A lot of this seems to reflect the consensus among experienced HN posters as well: you have to actually ship something and charge for it, it has to be something

A lot of this seems to reflect the consensus among experienced HN posters as well: you have to actually ship something and charge for it, it has to be something people actually want instead of just what you enjoy making, and so on. Arguably much of this is just common sense, but maybe that's just hindsight talking. The only one I strongly disagree with is "raise your prices". While this is common advice on HN as well, I think it should come with a caveat that it mostly applies to B2B businesses. If you're running a B2C business, your customers are spending their own money, and possibly on something that isn't a necessity and isn't immediately going to make or save them a greater amount of money in return. Customers in this situation may well be extremely price-sensitive, and even small adjustments in pricing can have dramatic effects on conversion rates. As a counter-example showing that a big price cut can be effective, look at the way that games suppliers like Steam and GoG run their sales.