A few lessons about starting a startup

In my previous post, I had made allusion to some kind of startup that two friends of mine and I are ninja-moding. Obviously, being in Ninja-Mode does not mean we can talk about what we have been learning. Actually, the thing about a startup as I am currently learning it is that there is a constant need to express one-self in order to find some kind of relief from all the stress.

Yesterday, as after I was done hacking some Ruby code, I started reflecting on what it actually took to start a startup and keep it on the path that had been determined by its founders. Here are in point form a few of the lessons I've been learning along the way:

• The first and most important thing is to keep healthy! There are a couple of things involved here: exercise whenever possible (I would recommend an activity as simple as running for about 20 to 30 mns on a daily basis), and sleep! It seems most hackers have the tendency not to sleep a lot. I also can't sleep much and as I have described, I have bad sleeping habits. However, when hacking some cool utilities to be used by other computer geeks is one thing and produce software that users actually want and like to use is another. In order to achieve the latter, it is imperative to have a clear and rested mind, through which good ideas can fuel.

• The second lesson is related to the ideas and the flexibility that the founders should have around those: so far we have come up with a bunch of things that we wanted to implement and everyday there would be a new idea in one of our minds. As time goes on, some ideas get refined while some others seem not to make sense anymore and literally die. Sometimes, ideas that we have, seem to require some radical changes in the direction that we have taken. I have found out that it is very important to be flexible enough to for example decide to totally scrap a feature or a product and restart with a new one. After all, we would not want to finish and offer a bad product fast when we could have taken more time and offer a really good (a.k.a fantastic) product: it is easier for customers to remember a bad product/service than the good ones. And when they do remember, the word spreads really fast.

• The 3rd lesson is related to reading (and doing lots and lots of it): obviously as geeks, when we think about reading, we tend to be attracted a lot more to technical books. From my experience so far however, it is equally important to be well acquainted with business related matters as we are with technical ones. So for example, it is important to read marketing related books, to spend sometime every morning on CNN's business website as well as it is important to read books on information architecture, CSS 2.0 and so on. Finally, reading helps new startups to avoid making the same mistakes that others have made. A few months ago, somewhere I've read the following, which pretty much describes the point I was trying to make: "It is very hard to repeat a brilliant performance, but it is straightforward to avoid previous errors."
  

• The 4th and final lesson I can think about is writing things down: ideas, thoughts and the lots have one trick that they keep on playing on us: they come and go. For some reason they do not stick to our memory and when they do, whenever we want to recall them they're appear to be very fuzzy and not as vivid as they were when we first had them. Which is why for projects, it is important to setup a Wiki where all the members of the team can jot down ideas related to the project and follow them up as they grow or change or get rejected. I would even advise the individual members of the team to walk around with a pen and small notebooks because ideas come up at the weirdest moments and it really is irritating not to be able to write them down right at that time. A good starting point for a Project's Wiki is DevJavu. A member of our team stumbled upon it a few days ago and we have started putting it to use: it is exactly what we've been looking for.

There are obviously more lessons that we are learning on the way but those four seem to be the essential ones in order to get going and keep fueling the startup on a daily basis.