Open Source Startup Lessons

Lessons and thoughts on software startups, and startups in general, for those that may be about to start one. A presentation for the NCSU Collegiate Entrepreneurship Organization.

Transcript

1. Lessons Learned from Ansible
   Open Source Startups & Other Topics
   Presentation to NCSU Collegiate Entrepreneurship Organization, 3/2015
   Michael DeHaan
   

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2. What Company To Start?
   

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3. Solve A Problem You Have
   and care about.
   

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4. A 20% Better Mousetrap Is
   Sufficient
   

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5. Build something people will
   pay for
   

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6. Can you bootstrap?
   Be aware of time to prime markets and sales cycle
   time
   

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7. Community Is Not A
   Buzzword, It’s Everything
   

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8. Community is a Force
   Multiplier
   

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9. Always be helping people.
   

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10. Take Users Along For The
    Journey
    

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11. Explain your thought process,
    decisions, and be human.
    

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12. Get Your Product To Mostly
    Sell Itself
    

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13. Product Design / Strategy
    

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14. Good products are a balance of
    central design and crowd input
    

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15. Listen to the crowd, not one
    user at a time.
    

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16. Watch your competition, but
    don’t follow them.
    

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17. Know your design (and
    implementation) aesthetic.
    

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18. Avoid MVP. Have expertise and know
    (and talk to) your audience before you
    build something.
    

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19. Anything Proof of Concept is
    Provable in 2 Weeks
    

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20. YAGNI - build what matters
    most
    

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21. Just the right amount of design and development.
    make shippable Prototypes (Python!)
    

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22. Avoid Heavy Engineering Process
    (Scrum/too-many-meetings/interruptions/etc)
    

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23. 15 minute timer for new user
    acquisition
    

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24. Good Documentation & Authenticity
    is more powerful than Marketing
    

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25. Company and Team
    Dynamics
    

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26. You have to be able to talk
    about everything
    

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27. Understand personal
    motives
    

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28. Seek correctness over saving face /
    Use Blameless Post-Mortems / Etc
    

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29. Be Able to Revisit Any
    Decision
    

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30. Culture is not declared, it grows
    from what you do every day.
    

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31. Hiring is really hard.
    

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32. Venture Capital and The
    Market
    

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33. Balancing Creating a Business
    vs The Desires of Venture Capital
    

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34. Get Profitable vs Seeking
    More Rounds
    

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35. IPOs are decreasing, have a
    better plan.
    

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36. Business models: SaaS vs
    Product vs Services ?
    

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37. Avoid Overhead
    

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38. Understand Timing
    

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39. Personal Things
    

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40. Running a Startup is more possible -
    But Infinitely More Work - Than It Looks.
    Be Sure You Want It
    

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41. Quote on starting my company from someone who
    started their own very successful company:
    “Congratulations! It’s horrible!”
    

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42. Don’t Say “We Are Killing It”
    All The Time
    

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43. We Are All Faking Knowing
    What We Are Doing.
    

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44. Even if it’s not, it always feels like the wheels are
    coming off - to all of us. Find someone you can talk
    to and be sure to take some time off occasionally.
    

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45. Remember to Enjoy the
    Ride.
    

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46. ?
    info / questions
    @laserllama / michael.dehaan@gmail.com
    

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