Howard Lindzon recently posted about his pal, Andy Swan, and his top ten commandments for startups. An excellent list for everyone, not just start ups. Howard focused on commandment 9 and 10, we are focused on 1and 2.
10 Startup Commandments
December 1, 2008 – 5:09 pm 1. Establish and grow RELATIONSHIPS
“Contacts” are not nearly as valuable as you think. Relationships are the key. People who trust you and like you are very likely to help you. In addition, they are very likely to induce their own relationships to help you.
Develop relationships BEFORE you need them. Do this by GIVING first and freely. Participate in, and enable the success of others at every opportunity.
2. DEFINE A SINGLE PROBLEM or NICHE OPPORTUNITY and resolve to find a simple solution (IDEA)
This is crucial. DO NOT spread yourself thin. Do one thing extraordinarily well that either A) solves a common problem or B) creates a new niche that can be expanded. It is tempting to attempt more in one broad stroke, but this path leads to failure.
DO NOT rely on having the best and latest technology unless you are willing to run the 100m dash….FOREVER
As a team, we all knew the importance of # 1. Eric and John figured this out when Scott Rafer left MyBlogLog. I knew it from the winery. Contacts, Rolodexs, friends on Facebook are all meaningless unless they are real relationships. But some of us are not good at it, we aren’t programmed the same way that super-connectors, business development gurus and social butterflies are.
Which led to #2. Before our current product, Eric built a prototype that used statistical analysis of online buzz to notify users of opportunities to connect with contacts about relevant information. It was complicated and didn’t give good results.
Zentact is much simpler - so simple that I didn’t think it would work when I first tried it. I was wrong.
And yes, I need to have Tracey add her dog Gibson to Dogster as well.