What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
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Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#2Its been said time and time again but its being able to get things done, and at a minimum being able to google the right thing. It gets harder from there, but at least thats a start.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#3I think "undo" is the wrong metaphor for decision making. It's "safe to fail" or "acceptable risk" or "acceptable loss." You always lose time and opportunity at a minimum, but in exchange for new information if you are willing to pay attention.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#4Its been said time and time again but its being able to get things done, and at a minimum being able to google the right thing. It gets harder from there, but at least thats a start.
Agreed.
The one thing where smaller companies can excel is shipping a viable product. Most people I know are willing to give smaller companies a break on a polished product if they know they will see updates in a timely manner. This is something smaller companies can outmatch their larger competitors and will also get them more loyalty from their users.
Shipping a viable product, with timely, dependable updates is crucial.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#5A strong sense of ethics.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#6Do such checkpoints really help in the long term? An athlete begins to learn by doing and then watching others. There's no playbook there, he just begins by playing an abridged version of the pro. A highly successful athlete is the one understands his game on his own and not following what the sporting greats before him did. I believe ambitious journeys are a process of self-discovery. If there is anything that helps is learning from the mistakes of successful ones, learning from one's own mistakes and doing one's own best each day. It's a deliberate practice.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#7I'm running Savio[1], which is my fourth small internet company I've run since 2007 (the previous three were sold).
At the risk of sounding cliche, the three skills that have been most valuable are:
1. The ability to build software that meaningfully solves a customer's problem
2. The ability to reach people who have the problem my software solves
3. The persistence to grind until we have a decent product and can regularly reach people who have our problem.
The above may seem like they're outcomes. But understanding problems and building solutions is a skill. Finding and reaching people is a skill. Grinding effectively is a skill.
Every other skill (writing well, communicating well, selling the visions, giving good demos and customer service) is in service of the above.
[1] - https://www.savio.io
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#8Marketing and sales.
As awful as that sounds to many people it just isn't enough to build an amazing product, write great code, or design something beautiful. You need to be able to get out there and tell people it exists in order to succeed. Without that ability your startup will fail. In fact, in my experience at least, far more companies fail because they couldn't reach customers than fail because they couldn't build something. Building something is the easy bit.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#9Marketing and sales. As awful as that sounds to many people it just isn't enough to build an amazing product, write great code, or design something beautiful. You need to be able to get out there and tell people it exists in order to succeed. Without that ability your startup will fail. In fact, in my experience at least, far more companies fail because they couldn't reach customers than fail because they couldn't bu…
> Building something is the easy bit.
Building something is certainly easy. Building something people want and works well is pretty hard. Unless you have the latter, all the sales and marketing won't do much for you unless you have an established legacy walled garden that people are forced to use.
Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?
#10Marketing and sales. As awful as that sounds to many people it just isn't enough to build an amazing product, write great code, or design something beautiful. You need to be able to get out there and tell people it exists in order to succeed. Without that ability your startup will fail. In fact, in my experience at least, far more companies fail because they couldn't reach customers than fail because they couldn't bu…
> Building something is the easy bit. Building something is certainly easy. Building something people want and works well is pretty hard. Unless you have the latter, all the sales and marketing won't do much for you unless you have an established legacy walled garden that people are forced to use.
News flash. That’s part of marketing. Not programming.
The past decades and even now, people tend to expect programmers to do everything related to tech.
This fairytale is why so many fail.