Hey, Trajan! I sent the following to a friend who is head of Design at OReilly. Some good zingers for people enamored of their unique entrepreneurial and revolutionary inspirations: 10 things I’ve never heard a successful startup founder say: 1. I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it. 2. After hiring a few people, being the CEO became a lot easier, and I was able to focus on high-level strategic plans instead of fighting fires. 3. I wish we had spent less time talking to prospective customers before designing interfaces and writing code. 4. The decision of whether to form an LLC, S-Corp, or C-Corp made a significant difference in my startup’s success. 5. Selling the company was an easy decision, and everyone in the company was on the same page. 6. We were so good at acting that our first few customers never knew we were a new company with no employees and buggy software. 7. Thanks to a software patent we filed, we never had a serious competitor. 8. Our most effective marketing campaigns were the ones filled with buzzwords and non-specific claims. 9. My lack of an MBA degree made building a company from scratch harder for me than for others. 10. I wish I had spent more time reading and weighing the pros and cons of various philosophies instead of just jumping in and doing what I thought was morally and financially sensible. 11. I spend much of my time deciding on whether to call my developers rockstars or ninjas. 12. What if my developer really is a rockstar? 13. Then give him a guitar and send him away. 14. If my ninja developer ambushes and kills the rockstar ones, is that solving or creating a problem? 15. That extra 3% benefit of the Bush tax cuts is what gave me the incentive to start this business. 16. I understand the difference between micro and macro economics 17. Just another idiot 18. So your thesis is that most founders of successful startups are so stupid that they cant reason about margins? You might be right. 19. What I do know is that my company could use a couple of extra people but we wont be hiring anyone because we are unsure about how much it will cost us because of regulations promoted by smug assholes like you. Were not a startup though. 20. Filling up the management team with my untrained relatives and acting on their advice over other employees made all the difference in ensuring our success 21. Those arguments about the name, logo, and design color were critical to our eventual success with Enterprise customers! 22. I learned everything I needed to know about starting and running a successful business by reading blogs. 23. I wish Id invested all the money i spent on hookers and blackjack into the company. 24. Sitting behind our screens and coding all day was the key to our success. 25. Our success was entirely based on a couple of mentions in the tech press 26. I hired fast and never fired anybody. 27. My software is so great the marketing just took care of itsself. 28. I was able to make up for my lack of knowledge of Google Adwords by just throwing money at it. 29. And I did it all in 4 hours a week. 30. The customer always comes around to thinking like we do and using the product like we do. 31. I dont know what the big deal is, raising money is the easiest thing weve ever done. If you build it, they will come! 32. Our mission statement was critical to our success! 33. Bring your dog to work day is the only reason our company has been successful. 34. I thought it was Hawaiian shirt day... 35. Shutup all of you. I know what I am doing 36. I wish I would have spent more time building everything myself 37. there are a billion people in china...if we get 1% of those users...well be rich 38. Buying a foreign domain extension (.me Montenegro, .co Columbia, .ly Libya) was our most secure long-term marketing bet ever. And just think of the resale value! 39. It was an easy decision to hire, and fire a friend. 40. Our most effective marketing campaigns where the ones filled with buzzwords and non-specific claims. 41. I wish I had never hired that MBA. As a developer, I know everything I need to know about building a business. 42. We owe our success to Erlang, Clojure and Scala 43. Once my startup got on TechCrunch it was smooth sailing. 44. OK, So form a Delaware C corp. If you raise money you are fine and good. If you dont you are fine and good. 45. Incorporating too hastily is a bad idea 46. I am so glad we spent $10K on the perfect logo. It has made all the difference in our success. 47. Starting a business with a good friend meant that I would never have conflicts with my co-founder. 48. I like cheese, and actually I think its getting cold in here and I have seen this movie already. 49. We owe our success entirely to ITIL certification. We made that our number one priority. The platitudinous ITIL non-specification helped us avoid premature commitment to a technology or an implementation before we had our processes and culture down. And once we had them down, we changed them continuously. Our motto is that no change is past the point of diminishing returns. Critics might call that dilatory dilettantism, but we arent technical: what were a group of poshlosts supposed to do besides pay ourselves? 50. The key to my success was coming up with the right font for my detailed business plan. Oh and the right colors for the graphs of all the revenue projections going up and to the right. 51. We focused on appearance more than substance. 52. Im so glad all the cofounders demanded VP titles. They were perfect for that job when we started growing. 53. I new exactly what I was doing when I started so I didnt have to learn anything along the way. 54. At least I had nights and weekends to myself 55. NDAs are a sure way to protect company secrets 56. Spending nine months to write our business plan before actually starting to do anything was the best decision we made. When finalized, the plan had solutions for every problem we encountered, and our eventual success was inevitable just by executing the plan step by step. 57. I knew that adopting a 15 interview hiring process would make us just like Google! 58. Spending 5 years thinking about the idea and rehashing it a million times in my head helped me produce a much better company once I actually started executing on the idea. 59. Of course, I waited til the children had left home and the mortgage was paid off before I started my own company. 60. Without reporting procedures and published policies my company just couldnt have survived that first, oooh, 10 years? 61. Having one good customer is all the input you need to design a product. Customers never have differing or conflicting needs 62. Spending money on marketing is a waste 63. We were happy to start in a market segment we knew nothing about. It made all the difference selling to B2B customers. 64. I read a bunch of blogs and so felt ready to start a company. 65. Actually my neighbours 15 year old nephew built our website. Basically any kid with a computer can build a website in their bedroom. And thats such a sustainable model as 15 year olds are notoriously reliable, available during business hours and open to rational business discussion. Whats not to like?! 66. Having plenty of money made us a lot smarter on how to spend it! 67. I am glad I spent all that time and money attending conferences while building my product, it was key to our success! 68. Everyone I spoke to about starting the business agreed that it was a good idea. 69. user testing to back up my conviction that blue buttons in the upper left drive acquisition really propelled our success beyond the stratosphere 70. I disagree on the structure of the company. We went through a major fix and had it not been done, our acquisition probably wouldnt have happened. 71. Thank God for Sarbanes-Oxley. Just as we got going, we really needed those extra 7 accountants and second auditing firm in place of the R&D and manufacturing staff the funds would have been used for. Yessirree. 72. Props for commending moral sensibility. 73. The easiest way to get things done is to hire employees. 74. As soon as this app is up it will take care of itself and I can get on with building the others, Ill have plenty of time and money to do so. 75. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits made me rich 76. If I could do it all again I wouldnt change a thing! 77. #1 one reason for our success - Stealth Mode 78. I never doubted that my project would be a success 79. I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it. 80. Our gut-wrenching decision on which platform and language to use made all the difference between success and failure. 81. I sure am glad we started dividing up the percentages of ownership when we came up with the concept. 82. This was a good and funny post but it could have been a bit more clear with some better and clearer formatting with bullet or numbered lists to set off the 10 statements you wanted to present. Otherwise, though good stuff. 83. Without my operations manual, Id be lost and the company would be a mess. 84. I wish I had spent more time reading and weighing the pros and cons of various philosophies instead of just jumping in and doing what I thought was morally and financially sensible.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 04:40:53 +0000
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