1. Pick good cofounders
2. Launch fast
3. Let your idea evolve
4. Understand your users
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service
7. You make what you measure
8. Spend little
9. Get ramen profitable
10. Avoid distractions
11. Don’t get demoralized
12. Don’t give up
13. Deals fall through

Paul elaborates on his points on his blog

Number 9 is my favourite!

“Ramen profitable” means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders’ living expenses. It’s not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It’s also great for morale.

Tomáš Čupr from Michal Berg on Vimeo.

]]> http://www.tomcupr.com/2010/01/competition-is-great/feed/ 0 http://www.tomcupr.com/2010/01/why-i-want-techhub/ http://www.tomcupr.com/2010/01/why-i-want-techhub/#comments Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:39:01 +0000 Tom http://www.tomcupr.com/?p=47 Here’s my contribution to TechHub’s pitch to UK government and competition.

TechHub is a new and exciting project to create a physical space for tech startups in London reaching out to entrepreneurs across the UK, Europe, the US and beyond.

Why do I say all this? I quite recently decided to ignore the critics and develop my first app. Review process took 7 working days which is long and needless to say I was very anxious as to whether it’ll get approved or not. But once it was I was sorted. I have marketing plan but I didn’t need to use it yet (saving it for version 2 that should be approved soon). Within two weeks it was in TOP 10 paid apps in Reference category and doing well. Now show me a platform where I could launch a product, not tell anyone about it and still be making thousands of dollars every month.

So I thank you Apple. Thank you for amazing phone and platform that is fun to develop for and profitable too!

Happy New Year everyone!

“Let’s put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand. Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner. The bill for all ten comes to £100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

• the first four men, the poorest, would pay nothing;
  
• the fifth would pay £1;
  
• the sixth would pay £3;
  
• the seventh would pay £7;
  
• the eighth pays £12;
  
• the ninth would pay £18;
  
• and the tenth man, the richest, would pay £59

“That’s what they decided to do. The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement — until one day, the owner threw them a curve (in tax language, a tax cut).

“‘Since you are all such good customers,’ he said, ‘I am going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by £20. So now dinner for the ten only cost £80.00.

“The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for free. But what about the other six–the paying customers? How could they divvy up the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

“The six men realized that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, Then the fifth man and the sixth man would end up being PAID to eat their meal. So the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay:

• as before, the first four men paid nothing;
• now the fifth man also paid nothing;
  
• the sixth man now paid £2;
  
• the seventh paid £5;
  
• the eighth man paid £9;
  
• the ninth man paid £12;
  
• leaving the tenth man with a bill of £52 instead of his earlier £59

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to eat for free.

“But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings. ‘I only got a pound out of the £20 reduction,’ declared the sixth man, but he, pointing to the tenth. ‘But he got £7!’. ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man, ‘I only saved a pound too; it’s unfair that he got seven times more than me!’

‘”That’s true,’ shouted the seventh man, ‘why should he get £7 back when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!. ‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison, ‘We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

“The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night he didn’t show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered, a little late what was very important. They were now £52 short of paying the bill.

And that, boys and girls, journalists, and college instructors, is how the tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.”

What do you think? Is this too materialistic view? What other factor should I consider?

Please use comments to answer. Thank you in advance!