It's crazy how many of this type of post are showing up everywhere. In the past couple weeks I've seen 4-5 posts on what founders did wrong or right with their companies.<p>It must be nice to be past all that and looking back on it to glean the lessons. Can't wait to get there.
The one about thinking that they needed to move really fast reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, recounted in "The Dip" by Seth Godin:<p>"We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we'd made a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better."<p>~Sergey Brin (cofounder Google)<p>That's a crazy mentality to have, and stands in such stark contrast to most of the frantic behavior of startups today.<p>Take your time and build a great product.
<i>but slow burning fires burn the hottest</i><p>But if it burns to slow (ie if your product does not generate the minimum amount of buzz to keep it alive) it will die. Entrepreneurs should make the difference between a slow burning fire and a slowly dying fire.<p>EDIT:<p><i>Thinking we had to spend more than we did</i><p>Too much resources handicaps more than not having enough. Give 3 coders a few thousand and they create Omnisio, which sells for millions. Give coders 15 millions and Omnisio will show up half as good and one year too late.<p><i>Placing my faith in consultants</i><p>Dude. I am not even going to talk about this one. Nowadays everybody claims to be a consultant.