Ten Rules for Web Startups

[nazgulnarsil]

I hate lists like these and here's why:

#3 contradicts #1

#5 and #6 contradict

#7 and #8 often come into conflict

#4 and #9 are in conflict

lists lead to check mark the box attitude, which is pretty much the opposite of the flexibility that allows new companies to steal users from entrenched players. running a business is a creative endeavor. asking yourself if you did XYZ today is counter productive.

[cookiecaper]

Even without an explicit contradiction, the terms and metrics are so vague that they could really mean anything, according to your interpretation.

[jasonlbaptiste]

the first point here: be narrow is such an overlooked and important idea. Facebook didn't have more than one photo for over 18 months and is now the largest photo sharing site by FAR.

[fauigerzigerk]

Yes, but it annoys me to read that kind of "overlooked" ideas over and over again and never see the issues discussed by the author.

If Evan Williams tells me to be narrow, maybe he could also tell me how not to be just a tiny feature of some powerful entity's app, waiting to be replaced as soon as my app gets traction.

[axod]

You can take it to extremes though. Twitter is such a narrow simple app. I think they'd probably do well to add features and expand the scope a bit. Sharing videos/pics/urls are things twitter should just implement themselves IMHO. Then we wouldn't have the bizarre situation of bit.ly twitpic, twitvid etc etc Or god forbid extend the character limit from 140.

[paulgerhardt]

[2005]

[paul]

Pre-Twitter. In some ways that makes it better in my mind.

[jacquesm]

Who cares, it's great stuff. That's one of the few times that such a 10 items list actually was worth reading, most of the time they are not worth the bits they're stored on.

[vaksel]

so why didn't twitter start charging 6 months in? and it doesn't look like he followed his own advice on staying small

[pkaler]

Odeo had enough cash flow to work on their second idea: Twitter.

According to Cruchbase, Twitter has 83 employees. That is pretty tiny with respect to the number users that they have. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter

[jacquesm]

Obviously because they had a different plan.

There is a huge difference between being a medium and selling a product.

[mattyb]

#11 (bonus!): Be Wary...Overgeneralized lists of business "rules" are not to be taken too literally. There are exceptions to everything.

Not sure why Twitter needed to be an exception, but he did mention it.

[jasonlbaptiste]

Rule 9: Be Agile.

[sabat]

Interesting to read, although the suggestion that you try a turnkey service is potentially bad advice. Most turnkey services ("we'll be your IT team for you!") suck. They don't care about doing a good job. They care about minimizing effort to maximize their profit. The SLA that you thought would protect you -- that turns out to only refund the money you paid the service for the time you were down. (Most SLAs don't promise to recoup your lost profits.)

[thiele]

It definitely depends on the types of services you are using. Services like UserVoice/GetSatisfaction, Gmail, Posterous/WordPress blog, etc are a better use of resources than hosting or rolling your own if its not core to your business.

[jacquesm]

mint.com ?