in the mirror and ask yourself, why, REALLY why, did I buy the last five purchases for my computer, or stereo, or whatever. I think if you are honest with yourself, you will find that your vaunted "reasons", carefully thought out, ususally were framed and driven by those "stupid" marketers (eg, if you made a specification driven purchase, are those specs really relevant, or are they marketing constructs). Like any stero system costing more then, say 2 or 3 grand - you are not paying for performance, but for some sort of ego drive created and fed by marketing.
It is a very humbling experince for a geek/techie/scientist/engineer to go thru this exercise.
A good marketer also knows what people are buying and why, and what new features they will pay for. A marketing person tells you one good feature that someone will actually pay for, they have earned their money for the year.
W
Google was indeed brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why the Scientific American article about extracting meaning from the structure of the web, when these guys were at Stanford? I remember reading that article & thinking "if this really works, it'll change everything when it comes out", and it did. Google won, in a blink. It wasn't their interface.* The meaningful rankings were the only thing that got me to move to Google.
It was brilliant. They realized that in this morass of data that is the web, the structural information could be extracted & used. At the time, I'd been thinking about using cluster analysis & similar techniques from image processing to correlate pages based on content, but their technique was far more efficient & quite effective in making the web more usable. (Now, clusty.com do a cluster analysis based search.)
It seems obvious now, but it was far from it at the time. Think Google did nothing special? Try searching the web with boolean only keyword searches for awhile.
Brilliance doesn't require uniqueness. Some brilliant soul reading this comment might have thought of doing this with the web before. Since they didn't publish or execute Google gets the credit. For an overblown analogy, neither Newton nor Leibniz made the other less brilliant when each invented differential calculus.
Paul Graham should know better.
* The interface was a smart move. It was the first demonstration that they didn't have just one good idea. It was also the first obvious instance of their choosing not to be evil. They could've foisted flash or some other self-indulgent drivel on us.
Re:WRONG. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WRONG. (Score:2, Insightful)
That is the easy part from my experience, getting someone to shell over $200,000.00 in startup capitol to fund the prototypes is next to impossible. finding Sales people that can competently sell as well as management that is actually skilled and desire to grow a business and not their wallets is even harder.
Venture Capital even in the 90's was not interested in creating a
yes, MONEY, and don't be shy (Score:2)
If you waste time saving small change, forget it.
The VC will want to know you're paying for the
best management you can get. The VC will want you
to demand the money you need to do things right,
without a chance of running short.
Re:WRONG. (Score:2)
no, not really. (Score:2)
Re:WRONG. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a (somewhat) successful entrepreneur, I take exception to your statement. I've been running my own network services company for about a year now. I started it up with practically nothing. Granted, it's nothing as sexy as working on the next killer app with a staff of 3 dozen people, but it was a startup. And it was done without having to sell my soul to a VC vulture.
It's been my fulltime job since I started. My truck was fully paid for before I started, I live in a cheap one-bed apartment and I have three cases of ramen in my pantry as I write this. But, my bills are always paid on time and I have enough cash to grow my biz. In fact, I just leased a tiny bit office space last week. I had been working exclusively out of my home.
You don't need a lot of money to be successful. The #1 thing, by far, that you need is dogged persistence. It's rough and can be very nerve wracking. You have to have the ability to hang in there.
And.... since it's on-topic, I'm going to plug the messageboard in my sig. I started it a couple of weeks ago to help others in my situation. It pays to learn from other's mistakes and it's great to have the moral support. If you run your own biz or are thinking about starting one, please come check us out: SmallBizGeeks.com [smallbizgeeks.com]
Re:WRONG. (Score:2)
Your message was inspiring. Thanks!
RE persistence (Score:3, Interesting)
By this, I mean people who truly share your vision of growing the business.
I work for a guy who did an on-site PC service/support startup business. In fact, I was really only his 3rd. employee (after a part-time guy he hired for a while, and then let go of). I was very interested in this business, because it was similar to one a friend of mine started almost 10 years ago - but which u
Re:WRONG. (Score:2)
Re:WRONG. (Score:2, Insightful)
this is like saying, to start a fire, you need a big huge can of gasoline.
you do not need money to get a startup going. you need motivation, good people to work with, paying customers, and cunning thriftiness.
give some moron who thinks the only way to start fires, a big can of gasoline, and you'll have a disaster on your hands, probably a crispy moron.
paying customers is the hard part, but then, software is a wonderful tool
Re:WRONG. (Score:2)
Re:WRONG. (Score:2)
AltaVista didn't suck, it had the largest index, and it had a clean interface. And a forgotten site called RankDex used links to ranks results. And supposedly the compromise of adding ads came much later.
Google added a more sophisticat
nope, you're wrong (Score:2)
But Paul says it much better than I can.
Re:I can't fail now (Score:3, Interesting)
Suggestions:
DO: by furniture at auction, pick up technology on sale, put down $.49/sf carpet, do you own work rather than hiring consultants, market by word of mouth or through your first clients.
DON'T: Buy solid mahogany desks, aeron chairs, and 30" HD montors, take out full page ads, or lease prime downtown office space in your first year.
Yes, I have a startup (of sorts). Yes, I made m