Some of the key points fall under the blanket of marketing:
* blogging, guest blogging
* submitting articles to HN, reddit, etc
* connecting to local startup/tech communities
Don't live in a bubble. Your startup should not be your personal safe haven that you keep secret from everyone. People need to hear about it, talk about it, criticize it, tear it apart, love it, live it, hate it... you get the picture. You want people to have opinions about your product, strong ones. It doesn't matter if it's a 50/50 split of those that love and hate it. People KNOW about it. If nobody knows you exist, there's no exit.That leads me to my next big topic: CONNECTIONS. Chose them wisely and treat them well. You are your own personal sales guy. Why do you think the startup incubators are so successful? Their connections. PG has connections, go impress him. I'll let you in on a secret though: he has a very high bullshit detector and has seen it all. It helps to know your target audience as well. PG has a preferential tendency towards startup ideas coming from founders that have domain knowledge (and aren't assholes.. he blogged about it).
Last point: DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE. Be nice to people, don't talk about them behind their back, always say nice things. It's all too easy to get in the habit of gossiping or talking shit about somebody when they aren't there. Word gets around. At some point they'll likely hear about it through the grapevine. Wouldn't you rather have them hear about the nice things you've said? That's friendship. That's a connection.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3356415
Everything's on the table - the site, the concept, the HN submission, even me. Tear it apart.
Knowing what groups are meeting in my community isn't a pain point for me at all. I'm aware of the goings-on in my community well enough already (too many for me to attend all the ones I'm interested in.) Of course, I'm just one data point, but this doesn't solve any problems for me.
Edit: Upon reflection, a related feature that would solve a pain point for me would be a service that helped provide me with videos/transcripts/minutes of the events I couldn't make it out to.
I think a more realistic approach is to review and understand all of the requirements for registering a business: What papers to file, who to file them with, what the deadlines are, and what the costs are. Once you understand that, you'll know when your business generates enough income to at least cover these costs, or the business is risky enough to warrant the liability protection. (Most software is sold "as-is" and is not that risky.)
I did my own LLC papers and paid the filing fee, which was a whopping 200 dollars or so, and the annual report stuff can be done online and requires a yearly fee of around 125 dollars, IIRC. Tax paperwork is also relatively minimal during the "pre revenue" days.
So is it worth it? Hard to say, but on balance I'm happy that I did it. Even though we'll have to do some extra paperwork later to transition to a traditional corporation when the issue of taking outside funding comes up.
YMMV, of course.
Very much agree with this, but I'd add to SELL that solution you built. App stores make it insanely easy to sell and (sorta) promote a minimum viable app.
I did this with Reddit Notifier, a simple Mac OS X app that gives your menubar the same "orangered" envelope you get on Reddit:
Reddit Notifier: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reddit-notifier/id468366517?m...
That "wow, people will pay real money for this little app I made" mindset goes a long way towards encouraging your loftier startup/technology goals.
2. Connect to the local startup community? More important to connect to customers and users. I won't discount the value of the startup community entirely, but there are echo-chamber and groupthink effects. Connect to customers first, and then the startup community might be more valuable to you. Treat the startup community as an end in itself and you just end up creating derivative, unprofitable ideas.
3. Read Hacker News? Maybe 2-3 years ago this was more valuable. Now I would suggest skimming Hacker News and using what you can, but also find the important forums and venues your customers use, and read those more closely.
6. Start a blog? Not bad advice, but the more general point--to write--is more broad than that. Blogging is only one medium, and there are many other mediums you have to write well in.
In Canada, just wing it as a Sole proprietor!
If you are a sole entrepreneur looking to go with a Canadan Controlled Private Corporation you should NOT pay a lawyer to get your business set up. Do your research, choose the jurisdiction that fits you best and get to it. It's dead simple and once you've determined the correct steps you can easily accomplish what need in a matter of days, or less.
Secondly, if you are paying $2k+ for your first fiscal year (let's assume that the company has not broken even) then you are being ripped off, plain and simple. You do not need audited accounts at this time. I paid roughly $450-550 annually for the first couple of years for the services of a very competent firm who I would refer in a heartbeat.
Being a sole proprietor is simple, both from the tax and setup perspectives however it is not without some drawbacks. The tax rate is much higher than that of a corporation and you will be doing business as yourself. This has far reaching legal ramifications if you want to accept money from people you don't know (online sales for your SaaS, for example) and many things that you will need to get to this stage are going to require a registered business at the very least. There are also some avenues that will be inaccessible to you because of your sole proprietor status (certain grants, tax credits, etc.) and you will constantly be fighting the little guy image.
The moral of the story is, if you ever want your business to move "beyond yourself", you should seriously consider incorporating.
Ultimately, you can do all these things but still not have a successful startup. There are varying definitions of what success is depending on who you talk to, 500, 37sig, PG, other VC. In fact the word startup means different things to those folks.
The only sure thing you can do, for your own good; learn about everything you come across with. People, products, companies, emotions... I say this because at the end of the day/year/startup, you'll have something to show... to yourself. You will be more defined, confident, passionate.
Sometimes it's not the goal, but the journey that defines who we are and what we do next. Those experiences, however infinite in choices and patterns is what sets you up _passionately_ for greatness.
Predicting the future is impossible.
Having paying customers is one of the first things that makes a new business real.
You still get a paycheck, but at the same time have a chance to gain a lot of important skills, meet a lot of important people in the community, and understand what life in a startup is like.
My two cents: Remember contracting is a decent bridge / fallback; maintain corporate relationships.
Get a revenue problem - multiple friends failed by obsessing over business structure.
Change attitude on risk/analysis; corporate often analyzes how things can fail while many successful entrepreneurs take uncertain gambles and pivot.
I've been doing this a long while now and after bootstrapping and making mistakes, I am seemingly still not near being able to do what I want (either through getting investment or finding a technical co-founder).
I'm not disagreeing that you can make a good product with old tech, but I'd contend that producing a good product and using some of the newer tools are not unrelated, on a number of levels.
If anything, though, I'm looking at a much wider definition of "startup" than just the technology kind... so I definitely don't think the "tech stack" is somehow more important...
But I'm not so sure this post talks about how to do a startup as much as how to start a side project.