Entrepreneurial Journey

Here are some intersting startup commandments by Mark Fletcher - Founder of Bloglines

• Your idea isn't new. Pick an idea; at least 50 other people have thought of it. Get over your stunning brilliance and realize that execution matters more.
• Stealth startups suck. You're not working on the Manhattan Project, Einstein. Get something out as quickly as possible and promote the hell out of it.
• If you don't have scaling problems, you're not growing fast enough.
• If you're successful, people will try to take advantage of you. Hope that you're in that position, and hope that you're smart enough to not fall for it.
• People will tell you they know more than you do. If that's really the case, you shouldn't be doing your startup.
• Your competition will inflate their numbers. Take any startup traffic number and slash it in half. At least.
• Perfection is the enemy of good enough. Leonardo could paint the Mona Lisa only once. You, Bob Ross, can push a bug release every 5 minutes because you were at least smart enough to do a web app.
• The size of your startup is not a reflection of your manhood. More employees does not make you more of a man (or woman as the case may be).
• You don't need business development people. If you're successful, companies will come to you. The deals will still be distractions and not worth doing, but at least you're not spending any effort trying to get them.
• You have to be wrong in the head to start a company. But we have all the fun.
• Starting a company will teach you what it's like to be a manic depressive. They, at least, can take medication.
• Your startup isn't succeeding? You have two options: go home with your tail between your legs or do something about it. What's it going to be?
• If you don't pay attention to your competition, they will turn out to be geniuses and will crush you. If you do pay attention to them, they will turn out to be idiots and you will have wasted your time. Which would you prefer?
• Startups are not a democracy. Want a democracy? Go run for class president, Bueller.
• You're doing a web app, right? This isn't the 1980s. Your crummy, half-assed web app will still be more successful than your competitor's most polished software application.
• You'll have to revise your 'strategy' every few weeks so don't spend a lot of time in Word / PowerPoint / Kinkos making it look pretty.
• No matter where on the emotional rollercoaster you are on any given day, project total confidence to the outside world -- people respond more to that, than your schpiel on disintermediating blah, blah, blah.
• If you go to a web 2.0 networking event, everyone you tell your idea to thinks they're an expert on what web businesses will succeed or fail. They're not. No one is. They just all read the same blogs which confidently assert constantly changing conventional wisdom.
• Wear comfortable shoes. You're frequently going to need to step outside to walk around the block while muttering to yourself.
• Exercise and eat healthy. In the long run, you don't increase productivity by consuming pizza, doritos and red bull while chained to your desk all day/every day.
• When your friends/family ask you how the business is coming along... always start off by saying "Great!" Save the cathartic sharing of any doubts/stress with fellow entrepreneurs and sites like this! Non-entrepreneurs won't understand and will just feel sorry for you...
• Don’t believe what you read. Don’t EVER believe what you read about yourself.

• "The Press" is no longer the most important source of coverage; the bloggers are today’s opinion makers, especially when it comes to coverage of technology innovations and, more importantly, the gossip that fuels the buzz of which products are hot, which are duds.

• Traditional PR firms only marginally "get" the blogosphere. Unless you have true Wall Street Journal worthy news, or are stupid, don’t bother paying $20,000 a month for an ineffective PR agency. You are far better off to hire a 21 year old who understands your stuff, give him/her a laptop and a six-pack of Crunk!!, and having them start chatting online about your firm/product.

• If an article claims your company is a loser, your product is a failure or that you eat goats for lunch, don’t kick the story forward by responding; better pour your energies into creating the best business model, the most elegant business solution, and go out and sell your company for a fortune. Unless you actually do eat goats for lunch.

• Describing a product as "revolutionary, but with an evolutionary bridge" only makes sense to a journalist who will never actually use your stuff; your customers will think you have been smoking crack. Go "leverage your synergies" and "shift your paradigms" somewhere else, marketingdroid.

• Never, ever, even if you have a term sheet from Google on the table, tell a journalist that your goal is "a billion dollars or bust" unless you want the next headline to read "Bust" when your sale/merger/IPO falls apart.

• Journalists are like teenagers, they have their collective crushes, then move on. Really. I'd give an example, but I've already forgotten about them all.

• The best quote in an article is from your customer telling the world why they love your product. The worst is you telling the world why they should love your company. That is unless the quote is from your mother telling the world how hard you work, that you are such a nice boy/girl and that her greatest wish is for a grandchild.

• If you are being interviewed by a journalist, read their recent articles. There is no better way to deflate an interviewer than to suggest they cover a topic they just wrote a story about the week before.

• You do keep track of what people are saying about your company, right? Subscribe to blog searches through Google or Bloglines and pay attention. Leave comments to blog posts where appropriate. It ain't rocket surgery.