GETTING REAL

Remy Blaettler

Certified Geek from the HSR Rapperswil

After 6 years in the Land of the evil Texan back in Switzerland

Now since 1st of Jan fulltime with my own Company Supertext

Getting real

A book from 37Signals (Basecamp, Highrise) Founder of Ruby on Rails Made more money from the book than most

other startups with their business model Contains lots of unconventional advise for

young companies

No, I don’t’ have shares and I don’t get commission

Less is more

Claim: Underdo your competition

You cannot outrun Microsoft with more features. Try it with less.

Use the 80/20 Rule. 80% of the users need only 20% of the functionality. Build for the 80%.

Leave out what doesn’t matter Ask people what they DON’T want

Feel the pain

Put developers into support Make them use the system they built Move everybody into the same room

Scratch your own itch

Release early and often

Point: Race to running software

It just doesn’t matter Start with No Half, not half-assed

Don’t wait until you have the perfect product, put it into the wild as early as possible. Everything you have planned will then change.

Delete your To-Do List

For: Really important

items will bubble up again and again. No need to track them.

Customers are not always right

Claim: Forget Feature Requests

Against: Sometimes the

best ideas only come only once

The Blank Slate

Point: Don’t forget the first run

During design and testing, you normally have your app full of data, but what a new users sees is a view without any data.The first impression counts.

Opportunity for tutorials, examples, first-steps, demo-screenshots, etc.

Easy On, Easy Off

Point: Let customers come and go easy

Signup and cancelation Data import and export No long term contract, signup fees,

hidden charges

Don’t scare them away, build trust instead

Bad news are good news

Point: Don’t fear bad news

Don’t hide your mistakes, explain them

Bad press? Use it Price increase? Announce and justify

it early

Where is the fire?

Hint: Google Alerts

Who’s talking about you?(Blogs, Digg, Press, Newsgroups)

Someone cloning your business?

Talk back, be an active member of the community.

Monitor and learn from your competition.

Your idea is worthless

Idea Awful = -1 Weak = 1 Good = 10 Brilliant = 20

Execution No = $1 Weak = $1k Good = $100k Brilliant =

$10,000kThe most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. A weak idea with brilliant execution is worth $10,000. Don’t hide your idea

Don’t wait until you invent the wheel

Move in with your parents(or stop drinking early)

Claim: Don’t get VC Funding

Spent over 100k for parties in the last 10 years

Could survive for 2 years on that now instead of giving up shares in the company!

On the other hand, VC money brings a lot of experience and good networks with it. That can be very helpful too.

Just do it

Don’t wait for the perfect idea waste time writing a business plan make a logo build the perfect website with a great

design wait for a partner

Build something useful and put it out there

Links

Getting real (The book in HTML)

Remy.Supertext.ch (My blog)

Web 2.0 Logo Creator

Basecamp