

Cumulative Advantage - Why You Should Start Now - ruang
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/14207/Cumulative-Advantage-Why-You-Need-A-Bias-Towards-Action.aspx

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patio11
One specific, undeniable mechanism for this is as regards SEO. The longer your
domain is up, the longer links to you are up, the more links you have
accumulated, the higher your ability to rank for terms of interest is. If you
get to the first page of the SERP for something, you will tend to accumulate
more links over time. Winners win, and winners take most.

Even if your company gets shot out from under you, you very well might have a
personal blog, portfolio site, or something which folks routinely cited when
saying that you were doing X, Y, or Z. You can take that with you, as capital
for your next adventure.

By the way, if you get a company shot out from under you, please don't just
slap up a We're Closed sign and let the domain lapse. That makes the SEO in me
want to wince. Your Internet reputation is worth money, and (modulo whatever
your agreement is with investors as regards IP) you probably still own it even
if the business is not functioning as a going concern. Point some links to
your personal domain and, when time comes, your new project. ("Thanks for your
support of MyTwitLy.er.ous, we failed to find a business model blah blah blah,
the CEO Bob went on to create SellsSoftwareForMoney.com and our co-founder is
currently making (linky)education done right(/linky) in Seattle.")

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dasil003
For anyone currently involved in a startup this is trite, but sadly for many
this is probably the single most important thing they need to internalize.

It reminds me of this guy I met on a flight to London a couple months ago. We
had been chatting, and when I mentioned I was working for a startup his ears
perked up a bit. He told me he had this idea for an app that he thought would
be "huge". I asked what it was, but he didn't want to share the idea, just
that it would target various mobile devices like iphones and ipads. I asked if
he was working on it, "no, waiting for the right time to find a developer and
get started". Meanwhile he's forty-something in a cush corporate job.

I suggested politely there's no better time to start than now. But inside I'm
laughing. As if the idea is so amazing that he must guard it preciously from
casual conversation, and that some guy already working for a startup has time
to steal it! I wanted to say, you should come to silicon valley and be
bombarded daily with ideas ten times better than yours that are still nearly
impossible to execute. Ah, but you can't trade war stories with someone
content to dreamer.

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ruang
It's interesting to see how long ago the Matthew Effect (aka Cumulative
Advantage) has been noticed.

This sociological phenomenon was named after a verse in the bible: For to all
those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from
those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

-Matthew 25:29, New Revised Standard Version.

Nassim Taleb also talks about cumulative advantage in his book Black Swan.

