Going off on a tangent here, but it's interesting how the first thing on that list is "create product". I would argue that most new companies (at least started

Going off on a tangent here, but it's interesting how the first thing on that list is "create product". I would argue that most new companies (at least started by and solely run by technical founders) fail exactly because of that. Product-oriented people tend to think that the success of a business is due to its product(s), when the reality is businesses succeed due to their ability to sell their products. Hence, the most important thing is actually being able to properly find and target an audience, which should be the first step of starting a business. The second step of starting a business should be to test marketing channels to make sure the selected audience can be effectively/efficiently reached. Only after this has been properly done should a product be ideated, based on the knowledge acquired about the target audience and the marketing channel(s) that work. Just my 2 cents to the HN community after having learned this lesson the hard way, failing multiple times and starting several businesses.