We summarized 10 principles to start a new business from one of his presentations.
1. Make meaning in your company
The most important purpose of starting a new company is to do something meaningful, not to earn money. If you make meaning, you may probably make money, but if you set out to make money, you will probably not make meaning and you won't make money. This should be the core of why you start a company.
2. Make mantra
Don't Write a Mission Statement, Write a Mantra Find some sentences which everyone can remember.
3. Jump to the next curve
Great companies aren't created when a book retailer says, "We're going to change the way books are sold. Instead of carrying 250,000 titles, we're going to carry 275,000." Great companies are created when you say, "Instead of 250,000 titles, we're going to carry 2.5 million." Then you have Amazon.
4. Roll the DICEE
DICEE is deep, intelligence, complete, elegant and emotive.
- Deep -- it doesn't run out of features right away.
- Indulgent -- a great product is a luxury, it makes you feel special when you guy it.
- Complete -- the support system around the product is as good as the product.
- Elegant -- the product has an elegant feel to it.
- Emotive -- a great product compels you to tell other people about it.
Your best customers may not be who you expect them to be, and no matter how good you are, no matter how much market research you do, you can't perfectly predict what will happen in the real world. Try to make your product open, allow people use it freely.
6. Don't worry, be crappy
Voltaire once said, "The best is the enemy of the good." If companies waited to completely perfect a product before releasing it, they would never get anything out. It's OK if your 1.0 release is a little rough around the edges, so long as it still creates value for customers. Of course, he says, "This doesn't apply if you're developing medical equipment."
7. Polarize people
You can't please everyone. It's better to have a small, fiercely loyal customer base than to create a mediocre product that fades quickly into obscurity. Some examples he gave were the Macintosh, Harley-Davidson, Tivo, and the Scion XP (People under 25 look at it and say, "Hey, cool car!" People over 25 look at it and say, "It must have been designed by someone who got fired from Volvo.")
8. Churn baby churn
A company must improve version 1.0 and create version 1.1, 1.2, ... 2.0. This is a difficult lesson to learn because it's so hard to ship an innovation; therefore, the last thing employees want to deal with is complaints about their perfect baby. Innovation is not an event. It's a process.
9. Niche yourself
Find Your Niche To Find Your Dream
10. Follow the 10/20/30 rulePPT is the most boring thing in the world. Remember in one presentation, no more than 10 slides of PPT, not over 20 minutes, don't use font size less than 30
11. Don't let the bozos grind you down
Some bozos are easy to spot. They're grumpy, cynical people who shoot down all your ideas. But beware the "successful bozo" wearing a nice suit. "People automatically equate 'rich' with 'smart'," he says. "That's a big dialectical leap." Often very successful people can't embrace the next curve.
The last one is the bonus principle.
In addition, you can read Guy Kawasaki's book "The Art of the Start" to find more advice.
Original author : 阮一峰 Source : http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2007/07/guy_kawasaki.html
