[rexreed]

I'll counter with some more basic and more broadly applicable advice.

1) Build a product people actually want and need and will pay money for

2) Promote yourself incessantly because others will be promoting themselves even more incessantly.

3) Spend your money wisely - focus on people, product, and marketing. Don't waste your money on office trappings and stuff that makes you feel good. Save your lunch money.

4) Ignore Venture Capital. If you are actually selling something people want, you can grow on revenues. If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want or if your growth is greater than revenue, then the VCs will want to talk to you anyways. Because a) you're growing and b) customers actually want what you have. But don't start by focusing on what VCs want. Focus on what your customers want instead.

5) Always be selling. To your customers. To the press. To your employees. To anyone who matters. Never stop talking about your company.

6) Always be listening. To your customers. To your employees. The easiest and best ideas come from others.

7) Re-invest. Plow your earnings back into the company and promotion.

8) It's ok not to have a competitive advantage. What? Ok maybe you need to have some advantage but it doesn't have to be nearly as significant as is stated in this video. You need to have some reason for your customers to buy your product or service instead of competitors', so there's always some advantage. It could be price. Features. better service. But it could also be just a better connection with your prospects. Or perhaps you manage to place yourself in the right place at the right time. Or maybe you're just spending a lot on marketing. If you want to be successful, you need to identify at least one FAIR competitive advantage that your customers care about. And if you want to be super successful, identify one UNFAIR competitive advantage that locks out the competition. That could be an exclusive partnership, some intellectual property advantage, or connections with your customers that your competitors can't easily obtain.

This applies no matter if you're running a silicon valley style startup or a cybersecurity enterprise-focused government client startup -- both can make you millions or billions.

[rmason]

Number 4 is exceedingly important and it's counter to popular thought. Bootstrapping is painful but if you start growing fast you won't have to seek them out the VC's will find you.

[john_moscow]

It just depends on the game you are playing. Currently you can make more money selling the emotion of owning a piece of something great to investors, than selling the actual product to customers.

[_hyn3]

Only over the short-term. Over the long-term, these should even out, all other things being equal.

[john_moscow]

Long-term thinking feels like a lost art nowadays...

[ryeguy_24]

To simplify further:

1. Be good at product management

2. Do marketing a lot

3. Be smart financially

4. Be smart financially

5. Do marketing a lot

6. Be good at product management

7. Be smart financially

8. Be good at product management

[sabujp]

don't forget product must pass toothbrush test, be simple enough for people to understand, and be the greatest thing since sliced gluten free bread

[Barrin92]

> Ignore Venture Capital

I have trouble seeing how this works in a robotics or biotech company. Yes, if you're building something facing consumers on the web you can go a long way on small savings and people just putting time in. But if you want to build something that requires some capital simply to keep the business running that's going to be difficult.

[gregrata]

As stated:

> If it takes a lot of money to create what your customers want

I assume that covers what you are talking about...

[mr337]

Only in a perfect world that would work that would ring true. For some reason people think robotics is cheap and easy, true with VCs.

[xevb3k]

The rest of that sentence is: “then the VCs will want to talk to you anyways.”

Which is only a little bit true.

[debt]

"1) Build a product people actually want and need and will pay money for"

This piece advice seems leftover from a bygone era as this is so fundamental that I wonder does it even bear saying?

Again, if you're building something people don't want or aren't going to pay for, something is seriously fundamentally wrong and you should try to define what you're even trying to achieve; that is, you're not even trying to build a business but may think you are.

In most industries, making money is usually the very first thing that happens and, in some cases, happens before a thing is built or a service is provided.

Starting a business == making money. Maybe it's not profitable, but money should be changing hands. If that's not happening, go back to the drawing board and question everything.

We're not in the Dropbox circa 2013 era anymore.

[vincentmarle]

On the other hand, the battle-tested formula for startup domination is:

1) Get to <insert singular mind-blowing metric, like 1 billion users or 1 million drivers>, whatever it takes (bending the laws of unit economics or bending the law in general).

2) Monetize.

[anonymous5133]

Even though that advice is obvious, it is so relevant and I see lots of people who don't actually follow it. Yes, hard to believe but it is true.

How many times do you see a "show HN" post where the project being showcased is just a very simple project. I am not sure if people are just showing it for feedback or if they want to make the project into a startup eventually. A lot of these projects I see seem like they are just simple features but the developer wants to commercialize it. Problem is the current version of the project is so simple that I rarely see any real market for it unless the project is something really amazing.

[enos_feedler]

How is 1) more broadly applicable? Nobody wants to pay money for anything. Perhaps you could say _would_ pay money for if they had to. Even still, the world of internet users has been trained to get a lot of great valuable things for free (Google, facebook and virtually every other consumer service) so their willingness to pay is skewed heavily towards free

[rexreed]

In those cases, the user is not the customer. The old saying goes, if you're not the customer, you're the product. Google, FB and the like monetize users through advertising. The product is not Gmail or Facebook. It's advertising to their audience. You are the audience. Advertising is the product. And so the broadly applicable advice is still relevant. But you know this. In that light, ask the question - who is the customer and what do they want from the product? The customer is the advertiser, and they need to want what FB and Google and Twitter have to sell. You're confusing the value that the users get (which is how they build and maintain the audience) with the value that the customers get (advertising to that audience).

And besides, how many startup founders are REALLY building the next Google or Facebook right now? Most are building something much more modest, in which case, in those cases the user is most likely the customer and so building something they want to buy is important.

[enos_feedler]

Who said anything about customer? Your advice is to build something that people will pay money for. My point is you can build something where users come first, and perhaps the "customers" don't show up until later. You can have great product metrics before you have a single customer. In many cases you can't even serve the customer before you have great product metrics. And I think startup founders should always be thinking of building the next Google or Facebook? It is sad to think otherwise

[suyash]

No offense, but before I take counter advise from a stranger, care about to share your credibility?