Notice how a lot of the answers form a single connected thread: how hard it is to get users, that doing so depends on making what they want, and that to make what they want you have to understand them (instead of working on some idea conceived in a vacuum).
and to understand them you have to observe them, observe the problems they face everyday and create a solution for them so that next time they see you on the street they give you a HUGE hug
Better yet, you need to be one of them. It works well when your service is, well, of service to you! thats when the proximity to the user is maximized.
What I liked most about this post: not so much the answers, but the fact that the answers were all so different...further emphasizing that there rarely is one right answer, but many possibilities and that you have to find your own.
I also read the book "Connect the Dots" 2 years back. That tells the founding stories of 20-25 founders. But all those stories are from India and are about general businesses.
It is so inspiring to read success stories of other people and you also learn the way they think about the problems and the way they tackle it.
Also, I just want to mention that if you have the ability to change your price rapidly then using a dynamic pricing API[0] might be better suited for determining the best price.
[0] Disclosure: this is what we do, but don't feel compelled to use us.
Is your product for shopping carts only or can it be used with anything? What if for example i was selling something using something like gumroad or shoplocket?
Our product is just a REST API, so you could use it with anything. We have been building out integrations with shopping carts but I think Gumroad would be a perfect application for it.
These people seem to have been chosen because of(and their advice ordered by) their physical attractiveness rather than their actual entrepreneurial success.
Edit: OK, I kind of take it back. I started paying attention at #4 and stopped at #10.
> Don’t hire people that are getting a salary bump up by working with you
Anyone else find that piece of advice a bit odd? Wouldn't someone like that be more of an asset since they were (ostensibly) getting paid closer to their worth than before, especially if they actually fit your culture?
My interpretation is that early-stage start-ups need employees motivated primarily by something other than money (at least in the short term).
Accepting a position at a higher pay than your current one is a low-risk proposition, and start-ups are not an ideal environment for people who prefer to play it safe. Working to make their equity valuable in the long term should be a higher priority for early employees than extracting short-term financial gains.
it seems that the recurring theme is "You can loose so much time worrying about things that don’t even matter" - Gautam
"start saying NO to things that would take me away from what really needed my attention" - Renee
"is the question I am agonizing over right now likely to be the thing I will agonize over four years from now? The answer is usually no." - Bo
The main idea I got from this is to re-evaluate the things you are doing every day and prioritize the tasks that are absolutely essential to the startup.
This has happened to me often enough lately that I really wish someone would implement peer-to-peer hosting in a form that will replace the way the current internet works.
Apparently this is currently possible, or will soon be possible, on Chrome and Firefox -- able to cache websites, and able to serve websites, through client-to-client communications.
