The Many Hats of Building and Launching a Web Startup¶
Author¶
- Tracy Osborn (http://twitter.com/limedaring)
- Founder of WeddingLovely.com
- Considers herself a designer
Overview¶
- Quit job as designer
- Failed to found co-founder
- Learned Python
Start Out¶
- Have good runway
- 1 year+
Health and relationships
Quit your job
What is Success?¶
- Don’t want to build Google
- Just build something that makes you some money
- Take a step back
- Love your job
- Concentrate on small successes
Background¶
- Knew HTML
- Hated CS courses
- Got a job at a startup
- Got bored
- Started freelancing
Entreprenuer¶
- No cofounder is better than a bad cofounder
- Applied to YC
- Things didn’t go well
- Used Learn Python the Hard Way (http://learnpythonthehardway.org/)
- Used Django
- Six weeks later, launched
Launch as Fast as Possible¶
- You need customers
- It helps morale
- Allows you to iterate
- “Good enough”
- You can add features later
- Work on the hard parts first
- For her, programming part was hard
- It was okay to launch with bad code.
- Violates DRY.
- Got picked up by Swiss Miss with MVP
Monetization¶
- Have a plan.
- Don’t think about it later or rely on funding
Don’t Be Alone¶
- Surround yourself in a community
- Find people who are smarter than you to help you out
- No NDAs
- Inhibits advice
- People stealing your ideas is a good thing
- Use Twitter/HN to talk
- Attend Hacker Events, SuperHappyDevHouse, PyLadies
Take Shortcuts¶
- Django ecosystem is awesome
- Doesn’t know databases at all, South makes it easy
- Dotcloud makes servers easy
- Themeforest for design
- Design for Non Designers
- You can always iterate later
- Launchrock.com