No matter the size of the discount being requested, you need to know your walk away numbers.

When you are just starting out an NDA is a cute way to demonstrate to the world you don’t have anything worth stealing.

Choosing which frameworks to use, which language to use, which game engine to use, which platforms to target, are all business decisions that should be made within the context of the business.

The moment you leave these important decisions up to your software developers you have started to give away business advantages to your competitors.

P.S. I’m a lifelong engineer and software developer and it took me a long time to realize this.

Sourcing and on-boarding new candidates will be one of the most time consuming and expensive activities your start-up will endure.

I am a great believer in the lean startup philosophy.

The leanest startup I can think of is an Excel spreadsheet, an email address, a cellphone, and a landing page that collects your email address.

And I am not too sure about the cellphone.

When you want to start, start small.

Really small.

Thinking of something small?

Good.

Well, that’s too big, let’s think smaller than that.

Bit smaller.

Smaller.

Good.

Got it?

That is what you need to start with.

That is what you will ship.

Something so infinitesimally small that the risk, to your bottom line, to your ego, to your customers (current and potential), to your company, and to whether you will ship at all, is so freaking small that you wouldn’t notice it.

That small thing would be considered a rounding error in your productivity.

Shipping something that is as small as possible is powerful.

Because it builds a habit of shipping.

And it lets us fail and try again very rapidly.

I think a lot of people throw around the word “sociopath” to describe an entrepreneur when what they mean is “just bloody rude.”

So many entrepreneurs fail catastrophically, either through a product that fails in the market or by simply running out of money, because they insist on trying to launch publicly with a final, absolutely perfect product (or service).

I find that many start-ups go after “cost inefficiencies.”

That is, they are trying to cut out the middle-man.

And when the middleman is an unregulated rent seeker, that is good business model to try and optimize.

The problem comes when start-ups go after cutting out the middleman (by making themselves a lower priced middleman), but the cost inefficiencies and the friction built in to the business model are mandated by legislation.

And that legislation is usually backed by powerful lobbying interests.

Those start-ups, if they can disrupt the business model and reduce the friction and cost inefficiencies, can change an entire industry.

But those start-ups are unicorns, and what they are building is an unassailable position.

The crux of the problem is that other start-ups come along and try to duplicate that success, usually without any success at all, because they are not trying to disrupt anything, they are just copycatting the trailblazer.

Those are the start-ups I won’t get involved with.

Never trust the technology advice of a Chief Technology Officer who doesn’t own a computer that is personally his.

My clients treat me a like a God.

They take very little notice of me and anything I say until their server stops working and then they pray to the Lloyd that their pleas for a miracle fix are heard.

If you don’t specifically need to know the gender of your user, for your app, product, SaaS or service, I can guarantee you are breaking the law in at least a dozen countries.

E-commerce, much like credit cards, have a distinct customer acquisition cost that you need to actively calculate.

And then recalculate at regular intervals – the price will change as the market dynamics change with the waxing and waning of your competitors and the shifting requirements of customers.

A sense of urgency in your start-up culture will never be as powerful as a sense of purpose.

Be flexible in the service you offer.

Be inflexible in the pricing of your services.

You will ask your developer to implement a feature at 11PM on Friday when they are working late and then wonder why the developer hasn’t gotten this simple feature implemented by 7AM Monday morning after you spent the weekend partying in a hot-tub.

And that’s okay, because you need to learn that sleep and partying are not a magic time machine that accelerates you in to a shiny future of new features.

And you need to learn that other people like to party and sleep too.

Attention can be consumed, and some entrepreneurs want to gorge themselves before they realize that attention is an expensive resource to replenish.

It doesn’t matter who your customer is they will demand a discount.

“We’re a small, nascent start-up and we don’t have much budget. What can you do for us?”

through to:

“We’re a large enterprise and we will buy a lot of services from you over the coming years.”

Everyone tries it on.

And if those are the only reasons they have, the discount isn’t the problem, it’s the customer’s commitment.

Customers will give entrepreneurs evolution.

“I want a faster horse.”

Entrepreneurs must give customers revolution.

“You don’t want a horse, you want a car.”

“Craigslist but prettier” is not a product worth pursuing.

If that is your pitch, you are missing the point.

The user interface of Craigslist may be broken, but that isn’t why people use it.

The art of shipping a product is that you should never bother regretting the fact that you shipped. Where people go wrong is getting wrapped up in the regret of shipping before they actually ship. So then they never ship.

You agree that this candidate is perfect, but you still want to see a few more.

“A few more” usually means “We’re price shopping, not quality shopping.”

Rome was not built in a day.

And neither was eBay.

A good web application or service takes time to mature and grow.

Don’t expect to achieve in a few months what major enterprises have taken years to reach.

I’ve seen the tip of this iceberg with small efforts by a few start-ups trying to deliver products or supply services in an on-demand fashion.

I don’t think we are there yet.

The technology, the connectivity, doesn’t provide for it.

But within a decade, you will be able to order up a limo, fresh groceries, a house cleaner, or someone to run an errand for you as easily as you order up a pizza or a taxi today.

We’re just waiting for the technology to catch up to us.

Customers have an acquisition cost in almost every business.

Most small businesses, and even a few large ones, don’t bother figuring out what it costs to acquire a customer.

The cost is just buried in some other detail but never fully articulated.

But for a business to survive and thrive, as a start-up, you need to know that cost to you.

Customers also have a long-term value, and so long as the LTV outweighs the acquisition cost, you’ll make money.

All the perks in the world will not compensate your employees for one occasion of poor treatment.

Your customers can be found in lots of places where they are communicating.

As a brand, you need to be owning that communications channel for your product.

Because if you aren’t, conversations will take place without you.

And those conversations may not be pleasant.

To be an early hire in my startups, you have to be better at whatever you do than I am.

To get fired at my startups (before we grow too large for it to matter), I have to be better at whatever you do than you are.

My goal is to be better at your job than you are.

Once I can do your job better than you, you’re surplus to requirements.

How do you keep your job?

Keep learning. Keep training. Keep getting better.

Otherwise, I will replace you with someone better than me.

It sounds harsh, but in a small startup where every piece is critical, there’s no place for an also-ran employee.

This is also the very essence of what people mean when they say “work with a co-founder with a complimentary skill set.”

If you think this is bravado, I will put money down that you’ve never been a founder frustrated by early hires that are just warm bodies where you constantly have to double-check work or send it back for a second pass.

Corporations like to spend big dollars and big advertising campaigns, because it makes them feel secure.

Would a $10,000 marketing campaign for Coca Cola move the needle for them?

Probably not.

But it would give people something to talk about.

It is easy to quickly assess whether someone is really committed to the idea of an MVP by determining whether they care about presentation details.

If they’re fussing over a few pixels, the right shade of grey for the underline, or individual edge cases of functionality, they are most definitely not focused on an MVP.