

Ask HN: How do startups work - phwd

As summer rounds the corner, I decided to start from the beginning of Hacker News posts from<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2 which is http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html : A Student's Guide to Startups.<p>So, I don't take Business Classes (I am in Engineering, closest thing we had was one course: Engineering Economics) and Paul said in his essay near the end<p><pre><code>     One thing you can do while you're still in school is to learn how startups work.
</code></pre>
It would preferable not to have a textbook definition, I just want to know how it applies currently.<p>I saw some threads here, that said they hacked together an app on the weekend and then label it as a startup. I honestly thought it was just a weekend project. So is the term more or less flexible ?<p>As someone who has a startup, how do they work ?
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HerraBRE
I think the main difference between a weekend project and a startup, is a
startup explicitly has the goal of becoming a sustainable business.

A project is just a project; throw something at the wall and see if it sticks.
A minority of really sticky projects may have the potential to become
startups. :-)

[edit: and conversely, some startups may have been better off left at the
project stage. :-P ]

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amorphid
Step 1. Read Four Steps To The Epiphany by Steve Blank. Step 2. Realize you
have no idea what you are getting yourself into. Step 3. Understand the market
decides if your project is worth anything.

