question: how are you learning to code and building a prototype when you have 25 meetings + 10 meetups to go to + 100 (wildly) repetitive blog posts to read every week? The blatant exaggeration hurts your argument. By trying to make it sound so easy and straightforward you actually make it sound much harder and intimidating than it is. Get one meeting with an influencer in your market. Go from there.
No better way to learn than to do so great advice and post about strategies to do just this. Although I do wonder if this all can be realistically achieved in 6 weeks.<p>The only thing I'd disagree with esp given the finite time available is that you should focus on meeting (or getting meetings) with potential customers and partners exclusively.<p>Sure Meetups are great but the signal:noise ratio for content is generally low. Lots of startup platitudes like "build something people want" with little useful, credible, actionable insight. And then the ratio of quality people to wantrapreneurs and service providers often leaves much to be desired and makes the networking goal difficult.<p>With regards to reading blogs, there is lots of great insight out there (many that you highlighted) but you can chew up your day reading through lots of entreporn as well which talks about the vagueries of the VC industry and other non-useful content which while interesting (and sometimes dramatic) doesn't really help you build or validate an idea/real biz.
I disagree with the author.
When <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat" rel="nofollow">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_World_Is_...</a> it is better to have a MBA before doing a startup.<p>"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself." --Sam Levenson
I really enjoyed seeing this today. It's very good timing for me. I just wish I knew how to translate the software specific parts of it into more general advice or where to go for similar information on other products/business models. I did go ahead and start a posterous group and invited a friend who was enthusing about starting a business with me earlier today. And also started a wordpress site. I have no idea where I am going to go with this but my health has been the big thing holding me back and I worked 17 hours of overtime this past week (a lot more overtime than I have ever worked before) without having to go home sick some time during the week due to pushing myself. This has been a watershed week for me and I want to go ahead and start getting on with life. I'm not ready to run flat out, so to speak, but I think I can stop sitting on the sidelines of life and wishing I had one (a life, that is).<p>Peace.