Dos and Don’ts for Founders | Hacker News Reader

Dos and Don’ts for Founders

ryancarson.com

104 pointsryancarson14 comments

I hear lots of advice to founders about not wasting time with email. This may be good advice, but to be honest I'm not sure why somebody at an early stage startup that hasn't launched a product yet would get so much email?

Sure you may be negotiating with VCs/Suppliers etc (in which case you probably want to see those emails) but I don't get why you would have hundreds of people spamming your inbox every day?

We are about to launch and I already have hundreds of unread emails in my inbox because I've been so busy coding to get to them. These can be broken down roughly into the following categories: - people trying to sell stuff - potential BD partnerships - random contact requests coming in from our website - product discussions with the team - various admin emails from our accelerator organizers - a few mailing list automated emails

As you can see, most of these are not important enough to have to read!!

Actually I get to email first thing in the day. I prioritize the ones I want to read and respond to or delegate. I also read email last thing in the day.

It is important to keep in good contact with everyone one wants to keep in touch with. But one shouldn't spend too much time doing it.

I just looked at this guy's startup. How the heck is it making money? Are people really so clueless as to not know that the same information can be had for free from dozens of websites just a Google search away?

There isn't even a free trial! How can they expect people to pay $50 up front on the strength of their nonexistent brand name?

I am seriously confused. The only explanation I can think of is that they get all of their traffic from this guy's blog posts, from HN hacker wannabes who want to learn to code and didn't think to Google.

A structured approach to learning, combined with motivation goodies (like the badges) saves a lot of time. Saving just a couple of hours a month easily justifies the $50 cost...and with any half-decent course you'll save a lot more than that.

As a wannabe, I am just as confused. I'm pretty sure the free stuff gets far more press anyway.

Ryan, what is it with the very precise timings? Waking at 4:54am and todos for 19 minutes.

My hypothesis is that if you aim to get up at 5am then it's easier to be lazy and say that 5:15am is almost 5am, but if you specify 4:54am then you can't cheat! Am I right?

I'd like a combination of 3 (mission statement) and 5 (TeamGantt) -- each time you are creating a concrete goal for your todo list, think about how exactly it will align with your mission statement and advance the company.

Interesting idea - thanks.

There's a lot of good stuff there. I would add one thing about accounting. If you are a founder, you need to know it. Every case I know of where a business went out of business due to embezzlement, the cause was a partner not keeping an eye on the books. Know your accounting and at least once a month look at the books. There are no excuses.

The second point is about todo lists. I have my own style here, the author has his own style. It's a good idea to develop your own style here and run with it. Maybe it is 19 min a day. Maybe it is 5 min a day. Maybe it is linear. Maybe like mine it is non-linear with general priorities.

So are those do's or don't's? Honestly, I thought it was a parody until I got to "learn basic accounting".

Probably not the best title but I enjoyed the article. I always like hearing what tools other founders use.

ps. all you project manager makers TODO list startups, listen up. Your app is not a project management app until it has dependencies. If you don't have dependenies you are just a TODO list; Basecamp, I'm looking at you ;)

Use TeamGantt to build your Road Map

Not a fan of this. Especially when you are just starting out with an idea that changes rapidly. A Google Doc with a few bullet points for key goals and big deadlines is more useful.

Agreed. Flexibility is important. I always say don't look at plans during execution.

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