Somewhere in those steps you should add "make a name for yourself." Marketing yourself and your company can lead you from a good idea/MVP/prototype to a successful business. I've seen it first hand on several occasions. It's not about what you know, but who you know. Numerous articles on HN have been targeted towards the difficulty of traction. "I have a good product, but I have no traction." There comes a point when a good product is not necessarily enough. This is especially true for niche markets. Marketing, marketing, marketing. And I don't mean the kind where you hire an agency. All they have is connections; you can make those with effort. There are all sorts of guerilla marketing tactics if you're looking for cost effective ways to get your name out there.

Some of the key points fall under the blanket of marketing:

    * blogging, guest blogging
    * submitting articles to HN, reddit, etc
    * connecting to local startup/tech communities

Don't live in a bubble. Your startup should not be your personal safe haven that you keep secret from everyone. People need to hear about it, talk about it, criticize it, tear it apart, love it, live it, hate it... you get the picture. You want people to have opinions about your product, strong ones. It doesn't matter if it's a 50/50 split of those that love and hate it. People KNOW about it. If nobody knows you exist, there's no exit.

That leads me to my next big topic: CONNECTIONS. Chose them wisely and treat them well. You are your own personal sales guy. Why do you think the startup incubators are so successful? Their connections. PG has connections, go impress him. I'll let you in on a secret though: he has a very high bullshit detector and has seen it all. It helps to know your target audience as well. PG has a preferential tendency towards startup ideas coming from founders that have domain knowledge (and aren't assholes.. he blogged about it).

Last point: DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE. Be nice to people, don't talk about them behind their back, always say nice things. It's all too easy to get in the habit of gossiping or talking shit about somebody when they aren't there. Word gets around. At some point they'll likely hear about it through the grapevine. Wouldn't you rather have them hear about the nice things you've said? That's friendship. That's a connection.