Oh for the love of god, will everyone please stop posting these sanitized, pointless, pretentious, vague points that ambigiously state the obvious while cowardly avoding any bold points that might actually bring a non-zero amount of useful info.
"Build your product to solve a customer’s problem." was absolutely revolutionary for me, I'd never even considered doing that, as it's completely counter-intuitive.
But when you think about it for a few hours, it kinda makes sense. Then an alarm goes off in your head and you're like "wait a minute, if I make something that solves a customers need..... they might use it". That was an absolute turning point for me after I read this very article 5 minutes ago.
I agree. People should write more about specific challenges they had, and how they overcame them.
Talk about the tough bank negotiation. Or when your biggest customer threatened to leave. Or didn't pay. Either something controversial or, better, specific, concrete, and useful.
The advices are very specific and concrete. If you actually run a startup, u will get the gist. You take care of your business while others take care of theirs. You can ask somebody for vision, but nobody can take action for you.
I do run a company. It grosses a few million a year, so I'd be in the position to "get the gist". These posts may be helpful for people who've never done a startup before, or are very early in their current one, but are not useful for people such as myself and many other HN members at a similar or later, greater stage than myself.
Agree massively. This is one of the reasons why books are often still better than the internet: you're more likely to get some meaty information, rather than a list of vague points. These kind of posts are like knowledge candy, fun to consume but don't provide much nourishment.
Should add that the "Top n things" kind of posts are inordinately popular on these kind of websites (Digg is much worse). I wonder what the appeal is? Perhaps internet users are at the centre of a Venn diagram: geeky types, who like things organised in a logical way, and people with low attention spans, who like everything in bite sized chunks. Solution: everything's a list!
Interesting. Is what you might consider "real content" (i.e. longer form, more substance, not popcorn ideas) lost on the web? Or is there still a place for it? I notice that when I write shorter articles it's much easier to get coverage for it than longer, more detailed articles that I personally find more interesting.
PG has postulated that it's an inevitable fate for communities like this because the short, easy to digest pieces are simple to view and upvote. Longer, meatier content is more difficult to digest, and thus receive fewer upvotes, even if the people who finish it find it more interesting.
I'm kind of curious about the response of this list to statement #2: Hire those with the best attitude and a willingness to learn over those with experience.
If that is truly good advice then I can see it saving me some 'wrangling with indecision' in the future.
here is what I have learned in three years of my "startup" and six years of another company.
- Selling/Trading skills are more important than your product
- Customer relations are most important. If internet is banned tomorrow I can sell toilet paper to my customers
- Mediocre product and superb selling skills is better than superb product and no selling skills at all
- Finding a sweet spot for your product price takes time and adjustments, selling cheap is a road to fiasco
- Acting quick on market changes is not always a good idea, probably isn't good idea at all
- If you are partner in a company, when money comes rolling in - problems start, make sure you all have the same goal
- customers do not know what they want in most cases, you have to bring them your vision and sell it to them. Do not expect them to tell you what they want and that would be your feature list, it won't
- last, but probably most important. Focus on one area and do it good. I don't mean necessarily on one product, because selling one and only thing is a lot harder than having a leverage of several things to offer - but if you sell several things, be sure they are related to one area.
edit:
one more thing. this is one thing, if I could tell only one thing, that I would say what I have learned. No matter what other people are saying, advices you read/get, it doesn't matter at all to you and your business until you learn it on your own and pay for it in time and money, the hard way. So listen to others only as a general guideline of what to expect, but you have to learn what is best for you on your own, sadly.
Interesting - this is quite different from anything I've ever heard on the subject. Can you expand on the reasons here? Also, it doesn't seem that you are talking about a tech company, which is pretty much implied when you talk about startups around here.
I own two companies. I have opened up a company six years ago with my friend, it was supposed to be a high tech company specialized in graphics r&d. Soon after that we started doing stuff that is related to that, like visual effects supervising, developing custom graphics tools for projects and stuff like that. After that business diversified into design, and even web design. I wasn't happy with that since we lost focus. I bought out company and delegated it back only to VFX/R&D company and it works like that to this date. It also serves as my holding unit for another company (that is this company owns 50% in another company) and a vehicle for my personal services which I do at least several times a year, like VFX Supervision and directing commercials and various tv projects. It is a really small company with only three of us, but it is profitable.
Another company is a business services company with a tech edge, sort of. It started out as an online service for monitoring public tenders, which are already public, but I have a system that monitors them for you based on your preferences and emails you about them (alerts), makes them easibly searchable, categorized etc... It is a subscription based service, and I had a vision to offer more services all for the same price - so you get as much services as we have all for one subscription. And it works. I have added a relational, up to date, company listing of all companies in this country, where you can see all of their info (you can request financial status for a separate fee), see who is the owner, see if that owner is an owner somewhere else, and various other relational data. Now I have added two more services into that, and am preparing a new design which will launch with another three services - two of which are not online. There is also a business related site with articles from experts and new attached to it all. As you can see it is a number of things, but they are all related. This is also a small company, only 5 people, not including me, 4 people doing sales and one doing content maintanance. I am all of tech support needed and I habe made all of the code myself. In three years we have pushed two competitors (one local and one international) out of the marker, made ourselves a market leader here and have a healthy prospect.
