Do More Faster by Techstars founders Brad Feld and David Cohen
(Apologies to OP’s request for brevity; there’s just a lot of good stuff that I’d like to share.)
A must read for anyone here who is serious about their startup.
I read it on the flight to Startup School to “get in the mood”. I couldn’t put it down.
It’s easy to read for 2 reasons: every chapter is a short essay by a different person (including many Techstars alumni) and it’s very well written, almost like pg essays but by lots of different people. It covers lots of ground, much of which has been covered here at hn many times, but then again, some of this stuff can’t be covered too often. Also, sometimes someone says the same thing a little differently, and that’s the one that actually reaches you.
My 300 page copy has 50 or 60 dog-earred pages and hundreds of red marks; it’s that full of gems. (For that reason, I highly suggest buying a hard copy and keeping it on your bookshelf for future reference.) I think that yc should come out with a similar book. I’d love to read essays from yc alumni, their advisors, and of course the yc principals themselves about what they thought was important. I realize much of this is on-line already, but there’s nothing like a great hard copy too.
A few of my favorite quotes from Do More Faster:
“I realized that I had two options. I could quit buying comics or I could quit my job and build the iTunes of comics.” - Kevin Mann
“Getting feedback and new ideas is the lifeblood of any startup. There is no point in living in fear of someone stealing your idea.” - Nate Abbott and Natty Zola
“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.” - Matt Mullenweb
“Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful” - David Cohen
“You know you’re on to something when the community starts donating money to make sure it stays alive.” - Darren Crystal
“In companies that rely on having a large user base as ours does, it is very unlikely that you will offend enough people quickly enough to dampen your future growth.” - Sean Corbett
“We learned that very few people care how you accomplish something. Instead, these people care more about whether you create value for your end user.” - Colin Angle
“We knew that the high-level concept of our first site still really inspired us.” - Alex White
“They stepped back from what they had created and thought about what they could do better than anyone else in the world.” - editors
“During the first few days of every TechStars cycle, we tell the 10 bright-eyed new teams that one of them will not be together at the end of the program. Unfortunately, we have not been wrong yet.” - editors
“If you can’t quit no matter how hard you try, then you have a chance to succeed.” - Laura Fitton
“When you ask CEOs of major companies what they’re most worried about, one common answer is ‘a couple of guys in a garage somewhere.’” - David Cohen
“Companies that work just always seem to move at lightning pace.” - David Cohen
“It turns out that giving up your one obvious competitive advantage often proves to be deadly. If a startup can’t do more faster, it usually just gets dead faster.” - David Cohen
“There is an enormous difference between exciting technology and an exciting business.” - Howard Diamond
“Changes come daily, weekly, and monthly - not once a quarter or once a year.” - Ari Newman
“While it was only a detour of a week, that’s a lot in TechStars time.” - Bill Warner
“Only hope instead is to listen to their head and their heart and follow a path that they believe in, keeping some of the feedback and discarding other thoughts and ideas.” - Bill Warner
“…when presented with exponential growth, remember that people tend to drastically overestimate what will happen in the short term, but will profoundly underestimate what happens over longer time spans.” - Ryan McIntyre
“…consider life as a founder of a startup to be one big intelligence test.” - Ryan McIntyre
“Remember that human nature has a tendency to admire complexity, but to reward simplicity.” - Ben Huh
“If you are innovating, you actually don’t know what your product needs to be. Furthermore, your customers don’t either. No one does.” - Ajay Kulkarni and Andy Cheung
“Nearly every startup must find ways to differentiate itself from competitors.” - Raj Aggarwai
“What is the thing that matters most to making progress right now?” - Dick Costolo
“…you cannot create the need.” - Michael Zeissner
“Opportunity cost can kill a startup.” - Michael Zeissner
“It’s easy to feel trapped by these handcuffs but if you change your perspective just a little, you might find that you hands are bound by nothing more than air, and the future is yours to create.” - Eric Marcoullier
“There is one thing that the hundred of founders I meet each year have in common, and that is that their plan is wrong. Sometimes it’s the big things, sometimes it’s the little things, but the plan is always wrong.” - Rob Hayes
“…we have to strike while the iron is hot! My experience is that this is rarely true.” - David Brown
“Take the time to get it right and you’ll find that those competitors might not be as close as you think.” - David Brown
“Seeking the perfect combo: ‘a smart-ass team with a kick-ass product in a big-ass market.’” - Jeff Clavier
“The moral of the story is easy: When you follow your heart, good things usually happen. We have a very short stay on this spinning orb and I believe life is way too short to be stuck in a career that doesn’t fulfill you.” - Mark Solon