Startup Strategy - Summary
My posts tend to be lengthy and a bit wordy, so I thought I'd distill my philosophy a bit. If I had to describe my founders philosophy in a few simple tenets they'd probably be something like the following:
- Have a good idea, something you are passionate about, but don't obsess over it being perfect. Developing an idea is an organic process and once you apply your mental energies to developing something, the way the idea evolves is more important than its initial form.
- Time is king. Time is money. Therefore aspire to maximum frugality as it will give you time to spiral in on the successful venture idea.
- Don't develop in a vacuum, try to sell something as quickly as possible. Market feedback is the 'experimental data' that allows you to know if you're on the right track or not. Revenue also gives you more time.
- Learn to extract value from failure. The greatest entrepreneurs were the ones that were able to extract the maximum value, to learn the most, from their failures. Failure is not the end of the road, failure is only a step towards success.
These are all related, obviously, and lead to lots of other more specific strategic corollaries but I'd say those are the foundation. There are lot of other pieces of strategic advice, but I believe thinking of them in the context of the above four will increase the overall chance of success for your venture.