Moe and Diana discuss how to launch a new idea when everything is on the line and how to generate real traction.
What Successful Startups Do
Y-Combinator co-founder, Paul Graham has long been an advocate of lightning fast growth for early stage startups; for without it, you’ll never know if you have the making of a business. “What I tell founders” he said “is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don’t do that, it won’t matter how clever your business model is.”
In a recent guest lecture at Sam Altman’s startup class at Stanford, he used the ‘counterintuitive’ analogy to describe the unpredictable nature of startups, and he referenced these six convincing lessons:
Its wise to trust your instinct about people, but not the business.
Opt not to be an expert on startups, and instead build expertise on your users and the problem you’re solving for them.
Starting a startup is where gaming the system stops working – there are no short cuts or tricks.
Startups are all-consuming and it never gets easier.
The only way to know if you’re up to the challenge is to try.
The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas
In the end, those who get it right never stop learning and readjusting; which is precisely why the third of Diana Kander’s four entrepreneurial principles is the imperative of being a ‘detective, not fortuneteller.‘ In her book, All In Startup: Launching a New Idea When Everything is on the Line, she brings to light this and the other three principles with a fictional character who’s on the verge of losing his bicycle shop, except that he made this mental shift.