Some Great Entrepreneurial Proverbs
With a link to all of them, thanks to Marc Hedlund, an entrepreneur-in-residence at O’Reilly Media. Some of my favorites are below. The last one is interesting, I’m not quite sure the “one slide” approach resounds with me, but the point of focusing on the full landscape of the business is excellent. Another interesting new blog I’m reading is OnStartups.com, from Dharmesh Shah.
Thanks for the comments and discussion, keep them coming!
Your ideas will get better the more you know about business — engineers hate to hear this, but you can generalize up quite far from here: the more you know about everything, the better all of your ideas will get! If you want to start a business and your strength is in development, learning about pricing, sales, marketing, finance, and yes, even HR, all of it will make your product ideas stronger and better.
Work only with people you like and believe in — I once heard Eric Schmidt say something along the lines of, “The older I get, the more I think all that matters is working with people you like.” If you’re smart and talented, you’re probably going to like a lot of smart and talented people. Working with people you like is so much more fun, and often more productive, than fighting against someone who may be smart and talented but just isn’t a great fit for you.
Test everything with real people – it’s unbelievable how helpful this is. Go find civilians, real people who use computers because they have to and not because they love to. Find them in Starbucks, or at the library, or in a college computer lab. Give them $20 for 20 minutes, and you’ll be paid back a hundred times over.
For investors, the product is nothing — the classic engineer’s VC pitch has ten slides about the product and two about the academic achievements of the founders. That’s a terrible pitch. One slide should be about the product, while the rest cover the market, competitors, financials, funding history, and the relevant experience of the team. The product matters far less to most investors than the reactions of customers, the properties of the market, and the credibility of the team. Obsess about the product on your own time; present your business in all of its parts.
Charlie
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