Startup lessons by Paul Graham
Here’s a nice article by Paul Graham on lessons for start-ups. He has a lot of experience and comes with some great tips:
www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html
Let me quote some of the article:
1. Release Early.
“.. By “release early” I don’t mean you should release something full of bugs, but that you should release something minimal. Users hate bugs, but they don’t seem to mind a minimal version 1, if there’s more coming soon..”
2. Keep Pumping Out Features.
3. Make Users Happy.
4. Fear the Right Things.
“.. Way more startups hose themselves than get crushed by competitors. There are a lot of ways to do it, but the three main ones are internal disputes, inertia, and ignoring users. Each is, by itself, enough to kill you. But if I had to pick the worst, it would be ignoring users..”
5. Commitment Is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
6. There Is Always Room.
“.. There is always room for new stuff. At every point in history, even the darkest bits of the dark ages, people were discovering things that made everyone say “why didn’t anyone think of that before?..”
7. Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.
“..The way to succeed in a startup is to focus on the goal of getting lots of users, and keep walking swiftly toward it while investors and acquires scurry alongside trying to wave money in your face..”
These are relevant lessons for my project. I think for now the release early lesson is most important. It’s better to have a test-version with very few functions, little bugs and an usable interface in stead of trying to do everything halfway. So that’s the goal for my Helpalot test-version.