

How to create a startup in 10.5 hours - mmaunder
http://markmaunder.com/2007/how-to-create-a-startup-in-105-hours/
I just launched FEEDJIT. It took me about 10.5 hours (4pm until 2:30am) from the first time my hand touched the keyboard until I fixed the last bug and went live. I got a question on the Seattle Tech Startup list about how I spent my 10.5 hours. So here's a brief summary....
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sbraford
If this counts as launching a startup then I've "launched" about 27 startups
over the past 8 years. Others might call this a feature or clever hack. (not
to denigrate at all what Mark did here - it's cool stuff, just not a startup
in the traditional sense)

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nick_man
While you might not see it as a start-up, it is generating significant number
of users and there must be some value in the type and volume of data being
collected.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for. I prefer opportunity.

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webwright
The thing that I like about this is that he distilled it down to a
hypothesis/test.

Hypothesis: Bloggers/site owners would like a stream-like
display/understanding of who's visiting, where they come from, and where they
leave to. Something a bit lighter and more fun than a standards analytics
package.

Do you need registration/passwords to test that idea? Focus groups?
Customizable widgets? Public profiles? Fancy graphs? Historical data?

Nope. Apparently all you need is 10.5 hours. ;-) If he sees any traction, he
can start piling on cool features based on user feedback. If not, he can let
it be as is.

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jkush
Good things happen when you put everything aside and really focus on getting
Version 1.0 done. Imagine what you can do if you did that for 3 months and had
YC's advice.

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palish
Right! When you're moonlighting, it's difficult running on 6 hours sleep each
day while managing 2 projects. Being able to focus on one thing 24/7 would be
great.

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adamdoupe
After working 8 hours, I end up avoiding working on my website. Instead I end
up playing wow or watching TV. I long for school to start so I have more free
time.

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far33d
You have more free time in school than you do at your job?

School was way more time consuming for me.

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palish
The draining part of work is the fact that you have people expecting you to
get X done absolutely as fast as you can, recurse with Y. And the
micromanagement. By the end of the day it's mentally draining.

At school, nobody cares whether you do anything. And when you do something,
it's by your own decision. I mean, I know you _decide_ to do something at
work, but.. It's hard to put into specific words. School lays all its
expectations out in front of you; work shoves them down your throat.

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epi0Bauqu
This goes in the "wish I thought of that" category. Not many things do.

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trekker7
This is really brilliant. Imagine what people would say if you traveled 50
years in the past and told them you could launch a new business in less than
11 hours.

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brent
This business would be analogous to a lemonade stand. The people in the past
would understand it just fine.

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rrival
Not to discount this remarkable achievement, but a lemonade stand would have a
business model ;)

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mmaunder
Sometimes folks forget that AdSense is a widget. :)

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brent
No, AdSense is a business model in which there is a simple javascript widget
interface. The model is money in exchange for advertising across billions(?)
of websites. A startup is created and launched when there is a business model
that uses the widget. Otherwise its a programming exercise. Any reasonable
programmer can create a program in <10 hours, but unless there is a business
model it is not a startup.

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webwright
A good example being YouTube? Or Google (before adwords)? Twitter? Delicious?
Reddit (before advertising)? If you build something people want to use,
monetizing it is always something that you can pull off.

I would say that a business model has to exist eventually-- and a startup
ought to have a few in mind. But I don't think an active business model is
required to be labeled as a "startup".

