I recently caught up with a budding entrepreneur on her upcoming startup. Its truly an amazing idea and in trying to structure a plan to move forward, I came across this short fantastic interview with Jessica Livingston of YCombinator (if you don’t know, these guys have funded some of the most popular/successful startups in the last 5 plus years from AirBnb , Dropbox to Stripe, check them out!).
Anyway, fundamentally, whilst there are so many facets to a new idea, to move forward, Jessica really hones in on some key points thats worth early startups really listening to and applying as its all too easy to get distracted even with the most brilliant of ideas.
Best to listen to it there are too many nuggets to summarise here but if you are short on time, the point is focus on building your product and customer base initially. Marketing, raising capital, networking although important can quickly overshadow and distract you from what matters when you hit START. If you can solve a REAL problem however counter-intuitive your solution and demonstrate demand quickly through building an audience, you are on your way to creating something viable, marketable and worth investing in.