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Open Source Startup Lessons

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.

Michael DeHaan

March 14, 2016
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  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 / [email protected]

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