I’ve being doing the ’startup thing’ for close to a year and a half. That might not sound like much, but I feel that I’ve learned a ton and gained much experience. Following a recent
startup-oriented weekend adventure I took a part in and some introspection, I thought I’d offer my take on
Ye Olde ‘Top 10 Pitfalls’ of starting up in the web environment:
1. Lack of focus
Keep it simple, stupid. This might sound obvious, but a lack of focus is a real killer for a young start up. Define your core business and avoid temptations to branch out in other directions as opportunities come along (Jim Collins calls it the hedgehog mentality). Know what you do best, and stick with it.
2. Lack of discipline
If you don’t have the discipline to pursue your goals with single-minded determination, you will fail. This doesn’t mean that your vision has to be set in stone (far from it, your vision should be constantly adapting), but you have to know what your core ideals are and believe they will take you where you want to get. You will encounter hardships and things will get much worse before they get better, so have the resolve to follow through (or save yourself the time and go work at some software company).
3. Overuse of buzz words
If the first two points were universally true, this one plagues web startups to a much greater degree. People throw around concepts such ‘viral’, ‘SaaS’, ’semantic web’,‘web 2.0′, ’social community’ to describe how their brand spanking new start up is going to succeed. If one of those concepts happen to apply to your idea, people will understand it themselves. If you need to keep using them to convince others of your certain future success, you might be experiencing the buzz-word syndrome. Continue »