Ten Rules for Web Startups

Ten Rules for Web Startups
Sunday, November 27, 2005
#1: Be Narrow
Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused. And when it comes to partnering, or being acquired, there's less chance for conflict. This is all so logical and, yet, there's a resistance to focusing. I think it comes from a fear of being trivial. Just remember: If you get to be #1 in your category, but your category is too small, then you can broaden your scope—and you can do so with leverage.

#2: Be Different
Ideas are in the air. There are lots of people thinking about—and probably working on—the same thing you are. And one of them is Google. Deal with it. How? First of all, realize that no sufficiently interesting space will be limited to one player. In a sense, competition actually is good—especially to legitimize new markets. Second, see #1—the specialist will almost always kick the generalist's ass. Third, consider doing something that's not so cutting edge. Many highly successful companies—the aforementioned big G being one—have thrived by taking on areas that everyone thought were done and redoing them right. Also? Get a good, non-generic name. Easier said than done, granted. But the most common mistake in naming is trying to be too descriptive, which leads to lots of hard-to-distinguish names. How many blogging companies have "blog" in their name, RSS companies "feed," or podcasting companies "pod" or "cast"? Rarely are they the ones that stand out.

#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.

#4: Be Picky
Another perennial business rule, and it applies to everything you do: features, employees, investors, partners, press opportunities. Startups are often too eager to accept people or ideas into their world. You can almost always afford to wait if something doesn't feel just right, and false negatives are usually better than false positives. One of Google's biggest strengths—and sources of frustration for outsiders—was their willingness to say no to opportunities, easy money, potential employees, and deals.

#5: Be User-Centric
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it's still undervalued and under-invested in. If you don't know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board. Better to iterate a hundred times to get the right feature right than to add a hundred more. The point of Ajax is that it can make a site more responsive, not that it's sexy. Tags can make things easier to find and classify, but maybe not in your application. The point of an API is so developers can add value for users, not to impress the geeks. Don't get sidetracked by technologies or the blog-worthiness of your next feature. Always focus on the user and all will be well.

#6: Be Self-Centered
Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world. Be a user of your own product. Hire people who are users of your product. Make it better based on your own desires. (But don't trick yourself into thinking you are your user, when it comes to usability.) Another aspect of this is to not get seduced into doing deals with big companies at the expense or your users or at the expense of making your product better. When you're small and they're big, it's hard to say no, but see #4.

#7: Be Greedy
It's always good to have options. One of the best ways to do that is to have income. While it's true that traffic is now again actually worth something, the give-everything-away-and-make-it-up-on-volume strategy stamps an expiration date on your company's ass. In other words, design something to charge for into your product and start taking money within 6 months (and do it with PayPal). Done right, charging money can actually accelerate growth, not impede it, because then you have something to fuel marketing costs with. More importantly, having money coming in the door puts you in a much more powerful position when it comes to your next round of funding or acquisition talks. In fact, consider whether you need to have a free version at all. The TypePad approach—taking the high-end position in the market—makes for a great business model in the right market. Less support. Less scalability concerns. Less abuse. And much higher margins.

#8: Be Tiny
It's standard web startup wisdom by now that with the substantially lower costs to starting something on the web, the difficulty of IPOs, and the willingness of the big guys to shell out for small teams doing innovative stuff, the most likely end game if you're successful is acquisition. Acquisitions are much easier if they're small. And small acquisitions are possible if valuations are kept low from the get go. And keeping valuations low is possible because it doesn't cost much to start something anymore (especially if you keep the scope narrow). Besides the obvious techniques, one way to do this is to use turnkey services to lower your overhead—Administaff, ServerBeach, web apps, maybe even Elance.

#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.

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

站长必读：Web创业的10条戒律

　　Evan Williams是Blogger的创始人，也是podcast服务网站Odeo的创始人和CEO。他根据自己的体会，列出了Web创业应该遵循的10条戒律（Ten Rules for Web Startups），摘录并评注如下：
　　收缩：专注于一个尽可能小的可能存在的难题，而你又能够解决这个难题。不要想着什么都做，贪多嚼不烂，搞不好就成了模仿者。小可以变大，船小好调头，小可以带给你很多优势，缝隙市场可以变成一个大市场。不要试图把1亿上网用户都当成你的用户，没用，能真正解决一部分用户的一部分需求，就足够你玩儿的。
　　差异：要记住很多人都在做着跟你一样的事情，而其中一个是Google。在这个市场上，专才比通才有用。不一定要做多么领先的事情，寻常的事情你同样可以做得跟别人不一样，比如Google。起名字也不要用那些通用词汇，比如像博客网、中国博客网、亚洲博客网、世界博客网之类的，太多了没人分得清谁是谁。
　　随意：随意的网络要大于刻意的网络，因为人们还要生活。创建一种服务让它适应并对人们每天的生活有所助益，而不要要求太多的承诺或改变他们的身份。放轻松，很多时候，偶然的需要让你的服务更有价值，就像Skype上偶然发生的对话。既然生活本身就是随意的、偶然的，不要总是试图限制用户。
　　挑剔：这一点适用于很多方面：服务的特性、员工、投资者、合作伙伴、记者采访等等。如果感觉某样东西不太对劲，就放一放。Google最强大的力量之一，就是他们乐于对机会、快钱、可能的雇员以及交易说不。但很多人太心切，太怕错过这村没这店，所以往往来者不拒，最终将会后悔。
　　以用户为中心：用户体验就是一切。你的整个公司都必须建立在这上面，如果你不懂什么叫以用户为中心的设计，赶快学，雇用懂的人。把对的特性做对，远超过添加一百个特性。Ajax是为了让网站更互动，而不是因为它很性感。API是为了让开发者更容易为用户增加价值，而不是为了去取悦geek 们。
　　自我本位：伟大的产品从来都是来自一个人自身的渴求。创造你自己需要的产品，成为你自己产品的用户，雇用你的产品的用户，按你自己的愿望改善它。另一方面，避免在费用、用户、或者有可能妨碍你改善产品等方面，跟大公司做交易。因为你小他们大，你很难说不。
　　饥渴：有选择永远好过没选择，最好的办法就是有收入。要为你的产品设计出收费模式并在6个月内开始有进项，这样你才会有市场费用。而且，有收入也会让你在融资或收购谈判中，处于更有利的位置。不过在中国可能没这么简单，为了赚钱而让服务变形的事总是在发生着。
　　苗条：保持低成本是一种Web创业智慧。能使用互联网上现有的服务，就不要花钱买。如果你希望被大公司收购，就更不能让自己显得很庞杂，小公司更容易被收购。Tim O'Reilly说过，如果你看到一家公司在市场活动上花很多钱，你可以肯定地知道，这不是一家Web 2.0公司。充分利用互联网现成的资源，也是一种能力。
　　灵活：要学会改变计划。Pyra最初要做的是一个项目管理程序，而不是 Blogger。Flickr最初要做的是游戏。Ebay最初也只是想销售拍卖软件。最初的设想几乎永远都是错的。一开始就认定自己是对的，很可能撞上南墙。要把创业过程，变成一个BETA过程，不断debug，不断调整，不断改进。
　　平衡：初创公司是什么样？目光迷离、睡眠不足、垃圾食品充饥、咖啡提神……还有呢？要知道，自然要求健康的平衡，当平衡成为你的公司的一部分，你就拥有了一样秘密武器。需要玩儿命，也需要玩儿。一个充满活力的平衡的团队，也会给人更多的信任和期待。
　　谨慎（这个是额外的奖励）：不要拿上面的戒律当成金科玉律，凡事总有例外。