I've seen “everythingitis” kill many a startup. This is the disease a startup gets when it sets out to add more features than the competition does.

We carefully avoid the sort of fly-by mentorship in which someone successful or famous stops by to impart some generic wisdom and give shallow feedback on each company. At TechStars, we’re only interested in deep and engaged mentorship.

Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful.

“As long as I listen to my customers, I never need to have another original idea.”

to consider the opportunity cost associated with not pursuing alternatives.

Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in. You can much more easily position and market yourself when more focused.

Startups are about testing theories and quickly pivoting based on feedback and data.

In discussions with big companies, it is very easy for entrepreneurs to develop “happy ears,” the tendency to hear what one wants to hear, while overlooking the signals that suggest otherwise.

Next, realize that you cannot create the need.