
Ten Rules for Web Startups - dshah
http://evhead.com/2005/11/ten-rules-for-web-startups.asp
======
nazgulnarsil
I hate lists like these and here's why:

#3 contradicts #1

#5 and #6 contradict

#7 and #8 often come into conflict

#4 and #9 are in conflict

lists lead to check mark the box attitude, which is pretty much the opposite
of the flexibility that allows new companies to steal users from entrenched
players. running a business is a creative endeavor. asking yourself if you did
XYZ today is counter productive.

~~~
cookiecaper
Even without an explicit contradiction, the terms and metrics are so vague
that they could really mean anything, according to your interpretation.

------
jasonlbaptiste
the first point here: be narrow is such an overlooked and important idea.
Facebook didn't have more than one photo for over 18 months and is now the
largest photo sharing site by FAR.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Yes, but it annoys me to read that kind of "overlooked" ideas over and over
again and never see the issues discussed by the author.

If Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not to
be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be replaced
as soon as my app gets traction.

~~~
patio11
_If Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not
to be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be
replaced as soon as my app gets traction._

I sell a strict subset of Microsoft Excel. My strategy for competing with
Microsoft Excel is two-fold: first, I'm not Microsoft and second, I don't sell
Excel.

Plus, if you'll forgive me one of my hobbyhorses: there is a titanic gulf
between your application's feature set and your business. I think as engineers
we look at the feature set and see 90% of the value, and naturally assume that
something with 100 times the features is 100 times better. I think the truth
is that the application itself is closer to 10% of the value, and that huge
ginormous feature sets have costs as well as benefits.

One quick example: if you have a very focused vision of your product or users,
you can afford to play depth-versus-breadth on marketing to your niche.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Every product will always have a set of intrinsic features; things like
usability, aesthetic appeal, performance, efficiency, robustness, etc. When
you use a brain-dead functionality checklist approach to development you are
almost assured to fail at delivering on the intrinsic featureset, which is
often the most important.

In mature industries most of the competition is on these intrinsic aspects,
just look at automobiles, furniture, or food.

When Apple initially revealed the first iPod in 2001 there was a considerable
amount of initial criticism from the tech savvy community and many people
thought it would flop. The critics called it just another MP3 player and
pointed out where it lacked seemingly important features that the competition
already had. And yet the iPod became one of the most phenomenally successful
products of all time, and has played a major role in revolutionizing the way
that music is produced, distributed, and listened to. All because Apple is
smart enough to know how critical it is to deliver on the intrinsic
featureset.

------
paulgerhardt
[2005]

~~~
paul
Pre-Twitter. In some ways that makes it better in my mind.

~~~
timr
Yes. There's more opportunity for irony now:

 _"While it's true that traffic is now again actually worth something, the
give-everything-away-and-make-it-up-on-volume strategy stamps an expiration
date on your company's ass....design something to charge for into your product
and start taking money within 6 months (and do it with PayPal)."_

also fun:

 _"Acquisitions are much easier if they're small. And small acquisitions are
possible if valuations are kept low from the get go."_

Ahem....what's Twitter up to now? $1 billion? Hope they get that paypal
feature launched soon...

~~~
aaronblohowiak
I dont "get" Twitter. Not in any way that I'd put money on, at least. Selling
people a product is much more predictable than playing the attention economy
game, let alone creating a social network. While he is riding the Twitter
growth for now, it is not apparent to me that it is something he should bank
on.

------
vaksel
so why didn't twitter start charging 6 months in? and it doesn't look like he
followed his own advice on staying small

~~~
pkaler
Odeo had enough cash flow to work on their second idea: Twitter.

According to Cruchbase, Twitter has 83 employees. That is pretty tiny with
respect to the number users that they have.
<http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter>

~~~
axod
83 is masses with respect to what they do. I wonder how many of those
employees are 'PR/marketing/bizdev' etc

------
sabat
Interesting to read, although the suggestion that you try a turnkey service is
potentially bad advice. Most turnkey services ("we'll be your IT team for
you!") suck. They don't care about doing a good job. They care about
minimizing effort to maximize their profit. The SLA that you thought would
protect you -- that turns out to only refund the money you paid the service
for the time you were down. (Most SLAs don't promise to recoup your lost
_profits_.)

~~~
thiele
It definitely depends on the types of services you are using. Services like
UserVoice/GetSatisfaction, Gmail, Posterous/WordPress blog, etc are a better
use of resources than hosting or rolling your own if its not core to your
business.

