Somewhere during the Adam-relentlessly-over-schedules-himself plan, I got behind in listening to The Startup Success Podcast. In the past three weeks I’ve dug myself out of that hole (though I notice there is a new episode in iTunes now) so here are notes from the ones from mid October 2009 to last week.

Derek Sivers, CDBaby and MuckWork

  • Only do what only you can do
  • You have to do everything you can to not take people out of the questions
  • But you need the right people
  • People should freak out about your startup idea or you should get a new idea

Renn Vara, SNP Communications

  • Just tell the truth
  • Be ready for your own success
  • Transparency is the direction things are going
  • If you find your leader’s communication strategy in the legal, marketing or public relations departments, then it will fail
  • In crisis, go to trust. Fast!
  • People will forgive quickly if you admit error. They don’t want to feel like you are hedging
  • But sometimes it makes sense to not communicate
  • Or if there is a leak for instance, maybe you want to get even further ahead of the story. Jump out and go way beyond the leak with even more information.
  • If I am not who I say I am, I am in deep trouble

Renn Vara, SNP Communications

  • People pay for products, not ideas

2010 Predictions and author, developer Wally McClure

  • Thou shalt not think that the mobile device is a scaled down desktop

Scientist/co-founder Mark Juras

  • Build not the smallest chunk they are willing to use, but the smallest chunk they are willing to pay for
  • Sometimes you have to market the idea space before you can market your product

Sramana Mitra on Positioning your Startup

  • Target people with a specific problem, not a generic solution
  • Don’t be a solution looking for a problem
  • What unfair market advantages do you have individually / as a team? Exploit them.
  • Having the right questions is important to finding the right answer

David Allen, Startups, and Getting Things Done

  • There are only two types of problems: we don’t know how to do what we want and we don’t know what we want
  • The secret of GTD is to figure out the next discrete actionable item

Carl Erickson, Atomic Object

You should just listen to this one start-to-finish. I know Carl and he is super smart. AO is one of the companies I would love to hang out at for awhile if I had a chance to.

  • If you say you don’t have the time to test, it is ironically a sign that now is exactly the time you need to be testing
  • ‘Teams of two’ is sometimes more culturally acceptable than ‘pair programming’
  • Pair programming is a risk reduction strategy.
  • You don’t have to ‘pair’ all the time, but solo code beside each other so conversations can still happen.
  • The intersection of my ignorance and your ignorance is pretty small
  • Sometimes its easier to show an ugly baby and make it prettier with feedback
  • A startup is more than just an interesting idea, its a hell of a lot of execution and the people (of course)

Seth Godin on Linchpins and Startups

No bullets here other than I’m in the midst of a lengthy Seth Godin fanboy phase so you should just listen to the whole episode for yourself.

Greg Jones, Bookkeeping Express

  • Outsource the things you don’t want to do