Dennis Crowley, the founder of Dodgeball and Foursquare, shares that fascination. When I first talked to him about Foursquare, he told me that he “tries to build things that make cities easier to use”.
September 21, 2009
4:27 pm
August 25, 2009
6:03 pm
People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. Any additional features are almost certainly superfluous and could even be damaging.
August 24, 2009
2:42 pm
10 Tips For Founders
- Ship it! Stop debating, stop analyzing, stop featuring, and just ship it! Goal #1 should be to get your product to market as quickly as possible so that you can minimize the time it takes to start getting real user feedback. You are going to get a lot of the early stuff wrong so get it out there and start learning as fast as you can.
- Stay small. Minimum required people in order to ship it.
- Stay cheap. Spend as little as possible to get as far as you can. Preserve cash. Preserve cash. Preserve cash. Trust me, you will need it more later than you do now.
- One little milestone at a time. You know that great big vision you have for how you are going to rule the world and create the next Facebook or YouTube or Twitter? Write it on a piece of paper, hang it up on the wall, and then forget about it for a while. Focus early on on hitting one little milestone at a time.
- Keep it simple. If you can’t wire-frame your initial prototype in powerpoint, you’re trying to do too much from the start.
- Trust your instincts. You’re the founder for a reason. Push through walls to do it they way you think it will work. The user will decide in the end if you are right, but don’t get caught up in too many debates with advisors, investors, etc. before you ship it.
- Share. Twitter, blog, Facebook, etc. Get your ideas out there and get feedback. Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas, rather get people excited about helping you.
- Nurture alpha and beta users.
- Do your own customer service. Get as close to user problems, frustrations, and suggestions as you can.
- Work out. Every single day. Sound body = sound mind.