What I really want to do asap is to bring that service on an international level, there are a few players out there that do that on international level, but it is easily takable if you know what to do, and quite easy to sell since there is no direct relationship, only branding. The problem is that bringing this stuff internationally requires logistics/money I don't have and I am pretty far from knowing any VC or contacts with them. Even if I find VC, it is not about the money as much as logistics I would require and know-how on international level, instead of regional. I always wondered why google didn't come about this business, since it falls into their domain - organizing data and making it searchable and current.
- Selling/Trading skills are more important than your product
- Customer relations are most important. If internet is banned tomorrow I can sell toilet paper to my customers
- Mediocre product and superb selling skills is better than superb product and no selling skills at all
This one can be viewed as one. No matter what line of business you are in, in direct sales (cold calling included) it is you who customer buys, not so much your product (that comes if you have exclusivety on something, a monopoly). Trade channel you make is what you need to nurture and it will yield you a profit every now and then. You need to take care of your relationship with your customer and push products on them every once in a while. Be it you are a tech company or whatever company, you have a product or service to sell, you make a network with your customers every day - that is what you do no matter what method of marketing you have (marketing as in sales and promotion, not promotion/branding only). If you are in business of making money you are in business of making a trade network/channel. That is the "business" part of your company. Part where you make or buy products/services you sell is another part of your company.
- Finding a sweet spot for your product price takes time and adjustments, selling cheap is a road to fiasco
- Acting quick on market changes is not always a good idea, probably isn't good idea at all
When you start pricing your product/services, general rule is that you start within a range your competition does. We did that at in the beginning. Then, naively, I have opted to cut a price a bit under competition believeing it would be a selling point - it didn't matter, people wouldn't opt for us on that merit. What I've found out is that established trade channels will pay pretty much whatever price you give them (within a reason) since they are buying from YOU, not your company, from YOU - and they will do business with YOU even if you move from company to another. Brand loyality does not matter on small scale. Price you set and tune matters only in the beginning of establishing a trade channel.
- If you are partner in a company, when money comes rolling in - problems start, make sure you all have the same goal
While I didn't personally have a nasty/greedy situation like I've heard happend in several places, I had a situtaion for sure. When money started coming in, my partner and I had different visions where we wanted to take a company further down the road. Since I was the majority partner (in vfx company), I offered to pay him up and take over the 100%. His vision, sadly, didn't come to realization, which he pursued on his own, and we are still good friends. Make sure you have the same long term goal if you partner up with someone.
- customers do not know what they want in most cases, you have to bring them your vision and sell it to them. Do not expect them to tell you what they want and that would be your feature list, it won't
This boils down to two items as I see it. One is that I get an impression that when your client buys stuff from you it is partly due to the trade channel relation where they buy stuff from you. They need some form of that stuff (or don't need), and they trust your judgment on what you will provide for them. The other thing is that people are generally delegated by inertia and trust you as a professional to provide them with the thing you sell them because you know that stuff - they don't, at least in my experience. They provide you with general idea what they need, but almost never exact specifications.
- last, but probably most important. Focus on one area and do it good. I don't mean necessarily on one product, because selling one and only thing is a lot harder than having a leverage of several things to offer - but if you sell several things, be sure they are related to one area.
You have to make some sort of brand for yourself, even if it is a small scale. It looks shady and not professional if Coca Cola sells you drinks and vehicle parts, even if they have resources to do it. If you want to diversify, open up another company or make a brand on its own and have a business group that manages it.
"Always reward those that perform and get rid of those that don’t."
I have a feeling that's very under-rated advice. I've rarely seen startup advocates say that you should fire the people that aren't cutting it. Maybe most people consider it a given but I've worked at a few startups now and I've never seen someone fired for incompetence even though some should have been. I've heard about it happening in the past when I currently am but I've never seen it happen to anyone. I've seen layoffs when the company runs out of cash but never someone outright fired because they weren't productive enough.
Has this happened where you worked? How did it affect the morale of the team?
I think this is fantastic advice - if I were to sum up everything I've learned over the past year and a half of running a venture backed startup, it'd look a lot like this.
I couldn't possibly agree with the 4th point "Stay Focused. Stay Focused. Stay Focused." more. I constantly find myself chasing new shiny objects (aka business opportunities) that seem like a good idea at the time, but usually turn out to be huge time sinks and take me away from focusing on our core service.
I'm battling the same issue. I've gone down errant paths too many times now. I've just recently switched back into my main startup focus and have been trying my best to just write down my random ideas in a notebook and putting it away from me once I've exhausted all of the details of the idea.
Maybe one day I can get to that notebook and build out one of the side projects...
Excellent article, I couldn't agree more with every point. I think it applies for both bootstrapped small businesses and traditional venture backed startups alike.
