Slashdot Mirror
Best & Worst Decisions Starting Companies
markfletcher writes "Today I launched a new site, Startupping, dedicated to helping Internet entrepreneurs. For the launch I asked several successful entrepreneurs about lessons they learned starting and running Internet companies. The first set of replies includes responses from Paul Graham, John Battelle, Chris Pirillo, Ross Mayfield, and Dick Costolo."
I wanna buy space too.
1. Get linked from slashdot.
2. Pay bandwidth overages.
3. ???
4. Profit
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
this isn't even news. This is blatant advertising.
A bit off topic maybe, but anyone know of good sites for more general startup help - that includes non-internet companies? A place to discuss contract terms, get recommendations for legal help, advice on whether to go LLC or C-corp - or one of the million other questions that come up.
The number one thing that people screw up is to start a business around an idea because it's interesting to work on, it can get funded, it's been done successfully before, the sector is hot, exit valuations are good, etc.
...trite, I know.
The ONLY successful ideas I have ever seen start with a _customer_. The first thing you say when somebody asks you what your idea is should be to describe who will buy it and why. Not what it is. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I've heard touting their latest venture with a pitch such as: "Think of it as a cross between grid computing and a web of trust, and it uses these applets that run on your back-end server... etc etc". This drivel often comes from seemingly smart people who have had impressive successes in the past. But who the fsck is the customer?
What is really astonishing is that it's the worst of these ideas, which happen to have just the right buzzwords du jour, which get funded by VCs. And it just gets more out of control from there. Even today, 7 years after the dot bomb, I know of several companies which have grown to 100+ employees and are on their fifth round of venture money without a profit in sight.
If your customer is not the #1 thing on your mind at all times, don't even bother!
(BTW dot coms DID have customers - it's just that the customer was not the guy buying you non-existent product, but rather the "bigger fool" who would buy your company. They eventually failed for the EXACT same reason - people kept starting companies even after they could no longer identify that customer.)
Sounds like they might have mentioned how to get free advertisement....
My partner and I are about to launch a new site, how much for a link from the front page?
We can guarantee:
aPaddedCell.com for a sneak preview, see we've even got an Internet Explorer hate piece on the front page!
To have a business, you need to understand cash flow (current & projected), customers, your product and how the hell you're going to get the product in front of the customer.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
thinking that people would pay for a site totally devoted to Cowboy Neal porn....WHAT WAS I THINKING? I'M RUINED!
Monstar L
Coming up with a domain name that can be read as "Star Tupping"
Tales from the pen of the latest boyband member, maybe?
Notice that almost all of the posts highlighted the "best decision" as hiring the right people, or finding co-founders that stuck with them. From what I've seen in the past, picking the right people is vital, its one of those things that is expected of you, and so we almost take it for granted, but if you don't do it right, you will mess the whole thing up.
--"You are your own God"--
He's using an old /. trick in order to promote his own website.
:(
1) Make a funny post (as AC, so you d'ont care about Karma), with the URL of your website at the end of it.
2) Get modded up "Funny"
3) Your URL is visible to all Slashdotters
4) Visitors => Profit !
Too bad I have neither a website nor a blog, so I can't try
startupping.com sounds like celebrities having fun with sheep (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Tupping)
sig's not here
Some serious mistakes...
1. Invent a verb.
2. Take the gerund of the verb and register it as a Web domain.
3. Launch a new Web site. There are already too many and yours sucks too.
4. Advertise your site on Slashdot, where opinionated fussbudgets, girlfriendless nerds, and Grammar Nazis (often all the same thing) will gleefully and mercilessly attack your competence and judgement.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Ok! Let's do it! Start Up PING:
64 bytes from 207.218.203.242 64 bytes from 207.218.203.242 64 bytes from 207.218.203.242
+1 Agree -1 Disagree
[sarcasm]
When in business, forget that those two concepts even exist- only focus on the money, the product, the stockholders, the law, and finally the customers. It also helps if you can know some lawmakers willing to counter anyone who causes friction in business conduct.
There's nothing worse than a pro-consumer law that works, an immigration bill that is fully enforced, workers that have long term hope versus fear, or if you cant use Far Eastern countries as a one stop solution for that pesky domestic talent. Don't let Reagan's work go in vain!
[/sarcasm]
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
1) Synergize
2) Think Outside The Box
3) Harness The Internet
4) Get A Boat
5) Ask yourself, "is this good for the company?"
6) Attend Donald Trump Wealth Seminars
7) Have a Can-Do Upwardly Mobile Attitude
8) Actualize Your Dreams
9) Have Wealthy Parents
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
For a in-depth look at some of the secrets for a succesful start-up, Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days might serve as an interesting read.
It features interviews with Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail).
I haven't purchased the book myself, but I'm getting one as soon as I can to help me with my own startup initiatives.
Quote: All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money and (b) not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life. --Steve Wozniak, founder of Apple, page 36
"I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel"
Today I launched a new site shutupping dedicated to talking wankers out of starting websites, then trying to pimp them on Slashdot.
(damn, I wonder if shutupping.com is taken. Well, I'm sure it is by now)
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh, is that the name of Apple's next product?
WikiCreole - a common wiki markup language
And if you really want your business to succeed, don't have any dealings with Slashdot, people will only complain that their lives are being ruined by your blatant advertising and will threaten to write letters nasty to you, your mom, your plumber and the EFF while also hyperanalyzing your whois records and posting the security holes related to your mail server's serial port to their blog.
Having a name that sounds like someone throwing up, startupping. Excuse me, I have to go startup. Whew. Sorry, my stomach's been a bit off.
