The 8 commandments for startups

In the past years we took part in two startups and also got to know how many others work from the inside. Because of this we think its a good time to codify our 8 startup commandments. They are simple as a screw driver, every one believes in them, but few actually follow…

… lets start then:

1

After the research and development phase is finished what must a startup do every day to survive ?

….

Sell something !

2

If you have 3 or more ideas for cash cows (distribution channels or client segments) what do you do ?

…

Focus ! You run towards one of them, the one that seams to have the most milk, and drain it dry !

…

Believe me you wont have enough hands to drain them all at once. There also is no sense to turn back to get two buckets when you can have one filled already.

3

If the best cow gave you little milk then stop and think… is it worth it to go to the next one.

…

Da ! maybe you should be happy that you didn’t waste your time on all of them.

4

Don’t count how many people said that they like your product.

…

It’s irrelevant. Count how many orders you received.

5

If the client:

a) likes your product,

b) needs it,

c) can afford it,

d) didn’t find any thing else with a+b+c > then yours,

then he will buy it even it your company does not have a name yet and you met him at the urinal.

6

Marketing has three roles to play:

a) inform the clients that you exist and show them the product,

b) sometimes to pimp up how your product looks like,

c) sometime to generate the need for it,

…

If in order to sell any quantities of your product you absolutely need (b) or (c) then in 99.99 % of the cases you cannot afford this type of marketing.

7

If the first cash cow was a failure… and still you went for the second one… and once more not even one bucket of milk came out of it…. then the recipe to your success is plain simple:

a) put your product in the middle of your saloon,

b) pour your self a glass of some nice wine,

c) set the product on fire,

d) embrace failure and move on to the next idea.

Life is hard and at the end you die. There is sense in wasting time on ideas that turned out to be bad.