1st rule: You do not talk about bootstrapping.<p>2nd rule: You DO NOT talk about bootstrapping.<p>3rd rule: If someone mentions real-time or social networking, it's over.<p>4th rule: Only two founders to a startup<p>5th rule: One startup at a time<p>6th rule: No suits, no MBAs<p>7th rule: Startups will go on as long as they have to<p>8th rule: If this is your first time at a startup, you HAVE to bootstrap.
These "rules" are a little too shallow to be very useful.<p>"Build something people need and love. People will talk about it."<p>People can only talk about it if they know about it. How will they know?<p>"Release, release and release. Release it before you think it's ready, you're wrong, you don't need that feature."<p>This would be better said as, "If you're not quite sure, don't be afraid to release. Blindly releasing for the sake of releasing is risky and stupid."<p>"Your app will probably fail, most of them do."<p>What is this doing on this list? Worst advice <i>ever</i>. Better would be, "Your app can succeed."<p>"Build something you want to use. Continue to use it, feel the user's pain."<p>This can easily be the opposite of #1, "Build something people need and love." You're unnecessarily restricting yourself to the relatively tiny population of things that interest you.<p>"Be Ballsy, don't follow the herd, make a courageous moves."<p>Such as...<p>"Build something you want to use. Continue to use it, feel the user's pain."<p>Bad advice. Better to ask the user about their own pain. Developers are notorious for having blind spots about their own apps.<p>"Google Adwords isn't a revenue model."<p>Not according to Markus Frind, founder of plentyoffish.com.<p>"Find the cheapest, fastest way to 500 paid users. People will pay for your app, if it's good."<p>Such as...<p>"Design is an iterative process, not just development. And you won't get it right the first time, so don't sweat so much."<p>Sweat a little. Release shit too soon and shoot yourself in the foot. Development must be done with design in mind.<p>"Don't scale until you actually need to. (The front page of Digg does not count as need.)"<p>But develop with scaling in mind. (Will you really have enough time to completely redesign your data base schema after 1000 users?)<p>"Don't spend any money."<p>What if spending money is more time/cost effective? (Paying someone to do something that would have taken me 5 days to do.)
1st rule: create a software app of high enough quality, that CS college grads from good departments will not vomit, when they see your source code<p>2nd rule: don't run out of money; get a part-time job; mow your neighbors lawns etc.<p>3rd rule: build something that companies, or any mid-sized and funded organization will actually use; you're insane to think you will actually succeed in the consumer market<p>my two cents. good luck.