

Lessons I Learned from Starting Precog - tkellogg
http://stackstreet.com/10-hard-lessons-learned-starting-precog/

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brandonb
Cool postmortem!

I think items 2-5 are implications of #1: stay focused. My previous startup
probably had a similar grand vision as Precog, but we decided to focus on a
specific use case (credit card fraud) first. Even still, we found fraud was
itself a broad problem with several subcategories; techniques that work well
for an online marketplace for vacation rentals might not work for an
e-commerce shop that sells shoes.

A template that I love is the one from Crossing the Chasm:

For [Target Customer] who has [Problem], our product is a [New Product
Category] that provides [Key Benefit]. Unlike [Competitor], we have [Key Point
of Differentiation].

Two declarative sentences. Sounds easy, but few startup founders succeed at
this exercise the first time they try. However, once you can do this, just
about everything else--selling to customers, convincing talented employees to
join, raising funding from VCs--becomes vastly easier.

I wish more startup advice focused on basics like that.

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wheaties
Glad to read this. You seemed like a nice enough guy at the conferences I met
you. Any comments on the infamous job applicant screen? Did that have any
negative repurcusions or was it more of a distraction at that point?

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buffyoda
Unfortunately, of all the things I did at Precog, I'll probably be remembered
most for that post, at least among developers. ;)

As these things often do, it led to many more user signups and a massive spike
in web traffic, but ultimately I don't think it had much effect on the
business one way or the other.

