34 ms·
great article paul. i especially love number 7: produce something specific for yourself. this forces you to notice problems and noticing your own problems and o
by sri 20y ago
great article paul. i especially love number 7: produce something specific for yourself. this forces you to notice problems and noticing your own problems and overcoming them with technology is a subset of noticing problems of others and using technology to help them, which is the job of startups and companies... so IMHO, noticing and solving your own problems is a fundamental skill people in startups need to have.
that technique works because most of us have been conditioned to ignore the problems that we encounter daily. when faced with a problem we simply side step, avoid the problem and keep marching. the entrepreneurs are the ones who stop, notice the problem (or opportunity) and help us get things done easier.
- kingkongrevenge 20y ago"produce something specific for yourself." This excludes any sort of capital good like an accounting package, or his own example of groupware. You'd never get most of the good product ideas targeted at businesses without industry experience, which sort of contradicts his advice not to work before starting a company.
- abossy 20y agoI don't understand -- how are accounting packages or groupware examples of goods that don't solve a problem for oneself? If I need to manage my money and taxes, I can build software for that. If I need to develop some kind of collaboration tool to help me work better with teams at school, or on an open-source project (both not inherently business domains), I can build software for that. Business tools are merely extensions of these. Unless I missed it, PG never mentions good product ideas targeted at businesses, so I am unclear as to where there is a contradicition. His mantra is to go for a wide user base, which typically requires mainstream business ideas, i.e., business-to-consumer, not business-to-business.