Paul Graham’s essay Startups in 13 Sentences is a great resource for any startup looking for a recipe for success. How does Openplaces stack up against his 13 points? I ran us through the list.
1. Pick good cofounders.
Paul writes: “Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate.” I agreed to join Openplaces because I thought hitching my boat to Frederic Lalonde’s oceanliner was a good idea. It’s all about the track record: before Openplaces, Fred raised $7 million in venture capital for his last startup, Newtrade Technologies, and then sold it to Expedia, where he stayed on and signed up the likes of Marriot, Hilton, Hyatt, and many others to their Direct Connect platform. He then proceeded to help Expedia acquire TripAdvisor, Hotels.com, and China’s #1 OTA, eLong. He’s been on both sides of the acquisition fence; I can’t think of anyone more qualified to run a startup. Meanwhile, Joost Ouwerkerk helped build and implement Newtrade and Expedia’s hotel supply connectivity engine–if anyone understands building large scale web applications, it’s him.
Pick good cofounders? Check.
2. Launch fast.
Openplaces.org has been live since March, but had been in stealth mode for over a year. Why so long? In the words of our CEO: “mixing Information Retrieval with Grid Computing is kinda hard.” So while we didn’t launch right away, we definitely agree with Paul when he writes: “Launching teaches you what you should have been building.” Iterate iterate iterate is our mantra, and releases with new features and bug fixes are getting pushed out the door all the time.
3. Let your idea evolve.
The idea is simple: make planning a trip suck less. We do it through building better search technology and user generated content. With such a simple idea I can’t say it evolves a lot, but the implementation of that idea is changing all the time.
4. Understand your users.
We almost have as many analytics people as we have developers. Why? Because we’re obsessed with our users! (In a good way.) We’re also our own target audience–frustrated trip planners. Planning a trip is supposed to be fun, we’re trying to make sure it is.
5. Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent.
I think we fail on this one–we pretty much expect our users to feel ambivalent about us at this stage. Our product isn’t where we want it to be, but we’re getting there.
6. Offer surprisingly good customer service.
We’re working on it! Most of the team is available on Twitter, but we’re often too busy to respond right away.
7. You make what you measure.
We’re metrics obsessed, no question (see item #4). We spend just as much time testing as we do iterating. We’re test obsessed.
8. Spend little.
Some startups are famous for their foosball tables, offsite retreats, and brand new Macbook Pros for every employee. But that’s not us. On my first day an Ubuntu box was waiting for me, put together with spare computer parts. We’re lean and mean.
9. Get ramen profitable.
Canada is a “hightech ramen heaven.” We have lower labour costs. And there’s the magical SR&ED Tax Incentive Program. Writing software in Canada is consistently competitive to outsourcing to India.
10. Avoid distractions.
There are no side projects going on at Openplaces. Our VC doesn’t ask for monthly reports. We don’t focus on “startup partnerships” that rarely pan out. We don’t travel to shows and conferences. We don’t have a controller or an HR Manager. We don’t even do weekly team meetings. We’re 100% focused.
11. Don’t get demoralized.
We hire based on two criteria: smarts, and the ability to get stuff done. If you’re constantly getting stuff done, it’s hard to get demoralized. Especially if you’re smart about it.
12. Don’t give up.
That’s just not in our DNA. Besides, what else is there to do except a startup?
13. Deals fall through.
This is why we don’t focus on deals right now, we need a great product first.
great post, jeff!
It's true, our internet marketing team definitely has their heads buried in analytics. But it's also important to state that in order to understand our consumers, we must first ATTRACT consumers (reach). We are always throwing new promotional ideas out there to gain MORE users so we can refine and tweak Openplaces, as well as learn from a larger audience.
great post, jeff!
It's true, our internet marketing team definitely has their heads buried in analytics. But it's also important to state that in order to understand our consumers, we must first ATTRACT consumers (reach). We are always throwing new promotional ideas out there to gain MORE users so we can refine and tweak Openplaces, as well as learn from a larger audience.
It's tough to do proper analytics without real reach! Good point. But we also don't want to scale our traffic too quickly, ie, see the closing point: “we need a great product first”.
It's tough to do proper analytics without real reach! Good point. But we also don't want to scale our traffic too quickly, ie, see the closing point: “we need a great product first”.