Advice for startups

Jason Calacanis initiated a quite interesting conversation about startups, beginning with a focus on saving tips that other bloggers branched out into full fledged startup advice. Techcrunch emphasized the critical factor of hiring the right people:

The most important part of hiring correctly is to not hire the wrong people. The second most important part of hiring correctly is to hire the right people. What that means is that it is better to not hire anyone at all if you can’t find the right person.

As the cost of reversing a faulty recruitment, both in terms of time and money, is quite high and risk being a distraction for the company, I think this is of utmost importance.

Marc Cuban has a range of interesting tips, among them:

1. Don't start a company unless its an obsession and something you love. 2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.......4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.

However, Tony Wright tells us (via Fred Wilson) that almost every startup advice is a lie, the world is too complex to be captured in a formula and everything is very situational. But he lists two generic ideas:

1. Build something people want. 2. Don't stop. Persist. Keep going.

While the first idea corresponds to the "does this solve a problem" issue, the second idea is essentially the requirement for the attitude towards the iterative process that is needed when most startups evolve. Tony Wright also links to a great essay by Paul Graham about the lowpoints that is inherent in the development of almost every startup.

Finally, as low costs enables a startup to have more time to try out different iterations, the focus on costs is one of the most important ones (besides that operating costs in the end are to be paid by customers).