Some great business advice
 

I found this online and thought it was great hopefully some of you agree and take something away from this ;)


Kevin Rose spoke at Tahoe Tech Talk <http://tahoetechtalkconf.com> hathis morning. I captured some notes from the event below:

1.) Go build it. If you really believe in something, you should just build it. If you love it, it won?t feel like work. It?s okay to drop out of college if you have an awesome idea.

2.) Build & release. List out your features for six months, sort them by importance, and go build three to five of them. Stop thinking you understand your users. Learn from what they?re actually doing on your site, not what you think they?ll do. It?s okay to kill features, but prove to your users that you have something better.

3.) Hire your boss. Senior positions: only hire people you?d personally work for. Make sure they can help build your vision. Junior positions: hire hustlers, people that will run circles around you.

4.) Don?t raise money. Beg borrow and steal for as long as possible. If someone gives you cash, ask yourself, ?how will they add value to my company??. If you don?t need the money, don?t take it. The more you go without taking funding, the more valuable your startup becomes. Don?t let investors take board seats.

5.) Go cheap. Use Amazon for storage and data. Work from home for as long as possible. Shared cell phone plans. Shared apartments. Get some contractors for smaller projects instead of hiring people full time.

6.) Connect with your audience. Start a podcast, even if you have a small audience. It has to start somewhere, right? Throw a launch party. Invite press and influencers to the party.

7.) Hack the press. Invite only system at the beginning. It will get people excited about your product and also make them curious. Talk to junior bloggers: if they get the scoop on a cool, new site, they could blow up and you could blow up. Attend parties you can?t afford. Network with influencers and bring a demo.

8.) Advisors. What technical problems are you going to have? Ask Joe Stump <http://twitter.com/joestump> hafor advice. If there are people you trust out there, give them 1% of your company for them to be on call for any issues you might need advice for. Solid advisors can help you raise cash.

9.) Leverage your user base to spread the word. Think Farmville and Facebook notifications: ?so and so, and 2 others have blah blah blah?. Who are those two others? Wefollow.com <http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/kevin-rose-creates-twitter-directory/367> haasks you to define yourself with three hashtags. If your friends see it, they will want to be a part of that community since you?re using it.

10.) Analyze your traffic. Tons of analytics. Make sure that you act on your feedback.

cool advice. .

Some really good stuff there.

Another one that Mark Cuban wrote was to cut your personal overhead as much as possible the less you have to pay out each month to survive the more likely you are to take the risk to do something. He started his first business when he was sharing an apartment with four other guys. He had hardly any monthly expenses so he had nothing to lose. If you have a house, two cars and a ton of bills each month you might allow yourself to not take that chance for the sake of being "responsible."

So look hard at your life and cut everything you don't need. Of course when you make it, you can get it all back :)

http://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster.../dp/0470929839

From the makers of Techstars.

Interesting tidbit

Good advice.

I have been practicing this from a business stand point over the last year. I cut my expenses by over 50% while maintaining and even increasing sales. I would have never thought I could have cut back so much. It almost turned into an obsession, I wanted to see how much more I could cut back and increase my profit margin. I got ride of shit that wasn't vital to making money and then reduced the costs on the things that I did need. I haggle now, where as before I just paid whatever.

There is two solid ways to make money, decrease costs, increase revenue. It sounds stupid it is so simple, but most people don't really make an effort to really cut costs. If you do both your profit margin increases tenfold. Even if you can just do one of the two you doing good.

Good schitt..

"Hiring Hustlers" hungry, eye of the tiger, lunch is for wimps attitude is hard to find. Next best thing is a $100 pps for motivation.

I like that.

Absolutely 100%. I think I wrote a post about that a few years ago. You have to really analyze your business and be working hard to do both (cut costs when possible and increase revenue) at all times.

brilliant!

I agree!

Top notch.
:thumbsup

Great advice.

Cutting costs is a fine line though. Sometimes cutting costs means lower quality, which turns into lower revenue and hurts your company image. Bit of a balancing act, I'd say.

It's an art. It's like increasing revenue. You have to be good at it and do it in the right places or you will hurt your overall business

LOL :thumbsup:thumbsup

interesting advices

i like kevin rose

some decent advice in there, thanks.

Great thread

I have an awesome idea that I've been working on for a long time, but paying the bills is holding me back from going full steam with it. I'm thinking about cashing in my some of my 401k to support me while I take a year to finish and get it out there --- instead of saying, "maybe next year I'll get more time". I've been saying that last 5 years.

Who even knows what the fuck will be going down years from now, when its time for me to receive my 401k? Or if we'll all even be here anyway?

What do you think?