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How to Decrease the Odds That Your Startup Fails

Both Sides of the Table

Most of this advice boils down to an argument in favor of basic planning before starting a company or raising money. In many ways the fact that it has become so cheap to start a company and relatively cheap to raise angel/seed money that we as an industry have gotten lazy on basic planning. Incumbent Strengths & Weaknesses.

Startup 150
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How to Start a Startup

www.paulgraham.com

March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard ComputerSociety.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start withgood people, to make something customers actually want, and to spendas little money as possible. Usually you get seed money from individual rich people called"angels."

Startup 105
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From Nothing To Something. How To Get There.

techcrunch.com

the meebo that launched in 2005 was a group effort – the idea primarily came from sandy being a huge IMer and having trouble getting on IM when we were working on earlier ideas in elaine’s apartment! For both companies, the initial traction enabled raising seed money to get them to a traditional VC investment.)