

What I've Learned Founding 3 Tech Companies | betashop - twapi
http://betashop.com/post/1417413108/57-things-ive-learned-founding-3-tech-companies

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aniket_ray
>44\. Conferences are generally a waste of time

What is the community's take on this? I kind of agree, but sometimes I feel
that I feel so because I haven't learned "networking" skills completely yet.

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simonw
As the co-founder of a conference related startup ( <http://lanyrd.com/> ) I'm
very obviously biased here, but I've found conferences incredibly valuable in
my career to date. What you get out of them depends very much on how you
approach them.

Unless you live in the bay area, conferences are going to be the highest
concentration of smart, informed peers you'll be exposed to for the whole
year. Talk to people! Don't think of it as "networking" - think of it as an
opportunity to learn from others (and to share your own knowledge). At most
conferences, the hallway track is by far the most valuable.

And if you really want to get the most out of conferences, speak at them.
Preparing a talk forces you to learn a great deal more about your subject, and
presenting guarantees you some excellent conversations afterwards.

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aymeric
35\. Don’t drink on airplanes unless you are on a flight of longer than 8
hours. It ruins you and wastes your time.

huh? it seems out of place in comparison to the rest of the list. Did I
misunderstand what he meant?

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betashop
It's just been my experience that drinking on airplanes has an adverse effect
on productivity in the air and then once on the ground. Let's say you take a
flight from SF to Chicago or NYC. You have a couple of drinks on the plane so
then you end up getting no real work done on the plane and not even thinking
clear enough to get head-work done on the plane. Then when you land, you don't
go workout nor do you do any work, so the night is basically shot. And you are
more prone to also say, ok i had a couple already today so let's have another
one, and then the next morning might even be a rough one.

I've also found this especially true for flights from NYC to London. There's
nothing worse than landing after a red-eye and a few drinks. It makes the red-
eye jetlag so much wose. The best way for me to hop across the pond is to
immediately hit the gym upon arrival.

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gacba
_1\. Build something you are personally passionate about. You are your best
focus group._

The first statement is great. The second is potentially dangerous and stupid
if your reality distortion field is strongly polarized against what a real
market wants. Do your homework and get real market research. Find a pain point
or a genuine need. Believing that you're right and everyone else is wrong is a
greased pole to hell in most cases. Caveat emptor.

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ericHosick
I think point four is true but difficult to achieve. Most CEOs I work with,
who also act as the product manager/owner, have a hard time keeping up with
the role of product manager: especially when there are two or more pairs
working on their product.

Having someone who can share that product vision with you is, in my opinion,
really important. This frees up the CEO to focus on other aspects of the
business like customer development, funding, etc.

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betashop
This is a tough one. On Jobster I made 2 big mistakes with regard to this. (1)
I gave up the chief product role too early in terms of getting too busy with
other aspects of running the business to really guide and impact the product.
(2) I made the mistake of thinking i could still guide the product when i was
actually too busy doing other stuff, and then I failed to give full day-to-day
control of the product to Ethan Lowry when he volunteered to help with it. I
was too foolish to realize that i had already given up product control but yet
unwilling to allow someone else to help me with it. Ethan went on to be the
founder of Urban Spoon.

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jscore
Noticed your current startup, fabulis, only allows login via FB, what about
people without FB accounts?

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betashop
are there such people? j/k.

We started with facebook only as a way to help ensure that our users are real
people with real names, real pictures, and real friends. This was especially
important in building a gay website so that we could set the right tone and
not quickly become a porn/hookup/sex site.

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rmason
Totally diaagree with him about conferences. I could nit pick about one or two
of the others but based on my experience doing several startups this is an
unusually good list.

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cKirpalani
Brilliant List. So real, so today. The best one is number 56 from the list.
Mature, but don’t grow up.

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ravi123
Really nice. Helpful in day to day work activities.

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stpeteartisan
excellent list

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rokhayakebe
57(last one). Never Give up.

