Marc Hedlund, serial entrepreneur and, until very recently, entrepreneur-in-residence at O’Reilly Media, has shared an inspiring — and inspired — collection of Entrepreneurial Proverbs from his eTech presentation on Monday on Coding to Co-Founder: How to Move from Engineering to Entrepreneuring … or, as Marc likes to put it, "Entrepreneuring for Geeks".
The post has such crisp and compelling nuggests of insights and experiences, that I’m tempted to reproduce the whole thing here, but instead will simply list the bullet items and make a mental note to refer back to it [often] … in part because the comments on Marc’s post are also illuminating.
Starting
- It’s good to be king.
- Losing sucks.
- Building to flip is building to flop.
- Prudence becomes procrastination.
- Momentum builds on itself.
- Jump when you are more excited than afraid.
The Idea
- Pay attention to the idea that won’t leave you alone.
- If you keep your secrets from the market, the market will keep its secrets from you.
- Immediate yes is immediate no.
- Build what you know.
- Give people what they need, not what they say they need.
- Your ideas will get better the more you know about business.
People
- Three is fine; two, divine [re: number of co-founders]
- Work only with people you like and believe in.
- Work with people who like and believe in you, just naturally.
- Great things are made by people who share a passion, not by those who have been talked into one.
Product
- Cool ideas are useless without great needs.
- Build the simplest thing possible.
- Solve problems, not potential problems.
- Test everything with real people.
Money
- Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible.
- The best investor pitches are plainspoken and entertaining (not in that order).
- Never let on that you’re keeping a secret. [not sure whether how this squares with the admonition to not keep secrets from the market alluded to under "The Idea"]
- No means maybe and yes means maybe.
- For investors, the product is nothing.
- The best way to get investment is not to need it.
Several of these items corroborate wisdom I’ve been exposed to at other times and places, such as Entrepreneur University and other NWEN events, but this collection of proverbs is the single most comprehensive collection of insights and experiences I’ve encountered, especially given the compactness of its representation! I’m sad I’ve missed eTech, but am glad that Marc, and others, are sharing their wisdom more broadly!
[via BoingBoing]