Helping startups get further, faster.

Inc Magazine June 2009 features a fantastic article about Start-up guru Paul Graham and his venture incubator, Y-Combinator. {Visit http://tinyurl.com/m6tn84}

Paul’s created a system for “mass producing the start-up” and some of his graduates, e.g. Reddit, Justin.tv etc have kicked real goals.

I’d like to highlight 5 lessons from the article that marketers should pay attention to. Let’s call it “5 lessons from 145 start-ups.”
All are readily transferable to your business. Regardless of industry.

1. Product Development v. PR.
Graham encourages founders to spend all their energy on product development, not on PR. In most cases, companies are expected to release a finished version of something — whether it be an iPhone app or a photo-sharing widget — before the three-month program is over.

2. Speed to Market: Graham encourages companies to release products quickly. Doing so, he says, is the best way to turn a bad idea into a good one. “As long as you pay attention to your users, you can change a bad idea,”

3. Adapt: “A lot of great companies started with different ideas,” Graham says, noting that Steve Jobs’s first plan for Apple was to sell do-it-yourself plans for building computers.

4. Make something people want: This is the real kicker.
“You need to listen to your users, figure out what they want, and do that.” When founders are accepted into Y Combinator, they are given a gray T-shirt that says, “Make something people want.” When a company sells, the founders get a black shirt that says, “I made something people want.”

5. Get out there and make something – start now.
Too many firms are scared to move away from core business and embrace new products. The metaphor, are you making typewriters, when your customers want PC’s?

These five lessons should be heeded by all start-ups and SME’s alike. It’s not capital that drives success it’s “making something people want”.

Is there something your customers want/need now? {Tick}
Can you make it? {Easy}
Will it work? {Who knows? Give it a crack}

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