I read this post with great interest thinking, "This all pretty much makes sense, good advice, but nothing really earth shattering." Then a strange thing happe

I read this post with great interest thinking, "This all pretty much makes sense, good advice, but nothing really earth shattering." Then a strange thing happened. I went back and reread the first paragraph under #1... Be able to name names of users or potential users. They need to have a specific problem or pain point. Master that before moving on to bigger or better things, even if those bigger and better things are really tempting. If your product can serve multiple purposes, make sure it serves one of them completely before moving on to the others. I realized that this is the most important advice that my mentor ever gave me. If you do this well, you really don't need to worry about anything else in this post. I understand that this is tough in a B2C web app; you're not always sure who your consumer will be. But in a B2B app, this is the same advice as, "Find a Customer." Working for a consumer (or consumers), busting your butt focusing on what is important to them, cures most of the other ills that the rest of this post addresses. Just take a look at the rest of the bullets: - Have a clear and consistent vision, but refine it as often as needed. - Design is important. - Build your product well. - Iterate often. - Do your homework. - Work (mostly) normal hours. - Have an office. - Have a budget. - Be direct when dealing with personal differences. - Hold one another accountable. - Leaders need to handle company resources impeccably. - Provide communication channels. - Use your human resources wisely. - Poke your users often. - Build a solid and regular communication network. - Co-author any outgoing messages. - Use language your users (and potential users) can understand. These are all important, but if you think about it for a moment, having a customer automatically forces you to do most of these already. You won't even have to think about them. Your customer(s) will make you do them well. Even if what you build for your first set of consumers isn't exactly what you final product will be, it doesn't matter. They will make you get good at delivering something and that will be a good starting point for a more "industrial strength" product for everyone else. Refining something built well for your early consumer(s) will be a lot easier than constantly thinking about what you're doing and how to do it. Do #1 well and the rest will follow.