can iron all that out before you actually start the company, or pick different
founders, it’ll improve your chances of success.
Tip number two: you can’t get too attached to your vision in a startup,
because things may change. It’s not a sign of failure to change your vision. I
remember in a previous company, we wanted to be this, but we were offered a
consulting contract to do this, that, and the other thing, and, yeah, that wasn’t in
the plan, but we’ll take that, because that’s going to add $50,000 to our startup
capital, and it’ll only take x amount of time. Yeah, be wary of distractions, but if
you’re lightning-focused on just one thing and aren’t willing to consider others,
you probably don’t have the flexibility to make it when things don’t go according
to plan. That’s the one truism: things won’t go according to plan.
At the earlier stages of the company, when you’re actually out trying to get
some customers, do whatever the hell the customer wants. If they’re going to
pay you, the customer is right. Because you need that initial money. You need
that customer on the list to go get the next one. If you have to give away whatever
you’re doing, give it away. Get the customer. Make them into a reference
account. Make that customer into the person that sings your praises the
loudest, and really uses your product or service.
It’s perfectly fine if you knew that customer through a past life and that’s
how they got to be a customer. Maybe they’ll be even more honest with you. If
it means adding a new feature to your product, or whatever, to close that initial
sale, and it’s not on strategy, screw the strategy. Do it, collect the money, get the
customer, and move forward.
Then, as you’re growing, sort of mid-stage, what I tried to foster here is an
attitude of risk-taking, where all I want to know really is what’s my downside
scenario in terms of time and opportunity cost? If I can try something offbeat,
weird-sounding, and it takes a few weeks, and the downside is, in my case, I rip
it out of the live website, or, if you’re producing software, I rip it out of the
piece of software, or I don’t document the feature if I’m producing a piece of
hardware or whatever—if the amount of time spent making a mistake is small,
don’t be afraid to make a lot of mistakes without a lot of time analyzing whether
you should or shouldn’t do it.
On the Web, it’s particularly easy to try something and get feedback. If it
doesn’t work, drop it. I’ve come up with really interesting ideas that were utter