{"id":4214,"date":"2011-08-08T23:59:22","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T06:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=4214"},"modified":"2011-08-09T00:10:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T07:10:00","slug":"57-things-ive-learned-founding-3-tech-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2011\/08\/08\/57-things-ive-learned-founding-3-tech-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"57 Things I’ve Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Jason Goldberg<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been founding and helping run technology companies since 1999.\u00a0 My latest company is fab.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Here are 57 lessons I\u2019ve learned along the way.\u00a0 I could have listed 100+ but I didn\u2019t want to bore you.<\/p>\n

1. Build something you are personally passionate about.\u00a0 You are your best focus group.<\/p>\n

2. User experience matters a lot.\u00a0 Most products that fail do so because users don\u2019t understand how to get value from them.\u00a0 Many product fail by being too complex.<\/p>\n

3. Be technical.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to write code but you do have to understand how it is built and how it works.<\/p>\n

4. The CEO of a startup must, must, must be the product manager. He\/she must own the functional user experience.<\/p>\n

5. Stack rank your features.\u00a0 No two features are ever created equal.\u00a0 You can\u2019t do everything all at once.\u00a0 Force prioritization.<\/p>\n

6. Use a bug tracking system and religiously manage development action items from it.<\/p>\n

7. Ship it.\u00a0 You\u2019ll never know how good your product is until real people touch it and give you feedback.<\/p>\n

8. Ship it fast and ship it often.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry about adding that extra feature.\u00a0 Ship the bare minimum feature set required in order to start gathering user feedback.\u00a0 Get feedback, repeat the process, and ship the next version and the next version as quickly as possible.\u00a0 If you\u2019re taking more than 3 months to launch your first consumer-facing product, you\u2019re taking too long.\u00a0 If you\u2019re taking more than 3 weeks to ship updates, you\u2019re taking too long.\u00a0 Ship small stuff weekly, if not several times per week.\u00a0 Ship significant releases in 3 week intervals.<\/p>\n

9. The only thing that matters is how good your product is.\u00a0 All the rest is noise.<\/p>\n

10. The only judge of how good your product is is how much your users use it.<\/p>\n

11. Therefore (adding #\u2019s 9 + 10):\u00a0 In the early days the key determinant of your future success is traction.\u00a0 Spend the majority of your time figuring out how to cultivate pockets of traction amongst your early adopters and optimize around that traction.\u00a0 Traction begets more traction if you are able to jump on it.<\/p>\n

12. You\u2019re doing really well if 50% of what you originally planned on doing turns out to actually work.\u00a0 Follow your users as much as possible.<\/p>\n

13. But don\u2019t rely on focus groups to tell you what to build.\u00a0 Focus groups can tell you what to fix and help you identify potentially interesting kernels for you to hone in on, but you still need to figure out how to synthesize such input and where to take your users.<\/p>\n

14. Most people really only heavily use about 5 to 7 services.\u00a0 If you want to be an important product and a big business, you will need to figure out how to fit into one of those 5 to 7 services, which means capturing your user\u2019s fascination, enthusiasm, and trust.\u00a0 You need to give your users a real reason to add you into their time.<\/p>\n

15. Try to ride an existing wave vs. creating your own market.\u00a0 If you can, catch onto an emerging macro trend and ride it.<\/p>\n

16. Find yourself a \u201csherpa.\u201d\u00a0 This is someone who has done it before \u2014 raised money, done deals, worked with startups.\u00a0 Give this person 1 to 2% of your company in exchange for their time.\u00a0 Rely on them to open doors to future investors.\u00a0 Use them as a sounding board for corporate development issues.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do this by committee.\u00a0 Advisory boards never amount to much.\u00a0 Find one person, make them your sherpa, and lean on them.<\/p>\n

17. Work with the best possible people for your project, regardless of where they are located.<\/p>\n

18. Co-locate as best possible but be willing to travel to remote offices to make multiple offices work.\u00a0 Online collaboration maxes out at 3 to 4 weeks apart, which means you need to commit to traveling almost monthly to make remote offices work.<\/p>\n

19. Work with people you like to be around.\u00a0 There\u2019s no sense in going to war with people you don\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

20. Work with people you trust like family.<\/p>\n

21. Work from home as long as you can.<\/p>\n

22. Position your desk in a way in which you are staring at your co-founders and they are staring at you.\u00a0 If you aren\u2019t enjoying looking at each other each day, you\u2019re working with the wrong people.<\/p>\n

23. Use a tool like Yammer to share internally what you\u2019re working on.\u00a0 It\u2019s easier for many people (especially developers) to post a status update than to write an email.<\/p>\n

24. Use a file sharing service like basecamp for your team.\u00a0 It\u2019s impossible for everyone to keep track of every file sent to their email in-box.\u00a0 Use basecamp so there\u2019s a history and central repository.<\/p>\n

