Startup success recipe from Eric Hahn
This post from Digitalyst analyzes and comments on an interview in RED HERRING of Eric Hahn, former CTO of Netscape, in which Hahn outlines his recipe for success for early-stage startup companies as follows:
"1. Identify a market with an underserved need and attractive economics which could potentially be pursued by a new company.
2. Build the best possible team, including an appropriate balance of domain experience and unbridled, youthful passion.
3. Get into the market with the absolute minimum viable product in the absolute minimum amount of time – while maintaining quality (it’s a hard balance to achieve – this is where experience really counts).
4. Do whatever it takes to delight your early customers (or users in a consumer business). Spare no expense to make every single one reference-able.
5. Listen and learn from your customers, technical experiences, competitors – develop metrics with which to measure yourself and use these to incrementally expand as fast as the market and capital will allow."
