The Next Web - Tom Preston-Werner

Next interesting speaker at TNW was GitHu ‘s Tom Preston-Werner, who’s business was slightly too geeky for me to actually understand (something about sharing code online…). But he had some very interesting observations on how to start a business as a side project (which I found incredibly interesting because I am running my own bootstrapped side project called mysocialnews.com).
So here they go:
1. Stealth mode just doesn’t work. You need to share everything you do with as many people as possible. Get out in the open with your idea and the project, because if you don’t you will miss out on valuable feedback and you will end up going down all the wrong alleys. (
2. Bring in another person with the same mind set. Go to meetups to meet people – but even more important: go drinking with your potential partner, because only under the influence of alcohol will you really understand your future (potential) partner
3. Bootstrap as long as possible. A lot of people are too focused on bringing in VC’s early in their startups, but they forget that with external funding you need to serve two masters: The VC’s and the customers. If you bootstrap you only need to serve the customers who are (after all) your customers.
4. Hire only the best people. It seems obvious, but you really need to understand that you should be able to work with these people for the rest of your life.
Good advice. Indeed!!!