It seems the trend with successful CEOs (and some less so) is to post a long list of things and call them your “rules for startups.” You get gems like “NEVER EVER EVER buy swag” or “Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work…” along with the ordinary new business penny pinching tips. Must be nice to have those sorts of problems.

If I did a list based on my startup experiences it would be pretty short. Just one item actually:

1. Find pain points and/or unmet needs in some current solution, fix them, have people pay you for the fix.

This is the hardest thing you’ll have to solve in your new business. Deciding on what sort of chairs and tables and soft drinks to stock will pale in comparison. Screw up Step 1 and you’ll be another small business statistic.

Since we’re on the internet, help (and more lists!) are just a search away. One of my favorites is from Evhead, Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea. His first item, Tractability, is probably the weakest, don’t let it slow you down. The rest ask very pointed questions about your startup idea: How much value can you ultimately deliver? Is it clear why people should use it? And so on.

Foosball or table tennis? Where’s the official startup CEO decision on that?

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

And published a day later, on March 05, 2008, Reznor makes $750,000 even when the music is free:

And it appears to be working quite well for Reznor, who has managed to sell all 2,500 copies of his $300 package without major label backing or much in the way of splashy marketing. If Reznor’s earlier experiments in digital distribution failed to recoup their costs, he’s clearly learned his lesson: grossing $750,000 in the space of three days isn’t a bad haul for any businessperson.

So it seems Kevin’s concepts can easily work for someone like a Trent Reznor. Kevin does spend a good portion of the article on how a lesser known could make this work as well.

David Schatsky, president of Jupiter Research one comment speaks volumes if we put it into context of the emerging market. He says “By paying closer attention to the tendencies of the end user, these sites will be able to evolve and meet the needs of a wider online audience.”

and

Individual allegiance moves away from portals, firms and toward networks and network platforms where individuals create collective affinities.

Explains the motivation behind new businesses like Satisfaction and their “people-powered customer service” idea. Aggregate the bottom-up efforts of an audience, harnessing their contributions (the Q&A, the social good vibes, the conversation, etc) and add a framework for pulling out ratings, reviews & answers for a company of interest. What you end up with, theoretically, is a better customer service experience than the company itself could provide. (As I understand it!)

My little epiphany: I think a firm’s success will come from it being able to act human enough to engage in those collective affinities.

“I see Wufoo as part of a broader trend – the gradual outsourcing of all routine development and administration to more efficient plug-together-and-play solutions. In a year or two, all the little start-ups run by two developers and no business types will start to get eclipsed by little start-ups run by two business types and no developers.”

This is the missing business piece behind all the trendy “web 2.0” ajax/whatever apps. Their success depends on an ecology of data access. Pretty tools like Wufoo make getting the data attractive and fun. Other tools and services, like my old boss Paul Martino’s Aggregate Knowledge, adds intelligence and value to the data.