Starting a Technology Company | Entrepreneurs. Executives. Investors. 6 Tips To Get Your Startup Off The Ground And Score A Seed Round Editor’s note: Anthemos Georgiades is the CEO of Zumper, a new platform for apartment rentals being built from the ground up. Prior to Zumper he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and as an Economic Advisor in British politics. You can follow him on Twitter. Zumper’s seed round story is far from perfect. Like most first-time founders, we screwed stuff up at every stage, from having no estimation of what valuation cap we should set, through to really stupid meeting scheduling, which led us to take several quite important calls from our Zipcar. Despite the challenges, we got there and are now humbled to work alongside a set of fantastic investors. Below are some simple and hopefully immediately applicable lessons I drew from the experience of raising the round. 1. Super simple, but super important. Use any means possible to get this warm intro. 2. There was a recent article on TechCrunch that argued that you don’t need to present a prototype to raise a seed round. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Ten Rules for Web Startups #1: Be NarrowFocus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. #2: Be DifferentIdeas are in the air. #3: Be CasualWe're moving into what I call the era of the "Casual Web" (and casual content creation). #4: Be PickyAnother perennial business rule, and it applies to everything you do: features, employees, investors, partners, press opportunities. #5: Be User-CentricUser experience is everything. #6: Be Self-CenteredGreat products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. #7: Be GreedyIt's always good to have options. #9: Be AgileYou know that old saw about a plane flying from California to Hawaii being off course 99% of the time—but constantly correcting? #11 (bonus!)
Some Lessons for Startups (pdf with notes)