Startups in 13 Sentences

Startups in 13 Sentences
paulgraham.com

Rule #1 -- Pick good cofounders. I picked no cofounders, based largely on the fact that that I couldn't think of anyone who would be interested in joining me who wouldn't dramatically lower the average founder quality. (Ok, that's being a bit facetious -- but I'm working in an area where domain knowledge is extremely important, so there are lots of wonderfully talented people who would be utterly useless to me as cofounders.)

Rule #2 -- Launch fast; and Rule #3 -- Let your idea evolve. I started working on tarsnap in September 2006, and I didn't open tarsnap to the public until November 2008. Over that time I ironed out some technical details behind the scenes, but the largest change in my idea was going from planning to charge $0.25/GB to actually charging $0.30/GB. Since then, I've listened to my users and occasionally added an unplanned-for feature because of a request (or more often, several requests for the same thing from different people); but most of the ways that tarsnap has deviated from my original plan have simply been in the ordering of when I implemented which features. The vision behind tarsnap, from 2.5 years ago -- an online snapshotted backup service with a tar front-end, a heavy emphasis on security, and a linear pricing model -- hasn't changed at all.

Rule #10 -- Avoid distractions. I've remained as FreeBSD Security Officer while working on tarsnap, and I don't regret it in the slightest. Yes, it has taken time away from tarsnap on occasion; however, it has also allowed me to further enhance my domain knowledge, and has brought many people to tarsnap (one person recently described tarsnap as being a backup system with "a good pedigree", which I'm presuming refers to my open source security background).

Now, for all that I've broken these rules without regrets, I still think that they're good rules -- in most cases. But I think there should be a Rule #0: Realize that there are always exceptions, and understand why these rules are usually correct instead of applying them blindly.

Even so there were several things that seemed new to me. Let me check.

I never quite realized till now that a version 1.0 was (or could be) nothing more than a pretext.

The rectangle metaphor and the point about one side being easier to change is new; I only thought of that a couple weeks ago.

The greater difficulty of lying to yourself when expanding userwise is something I don't think I've written about.

I don't think I've mentioned that founders' own standards for customer service are artificially low, or that customer service is mostly a way of studying users.

I don't think I realized before that being cheap was interchangeable with iterating, or mentioned that a culture of cheapness keeps companies young.

I don't think I've written about how paying distractions are so much worse than other kinds, or that it's specifically because they work like interrupts.

I didn't realize till recently that the right metaphor for a deal was a background process.

And I definitely didn't realize till I'd actually written out the list which would be the most important one, or that it was involved in half the others.

Not that bad for an essay only 2.5 pages long.