Notes from Startup School - Ali and Hadi Partovi

Ali Partovi - Founder, iLike
Hadi Partovi - President, iLike

Ali and Hadi Partovi at Startup School 2007.

Is my idea a winner? better metric is the team or group of people

• can i easily explain what the customers need in one or two sentences?
  
• does the business scale - can you double your revenue w/o also doubling costs?
  
• am i creating added value? book - "co-opitiion" size of pie when i'm in the game, vs. when not in the game -- that is the added value.
  
• will the users naturally recruit new users?
  
• network effect - will the value delivered to each customer increase as # of customers increase?
  
• passion - is the entrepreneur passionate about the idea?
  

Do's:

1. listen to customers, identify with them. critical to actually listen to them yourself.
   
2. rank top problems most critical to success - rank top people, assign top people to top problems (for bigger companies). delegating effectively
   
3. make frugality and profitability part of your culture. avoid a luxurious environment. cut spending anywhere you can.
   
4. move quickly. make decisions fast! avoid committees. avoid 12-month development projects.
   
5. have a strong CEO. best sales person, outward person as CEO.
   
6. FOCUS - can't afford to be spread thin when company is small.
   
7. hire great people. judging people is most important skill you can learn in business.
   

Don'ts:

• be distracted by the press; don't make decisions based upon press coverage. value is to help with recruiting or to aid with strategic partners.
  
• don't take your company culture for granted - natural flow is for organizations to become political. want to start thinking about this at the early days, to keep it going.
  
• don't be greedy in business negotiations. let other company have bigger piece of pie, in return for speed
  
• don't ignore your gut feel about an employee or candidate
  
• forget to have fun.