December 03, 2007

The idea does not count only execution matters: 10 rules to launch a startup today

I have 10 rules to launch a startup these days that I am writing as bullet points for a Financial Times story, I explained them briefly in video at the last Google Zeitgeist Europe too, will detail this post later.

1- do not wait for a revolutionary idea, the idea of your life will never happen, just focus on a simple exciting empty space you see and execute as fast as possible
2- share your idea as much as possible, the more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3- build a community around you through blogging and social software
4- listen to your community, answer questions and build your product with their feedback, involve bloggers as early as possible and get their feedback, if negative, adapt your product permanently
5- gather a great team with a very different skill set than yours, look for people who are better than you without being afraid of it
6- be the first to recognize a problem or a mistake you have made. Never hide it behind the carpet. Address the issue in public, learn and correct it.
7- do not spend time on market research, but launch as early as possible in alpha or beta versions. Keep improving the product in the open.
8- do not focus on a large spreadsheet business plan, you are so sure it is not going to happen anyway
9- do not plan huge marketing, growing with your community loving the product is much more powerful
10- do not focus on getting rich or selling your company, focus on your users, money is a consequence of success, can't be a goal

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Welcome to my blog. Based in San Francisco, I am an entrepreneur and a blogger. I just started my fifth startup, Seesmic, a community driven video social software. Here is what TechCrunch says about it.

I am blogging every day a video on loic.tv about (almost) everything I do as I start Seesmic, I also constantly post short thoughts to twitter and often my pictures on Flickr.

I also organize every year in Paris the conference LeWeb3 that gathers more than a thousand bloggers and entrepreneurs from 40 countries on Dec 11 and 12.

If you would like to learn more, here is a bio, my LinkedIn profile, my wikipedia pages in english and french. Sometimes they are subject to changes that do not always reflect what I consider the truth but that is the principle.

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