10 Rules For Web Startups

Evan Williams of Odeo has a great ten rules list up on his blog for web startups.  If you are doing a startup of any kind, give it a read.  It's very good.

Many of these rules have been said before by others, but that doesn't mean that they are any less useful.

I am particularly fond of numbers 3, 9 & 10;

#3: Be Casual
We're moving into what I call the era of the "Casual Web" (and casual content creation). This is much bigger than the hobbyist web or the professional web. Why? Because people have lives. And now, people with lives also have broadband. If you want to hit the really big home runs, create services that fit in with—and, indeed, help—people's everyday lives without requiring lots of commitment or identity change. Flickr enables personal publishing among millions of folks who would never consider themselves personal publishers—they're just sharing pictures with friends and family, a casual activity. Casual games are huge. Skype enables casual conversations.

#9: Be Agile
You know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? The same is true of successful startups—except they may start out heading toward Alaska. Many dot-com bubble companies that died could have eventually been successful had they been able to adjust and change their plans instead of running as fast as they could until they burned out, based on their initial assumptions. Pyra was started to build a project-management app, not Blogger. Flickr's company was building a game. Ebay was going to sell auction software. Initial assumptions are almost always wrong. That's why the waterfall approach to building software is obsolete in favor agile techniques. The same philosophy should be applied to building a company.

#10: Be Balanced
What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer?: A lot more enjoyable place to work. Yes, high levels of commitment are crucial. And yes, crunch times come and sometimes require an inordinate, painful, apologies-to-the-SO amount of work. But it can't be all the time. Nature requires balance for health—as do the bodies and minds who work for you and, without which, your company will be worthless. There is no better way to maintain balance and lower your stress that I've found than David Allen's GTD process. Learn it. Live it. Make it a part of your company, and you'll have a secret weapon.

Comments

[Douglass Turner]

Hello,

Without a means of actually finding your little bundle of joy app nobody will know it even exists?

Why use your app. versues the thousand other seemingly identical apps?

Everything can't be viral and/or be ad supported.

Cheers,
Doug Turner

[simon]

wat a great post

[Minic]

I like #8 (Be Tiny). My wife and I started our own little network of blogs by just saving on our daily expense... don't ride the subway... walk... don't eat outside, bring your own home-cooked food... at the end of the day I am able to buy one domain name to start a blog for a member :)

[Sharetips033]

“Build something people need and love. People will talk about it.”

This is a poor substitute for a marketing plan. While word of mouth is AWESOME and something you should shoot for, it’s certainly NOT something you can plan for. It’s a great idea to have some plan to introduce folks to your product who have never heard of it. Do keyword research and do some light SEO. Track a few keywords on Twitter/Google Blog Search and reply to people with a pain you solve. Try adwords with some tuned landing pages. Figure out of there are sites/conferences with a high density folks who are your perfect customer.

Even with good word of mouth, if you wait for it to happen, the length of your road to ramen-profitability is a long one.

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