25. Figure out quickly what you are personally really good at and focus your personal time around those activities.\u00a0 Let other people do the other stuff.<\/p>\n

26. Surround yourself with people who fill your gaps.\u00a0 Let them do the stuff they are better at.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do their jobs.<\/p>\n

27. Work with people who are smarter than you at certain things.<\/p>\n

28. Work with people who argue with you and tell you no.<\/p>\n

29. Be willing to fight like hell during the day but still love each other when you go home.<\/p>\n

30. Work with people who are passionate about solving the specific problem you are trying to solve.\u00a0 Passion for building a business is not enough; there needs to be passion for your customer and solving your customer\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n

31. Push the people around you to care as much as you do.<\/p>\n

32. Be loyal.\u00a0 Cultivate and coach people vs. churning through them.<\/p>\n

33. You\u2019re never as right as you think you are.<\/p>\n

34. Go to the gym and\/or run at least 4 times per week.\u00a0 Keep your body in shape if you want to keep your mind in shape.<\/p>\n

35. Don\u2019t drink on airplanes unless you are on a flight of longer than 8 hours. It ruins you and wastes your time.<\/p>\n

36. Choose your investors based on who you want to work with, be friends with, and get advice from.<\/p>\n

37. Don\u2019t choose your investors based on valuation.\u00a0 A couple of dilution points here or there wont matter in the long run but working with the right people will.<\/p>\n

38. Raise as little money as possible when you first start.\u00a0 Force yourself to be budget constrained as it will cause you to carefully spend each dollar like it is your last.<\/p>\n

39. Once you have some traction, raise more money than you need but not more than you know what to do with.\u00a0 This is tricky.\u00a0 Don\u2019t skimp on fundraising because of dilution fears.<\/p>\n

40. Spend every dollar like it is your last.<\/p>\n

41. Know what kind of company you are trying to build.\u00a0 There are very few Googles and Facebooks.\u00a0 A good outcome for your business might be a $10M exit or a $20M exit or a $100M exit or no exit at all.\u00a0 Plan for the business you want to build.\u00a0 Don\u2019t just shoot for the moon.\u00a0 From a money-in-your-pocket and return on time spent standpoint, owning 20% of a $20M exit in 2 years is much better than owning 3% of a $100M business in 5 years.<\/p>\n

42. Related to #41, understand whether your business is a VC business or not. A VC business is expected to deliver 10x returns to investors.\u00a0 That means if you\u2019re taking money with a $5M post-money valuation, the expectation is that you are building for a minimum $50M exit.\u00a0 $10M post-money valuation = $100M target.\u00a0 That\u2019s not to say that you might not sell the company for less and everyone involved might be happy with that outcome, but that\u2019s not what you are signing up for when you take VC money with such a valuation.\u00a0 Know what the implications of taking VC money are and what it means for expectations on you.<\/p>\n

43. Make sure your personal business goals are aligned with the goals of your investors.\u00a0 The business will only succeed if you are motivated.\u00a0 Investors can\u2019t force the business to succeed.\u00a0 And they certainly can\u2019t force a CEO to care.<\/p>\n

44. Conferences are generally a waste of time.<\/p>\n

45. Smile.\u00a0 Laugh.\u00a0 Wear funny socks. I wear funny socks to remind myself to not settle for boring and to be creative.<\/p>\n

46. Do something, anything that shows you\u2019re not just a robot.\u00a0 Let people get to know the real you.<\/p>\n

47. Hang a lantern on your hangups.<\/p>\n

48. Wear your company\u2019s t-shirts everywhere.<\/p>\n

49. Do your own customer service.<\/p>\n

50. Tell a good story.<\/p>\n

51. But don\u2019t lie.\u00a0 Ever.<\/p>\n

52. Find inspiration in the people around you.<\/p>\n

53. Have fun every single day.\u00a0 If it\u2019s not fun, stop doing it.\u00a0 No one is making you.<\/p>\n

54. It\u2019s true what they say in sales, you\u2019re only as good as your last sale.<\/p>\n

55. Make mistakes, but learn from them.\u00a0 I\u2019ve made hundreds.<\/p>\n

56. Mature, but don\u2019t grow up.<\/p>\n

57. Never give up.<\/p>\n

Bonus: So, I found a dirty car today…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Jason Goldberg I\u2019ve been founding and helping run technology companies since 1999.\u00a0 My latest company is fab.com.\u00a0 Here are 57 lessons I\u2019ve learned along the way.\u00a0 I could have listed 100+ but I didn\u2019t want to bore you. 1. Build something you are personally passionate about.\u00a0 You are your best focus group. 2. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4215,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4214\/revisions\/4215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}