I can't say this enough, or nearly as well:

    Try to ride some powerful existing waves vs. just creating new waves.  Find some big and important industry trends and ride on top of them.  It is very very hard to create your own industry trends.  Be careful about getting out too far ahead of any wave. 

It is where I made a major error - getting way out in front of the wave.

I agree. I think the article basically summarizes what we have all learned (the hard way) ... ahead of your competitors but never too far ahead of your customers.

This is a fantastic article summarizing what I have learned and what I tried to write on my own (http://www.startupforless.com).

I am humble by it.

Basically it boils down to the following ...

1) Create "value", not "valuation" 2) Be a "surrogate" customer, live their lives and adopt their persona 3) Be frugal, use your VC money as working capital and treat it as the last money you ever going to have and need 4) ... and more

--Denny--

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't sign comments, especially with your url. They're already signed with your username. If other users want to learn more about you, they can click on it to see your profile.

Check this out

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95764

I find it a very interesting usage, too bad he didn't tell me more about it.

Thanks. I am from the old World.

That'll learn ya.

As a former startup CEO, I think Jason pointed some really good pointers on priorities and what it takes to make it. I'd like to see more articles like this from other CEO's.

Learning #1: "learning" is not a noun. You can't have "learnings". You can have knowledge. You can learn things. Saying you have "learnings" makes you sound retarded.

Part of speech in English is determined by word order. If you attach "s" to "learning" it simply forces it to become a noun. It's not proper in the books, but neither was "Google" a verb 10 years ago.

While I agree that you're right -- English is not an especially logical language, and one that is quite fluid -- I think what I'm really hoping is that ugly corporatisms like "learnings" and "planful" don't get their ugly roots very deep. I'm also arguing that "learnings" is unnecessary (as is "pushback" and "monetizing") because we already have words for the idea.

Learnings? From looking at his site, it doesn't appear that english is his second language. Lots of stuff on valleywag about jobster, e.g. http://valleywag.com/tech/startup-hell/jobsters-death-march-...

Perhaps we should focus on the message and not messager (sp??).

--Denny--

Note: English is my second language.

Having worked at Jobster, I can safely say that 95% of the stuff on Valleywag about Jason is just plain wrong or horribly exaggerated. Pointing people there is the startup equivalent of pointing people to the National Enquirer.

I used to love the National Enquirer ;-) I love Valleywag too.