Startup Session @ SXSW notes

Great session on care and feeding of a startup. Some notes follow:

The concept
* make sure the entire team knows what the idea is

Team
* dont fill your ranks too soon
* you can outsource
* a company that does a good job of outsourcing will scale better

Ensure that your team has got the following components:
* A product guy - with his ear to the ground - understanding the user and shaping the product around answering the user's pain
* A biz dev guy - the guy making the deals that bring in the clients/customers
* Someone dedicated to managing the money & investors - everyone else should be focused on the product.
* An advisory board - a good advisory board is one of the most critical components. Get good ones. Keep them involved. Make use of their networks.

Market
* define your market clearly  who is the buyer?
* listen to the people who will use your thing. listen very closely
* test, test, test
* do small iterations and see if it's working
* look for a massive pain. the product should directly address that pain.
* enter a market where there is a larger company that doesn't need to endorse you, but that may want to acquire you (example of an ebay add-on product)

Financing
* don't bring on VC too early
* VC's want to see 1m users before getting interested
* when you have meetings with investors, make them strategic. don't just do reporting.
* look for angels who are aligned with your market - who can add value in that particular market

Metrics
* measure everything. metrics are key
* how long can you last before revenue
* prove your value proposition
* #of users are important, but more important is adoption rates, amt time spent