Do More Faster

Ev's last point is key. If you're the best in the world at thing X, it's much easier to get to X + Y. You'll have credibility from your customers who already love you for what you do so well. They'll be patient and willing to help you build Y. It's a place of strength, and it can be so much easier to do more from there.

Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you've created until it's out there. That means every moment you're working on something without it being in the public arena, it's actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world. It's

look for the one thing that you couldn't take away from your customers without them screaming at you. Once they find it, we encourage them to make that one thing even better.

We coached them early on that they have to be the best in the world at something and then build from there.

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.

The ability to listen is an important skill for any startup founder. We're all accustomed to trying to persuade people to try our products, to invest in our companies, or to listen to what we have to say. If you're doing that with customers, you're doing it backward.

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.

Usage Is Like Oxygen for Ideas