Anyway, you really have to wonder what strange chain of events happened to make someone think that verbing that particular noun sounded good. Roll it aound on the tongue. Startupping. StartUpping. Hmmm. Maybe another hit of Jack. Yes, that's it. Startupping. Hmm. Still sounds lame. Maybe if we change the emphasis. STARTuping. startUPing. startupING. Yeah, that's it. Suave. Respectable. Instant recognition.
I can't imagine how this domain was available.
Ads for nerds. Stuff that maddens.
The second most informative comment in the whole thread and it received no other commentary than this: curious.
It takes gumption to put your money where your hands have never been.
Nolo. No contest. They have quite a bit of free information and you can buy their eBooks in DRM-free .pdf format in addition to the usual dead trees versions.
BTW, you almost certainly want to go LLC.
condoms?
A place to discuss contract terms, get recommendations for legal help, advice on whether to go LLC or C-corp - or one of the million other questions that come up.
A fellow named "Robert A. Cooke" has written several easy-reading tax law/accountancy books, very much in the mould of what you might call "The Idiot's Guide[s] to Teaching Yourself Corporate Tax Law in About 24 Minutes Flat": Be aware, though, that Congress has a bad habit of changing the "laws" about every five minutes [and dittoes as regards the IRS & the "regulations"], so at any one point in time, no single person on the entire planet is entirely certain of the precise state of all the laws and all the regulations at that very moment.
But I'd recommend Cooke as a good place to start to get an overview of the big picture.
1) Advertise for free on a popular website
2) __________?
3) Profit!
The best one I've seen is inc.com. It's got real articles, written by real people with real experience running real companies (as opposed to people whose only "business" is sucking VC's dry).
I don't respond to AC's.
We are probably going to end up selling our company at a firesale price. We got off to a roaring start with two contracts from medium-sized businesses. Management was obsessed with "landing Fortune 500 costumers" and "selling the company". All the while, they never listed to the logic of the fact that we'd already sold to medium-sized businesses, so if we duplicated those two local sales in similar sized markets, nationwide, we'd have probably had hundreds of customers by now. Our product was not cheap--6 figure contracts, which would have involved sales teams flying out a lot. Instead, the CEO flew out to a bunch of companies trying to make deals to sell the company. If those flights had been to medium sized business to sell our product, where would we be now?
Build the company, and the company will, to a certain extent, sell itself. Focusing on selling the company, and you are literally selling your own company short.
I think the comment was amusing enough to warrant funny mod. I don't care if he fishes a couple of clicks from his post.
I hate you MOD-PARENT-SIDEWAYS-TO-NEXT-TUESDAY-people. Look. Either you have mod points or you don't. Stop telling other people how to mod.
And stop posting AC in fear of retaliation. Damn spineless assholes, not willing to stand behind their words.
Bot Assisted Blogging
As a startup, you need a mission and vision statement. Find a need by users in an industry and satisfy the need. This is what Apple did with the IPod.
Visit http://www.kaizenlog.com
FAIL! (OT I know)
09:F9:11:02 - 9D:74:E3:5B - D8:41:56:C5 - 63:56:88:C0
How do you know he is more suited to an LLC over a C-Corp? (I think you meant S-corp)
Choosing to LLC vs S-corp is a cost/benefit scenario. There are some very good reasons to go S-Corp, specifically, for liability reasons.
So, to the parent -- go research both and see which is right for your situation. I've done that and I decided an S-Corp was the way to go for us.
Startupstartupping, dedicated to helping entrepreneurs who help entrepeneurs. Silicon Valley business is fun, isn't it.
Look at Apple -- great PCs with strong user satisfaction, great image relative to Microsoft -- yet very few people are willing to pay the price Apple needs to ask to turn a profit per unit, so in the end it's not a very smart business strategy.
How many other computer hardware companies from 1984 can you name who are still in business?
Steve Jobs keeps making the stupid mistake of maximizing product quality over all else, when a smart business person understands that product quality is just one of many factors that must be balanced to maximize profits.
Product quality seems to have kept them in business a couple decades longer than their competitors. Or do you think Apple would have done better to try squeezing between Commodore and Atari for a little while longer?
You're in a tough spot. If you claim that Steve Jobs is not "a smart business person" and making mistakes you can recognize, you kind of have to explain why he is the founder and CEO (and rebuilder) of a $19B computer company and you're "c0d3h4x0r" on slashdot.
I wanna buy space too.
No need. Just do something useful.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Gents, I didn't mean to imply that liability was the ONLY reason to consider S-corp. In fact, the primary reason to consider S-corp is taxes. S-corps tax the distribution of earnings to the owners so the company doesn't pay taxes on earning (you do this because your personal tax rate is lower than the corporate tax rate. If the reverse were true, S-corps would be a non-starter)
I only meant there are liability concerns - but, again, it depends what line of business you are in. For certain industries, an S-corp offers certain advantages over the LLC. There are lots of industries where one might be preferred over the other. While most small startups begin as LLC's, some of them convert to S-corp over time -- for the same reasons.
But you are right, there is more "paperwork" for an S-corp than LLC but again, it may be worth it depending on the situation. Attorneys and accountants are a must-have but that doesn't mean you have to keep one on staff. Those are services you can buy, you know.
So again, I didn't mean to say the liability is the primary issue - its not. But it is a consideration and there are differences b/t an LLC and S-corp.
armchairprognosticators.com -- where people who know fuck-all about anything pretend to be experts in the matter.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.