A benefit of having no (or very little) money ...

For various reasons I ended up on this page: http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/02/throwing-away-working-code.html

Originally submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500713

From that article:

  > We eventually uncovered the problem, that
  > a core aspect of our product concept was
  > deeply flawed. And along the way we learned
  > our first profound lesson in the power of
  > metrics, what I would later come to realize
  > was a key part of the fundamental startup
  > feedback loop.

Hard lessons to learn. But there's another lesson:

  > None of it would have happened if we had
  > plenty of cash, or were content to count
  > our progress by traffic or product
  > development milestones.

That seriously struck home with me. If you have plenty of cash you don't have to be particularly efficient to survive for a while, only to realise as you run out of cash (near wrote cache!) that you are in the habit of being inefficient, and change is hard. Newton's laws about inertia really do apply to organisations.

So even if you have cash, you need to pretend you don't. Only spend it if you can prove you'll get a commensurate return.

As always, there's a trade-off, but as with most things, it may not be where you think it is. It's probably closer to the "DON'T SPEND" end of the continuum than you think.

And it emphasises yet again that you must engage with your customers. And if you don't have customers, get some, even if it's only one.