The Lifelong Learner :: Do what you can, with what you have, where you are -Roosevelt ::

Paul Graham wrote an excellent article, How to Start a Startup. One thing about Paul Graham: there only a few that can write as well as him.

I’m going to extract couple things that I marked with double stars. However, go read the article as it was a joy to read. Highly recommended.

You might not start a startup right away, but you’ll learn what it takes and the whole process of creating a successful tech startup.

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

Ideas for a startup?

look at something people are trying to do, and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn’t suck.

If you want ideas for startups, one of the most valuable things you could do is find a middle-sized non-technology company and spend a couple weeks just watching what they do with computers.

People

We could bear any amount of nerdiness if someone was truly smart. What we couldn’t stand were people with a lot of attitude. But most of those weren’t truly smart.

So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people by their ability to say things like “I don’t know,” “Maybe you’re right,” and “I don’t understand x well enough.”

Understand Users

If you can’t understand users, however, you should either learn how or find a co-founder who can. That is the single most important issue for technology startups, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else.

What Customers Want

In nearly every failed startup, the real problem was that customers didn’t want the product.

The only way to make something customers want is to get a prototype in front of them and refine it based on their reactions.

It’s worth trying very, very hard to make technology easy to use.

If you build the simple, inexpensive option, you’ll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you’ll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of the market.

Raising Money

[What] most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you’re going to make money from it, and the resumes of the founders. If you just sit down and write out what you’ve been saying to one another, that should be fine.