1.
your customers,
competitors,
employees,
prospects...
everyone else. your businessyour business

2.
37Signals

3.
Stay small.
Avoid plans.

4.
Plans are usually
garbage...easy to say if you
are self-funded.

5.
Don’t have a mission
statement. Live and work for
what you stand for.

6.
Learn from success - not
failure.
* let’s ask Harper Reed...

7.
Entrepreneurs
<
Starters

8.
Business plans, months of
prep, hiring, and seeking
funding are barriers to entry.

9.
Start and work a little at a
time to see if it pans out.
You can burn out with little
to no risk. Fund it with your
day job.

10.
A business has a path to
profit.
A startup is a crutch
(spending others’ money
without profit)

11.
Do more
with less.

12.
Cut out the good leaving the
great with a focus on your
epicenter.

13.
LAUNCH!!!1

14.
Ship now and get “there”
through iterations later.

15.
Make decisions instead of
waiting for the best decision.
That doesn’t exist now.

16.
Break larger projects into
week or day long projects
with goals that can be
celebrated.

17.
We suck at estimating.

18.
Prioritize by position - not
weight.

19.
Let your customers outgrow
your non-complex solution.
Don’t write down feature
requests. You will remember
the ones that are repeated
and matter.

20.
It’s ok to be a quitter. Get
more eyes on a problem, and
reallocate your time to
something you can kill.

21.
Competition

22.
Call your competition out.

23.
Be influenced, but don’t steal.
copying === letting someone else do the bulk of the work

24.
MARKETING

25.
Build an audience instead of
blindly wasting money.

26.
Emulate chefs. Your craft
and knowledge are the
ultimate marketing tool.

27.
Also be like drug dealers.
Really.

28.
Be unforgettable.
Be passionate.
Sell your story like only you
can.

29.
HIRING

30.
You should learn your way
out instead of hiring your
way out of a problem.
Hire only when it hurts...bad.

31.
Look at cover letters instead
of resumes. If it comes down
to a few candidates - choose
the best writer.

32.
Any college or no college will do. How
long is not as important as how well you
can do something.

33.
Delegators are dead weight
and meeting whores.

34.
CUSTOMERS

35.
Apologies need to be sincere.
Everything you do leading up
to that point in the
relationship is important to
make it real.

36.
Speed changes everything.
No one should be on hold
for 16 minutes.

37.
CULTURE

38.
Culture isn’t instant. It’s like
scotch and takes time.
(insert picture of drunk Nick)

39.
After making a change ride
out the initial dissent. That
always happens.

40.
Build a great environment of
busy people who go home at
5 everyday.

41.
Few words - tons of
assumptions:
need, can’t, easy, just, only,
fast
Don’t f***ing say this sh**.

42.
Inspiration is perishable.
Do it when you are
passionate.
Do it now.