10 core principles for starting up

There is an infinite amount of advice for startups, but if I had to boil it down to just 10 essentials, these are the most crucial principles for starting up that every founder needs to understand from an early stage.

  1. You need a vision.
  2. You need to run a good beta.
  3. You need world class onboarding.
  4. You need to know who your real competitors are.
  5. You need to understand the four forces.
  6. You need to consider how your product will spread.
  7. You need to understand marketplaces.
  8. You need to focus your roadmap on impact.
  9. You need to focus on new feature engagement.
  10. You need to constantly revisit assumptions.

Here is the video and accompanying slides of a talk I gave for This Week in Startups, covering these 10 principles in depth and explaining how they shape your product and prospects for success. Enjoy.