Intro

Intro

I've built a few companies. During the 1999-2001 I had my first startup experiences. I joined an early stage company (Everdev) that sold app-site development services and a content management platform.

The Happy Path

1. Idea
2. Canvas - https://businessmodelanalyst.com/downloads/lean-canvas-template/
3. Customer Development / Build Community
4. Team
5. Traction

The Un-Happy Path

1. Idea
2. Skip Canvas
3. Start building PRODUCT
4. Forget Marketing
5. LAUNCH
6. Realise room is empty, clients are scarce, revenue is zero
7. Start blaming each other or some bullshit "market forces" or "we were to early"

• How Not to Fail: Cash Burn, Founding Stories, Founder Psychology
• Myths About Failure

Prime Objective: Get to Cash Flow Positive

Get some revenue, some how some why. Revenue proves traction, any other metric you can imagine is a BULLSHIT metric for proof of traction. Think "beyond a reasonable doubt".

• Default Alive or Default Dead?

Start a Business

Start a Sole-Prop if you're just getting started. It's very easy and inexpensive to ramp-up from Sole-Prop, to LLC to S-CORP to C-CORP. It's difficult and expensive to unwind or to roll-back.

A tool called [Stripe Atlas]() can help.

• First tax year with Stripe Atlas