Evan Prodromou: "As an experienced programmer, I think of a startup as an abusive relationship"

I once worked in programming for a non-tech startup, and the experience was like this guy describes it, only much worse. There were times when I worked 30+ hours straight and my paycheck bounced. The two guys who founded the company were worthless, lying megalomaniacs who still owe me thousands of dollars.

It was a very educational experience though. Here's a summary of startup wisdom I learned from this experience Forgive me if some of these seem like tautologies.

Don't spend money unless you absolutely have to - don't buy a $5000 copy machine when you really don't copy things that often. Don't spend several grand on rent when you could work out of your house.

Don't forget to eat and sleep (once in awhile). You aren't a very good programmer after 36 hours of straight coding with no sleep and only a can of mixed nuts for sustenance.

Becoming a startup founder doesn't immediately make you 'somebody', so don't go around being a dick to everyone. The same rules that apply to everyone else still apply to you.

Spend your time building products, not doing administrative stuff.

Focus on your core competency. If you're a clothing company who happen to have developed a piece of inventory-control software in house, you might be tempted to try to re-sell it for an additional revenue stream. Don't do it! Get back to designing clothes and just be thankful you have a way to control your inventory. Amazon seems to be the exception here, they're selling everything under the sun, even at night.

This is largely true, but I'd still recommend joining a startup or 5 before starting your own. Why? Because as a new startup founder, you will make every mistake your former bosses did. It's much easier to recognize somebody else's mistakes than your own, particularly when their mistakes prevent you from doing your job well or make you quit.

Joining someone else's startup gives you a chance to learn from their mistakes and get paid (relatively little) for it. You shouldn't think of it as a job, you should think of it as an MBA that's not full of bullshit where the money flows from instructor to student instead of student to instructor.

Sounds to me like a special case of Sturgeon's Law: of course 90% of startups are crap. That's because 90% of everything is crap.

Unless you have significant equity; then it's marriage.