Johanna

A manufacturing process, once in place, can be repeated thousands or millions of times. But it’s very difficult to decompose a building in such a way that it can be produced by a sequence of repetitive movements, and it’s difficult to mass produce large numbers of identical buildings.

Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours. Most people waste most of their time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles.

I realize that not every business has a community around what they do, but if you do have a broader ecosystem of users, developers or fans, you should try like hell to hire from that crowd whenever possible.

The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful.

The most counterintuitive secret about startups is that it’s often easier to succeed with a hard startup than an easy one. A hard startup requires a lot more money, time, coordination, or technological development than most startups. A good hard startup is one that will be valuable if it works (not all hard problems are worth solving!).