Graham's Advice to Startups

Paul Graham has some very straight-forward advice for entrepreneurs in startups: Don't Die.

In his words, "The odds of getting from launch to liquidity without some kind of disaster happening are one in a thousand. So don't get demoralized [when the disaster happens]."

He goes on to say that founders seem to succeed when they do cannot fail publicly; "One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars."

His advice: Stay in touch with the investors and with other startup entrepreneurs, and try to make something that at least someone really loves. The number one thing not to do is other things. Distraction is fatal to startups.

Graham points to Octopart and its founders as examples, noting that the publicity they have received makes it nearly impossible to fail now. Welcome to Help, which launched the end of August, may be another example. (They are hosts for the current CotC)

After not dying, entrepreneurs may want to consider this advice from A VC, to "hire someone who knows about cash flow forecasting, gaap accounting, bank lines, collecting revenues, and managing your dwindling cash balances" in order to get through ugly adolescence.

Fortune Lists, 2007

In August, Fortune Small Business named the finalists for their 6th Annual Business Plan Competition: Calle Soccer from Brigham Young University; SweetRiot (chocolateers) from NYC; Idea Storm Products, from Pace University; Mulligan Stew Pet Food from Wyoming; Green Dragon Pest Solutions from Georgia; and Saatwic Food (for diabetics) from Tennessee.

Earlier this year, seven companies headquartered in Virginia were among the 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2007, recognized by Fortune: Network Appliance, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capital One Financial, MITRE, SRA International, Stanley, and CarMax, which is located in central Virginia.

More recently, Fortune identified the Best Colleges for Entrepreneurs; the University of Virginia made that list that for their partnership with the University's medical school.

A Few New Web Sites

This quirky site, Should Do This, offers everyone the opportunity to advise ... everyone else. (They also offer an integrated suggestion box for companies.)

Other interesting new startups at Killer Startups include the un-enclopedia, EnWikopedia, the entrepreneurship interviews at Hatch That!, the Damsels in Success, and a potential Craigslist competitor, OddBark.

Wallstrip Reviewed

Startup Review profiles Wallstrip this week:

Wallstrip, which produces short online video pieces covering stocks, is a fascinating and unusual business. Born of the blogosphere, founded by a venture capitalist who says he never intended to run it as a long-term business, funded with seed capital and sold less than a year later, the company fairly screams “test project”. The fact that it was sold to CBS for $5M ... a mere nine months after launch proves that the test was successful.

Wallstrip carries material from other sites as well; Howard Lindzon's recent piece on Canadian oil is probably typical.

Startups are Harder than They Look

Glenn Kelman has a slightly different take on entrepreneurship, especially startups. Most recently he founded of Redfin, an online market for houses.

If you aren’t doing something worthwhile, you can’t get anyone worthwhile to work on it. I often think about what Ezra Pound once said of his epic poem, that "if it's a failure, it's a failure worth all the successes of its age.”
I remember the Venerable Bede’s complaint that his eighth century contemporaries had lost the fervor of seventh century monks. Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, people were nostalgic for...the Dark Ages. Snippets from Guy Kawasaki's blog, where Kelman was guest blogger.

Y-Combinator Funding

Paul Graham's Y-Combinator has just opened applications for funding in the San Francisco Bay area. The deadline is October 11 for companies seeking startup funding and mentoring. Reddit is one of the companies launched through this program.

Graham's March essay, "Why to Not Not Start a Startup", derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA, reviews some of the lessons learned from Y-Combinator's first years of operations. He comments that So about half the founders from that first summer, less than two years ago, are now rich, at least by their standards. His piece on The Equity Equation is an interesting perspective on whether to seek or accept startup funding.

Startup Reviews

Sponsored by Sierra Ventures, Startup Review profiles interesting new tech companies. The Startup Review index includes 30 of the most important new companies. Their Reddit review from April is a good example.

Launched early this year, Killer Startups provides quite different startup reviews, daily coverage of unusual new companies like the free publishing site Lulu, and the search engine for obscure sites, TagTooga. Their nomination form requires registration, but makes it easy to propose a startup for review.
We [Killer Startups] deeply believe in the power of crowds, and we want to put it to good use by detecting in an early stage what’s going to be big.

Seeking Mobile Startups

Under the Radar is looking for 32 great mobile startups for presentations at their November conference.

With modest grants from Hewlett Packard and Verizon, Diane Wolff, an associate professor of information systems technology at Virginia Western Community College, will launch their associate degree in mobile programming this fall. Snippet from the Roanoke Times.

Virginia Western's Information Technology presentation on their new program is terrific.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Marc Andreessen has just published the fourth of his of his Guides to Startups. (First, second, third installments.)

From Adventures in Capitalism comes this advice, originally from Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist:

"There will be times when you feel invincible. There will be times when you feel doomed. You're wrong in both cases."

Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster ride. If you treat each step forward as a triumph, and each step backwards as a tragedy, you'll find yourself emotionally exhausted and, likely, making bad decisions. Keep your eye on the big picture, and don't let the highs and lows get away from you.

Supernova Conference

According to WebWare, last week's Supernova Conference in San Francisco included a hoax startup presentation by ZapMeals, in a Spot-the-Fake challenge.

This conference has a rich online presence in the form of a Conversation Hub multiple authors blogging directly from the event, and a Community Connection that utilizes a Wink group for ongoing communication.

Conference speakers included Irving Wladawsky-Berger. The conference was produced in partnership with the The Wharton School.

Predictions for Media?

The Economist profiles Simon and Schuster's Touchstone, which is using the new MediaPredict site to help select successful ventures. Media Predict hopes to do this using a virtual stockmarket for unpublished books, unsigned music acts and proposed television shows. Artists or agents post samples of such as a a book chapter or a television pilot. "Traders" use virtual cash buy shares in the material they feel has the greatest potential.

The idea is that as traders buy and sell shares in competing content, the cream will float to the top—where entertainment-industry bosses can skim it off. Snippet from The Economist

MediaPredict combines the wisdom of crowds, an online stock market of sorts, virtual money, a blog and social bookmarking. No doubt O'Reilly Radar will have something to say about this initiative.

Valleywag's Hottest Startups

The hottest startup companies today, according to Valleywag: