Dharmesh Shah’s tips for Student Entrepreneurs

来自onstartups.com 的 Dharmesh Shah在MIT分享了一些创业的心得，这家伙刚为他的hubspot搞定17Million的投资。

总结和扩充如下：

点子不太好没关系：点子会在实践中越炼越好。在你投身进入创业之前，不可能搞定完美的计划。别浪费太多时间在商业计划书上。开始运作之后，点子自然会改进，甚至变得与最初完全不同。

别老想着找风投：一开始先好好做点东西出来，不然拉风投也是白搭。在有价值的产品出来之前，拿到风投的机会非常低。安心做好产品，吸引到客户。只要有人愿意花钱购买你的产品，你就成功了。

目标合适就好：不是每个人都能做到年收入10亿美金这种规模的 ，上次David Heinemeier Hansson的演讲里也提到这个问题。成为下一个YouTube或下一个Facebook的几率是1/100000000000，而成为下一个37signals的几率是1/100000，为什么不做下一个37signal呢，一年赚几十个Million不是很好么？

找到合适的合作伙伴：学生的最大好处，是很容易找到志同道合、目的单纯的伙伴。这是一个成功的startup不可缺少的因素。创业公司一开始往往太关注资金，却忽视了一个事实：团队才是最关键的因素。等公司开始运作之后，就会明白这个真理。

别高估创业的风险：第一次创业的公司90％都会失败，但是这并不意味着创业者本人的失败。对于即将毕业的学生，尽管放弃了大公司的稳定工作，但是经过一次创业之后，会有更高的几率获得事业上的成功；只要他愿意被人雇佣，也会比普通学生更容易找到好工作。找到一个创业计划，立即开始吧！

原文如下：
1. It’s alright if your idea is sort of crappy: Most startup ideas start out kind of crappy. The good news is that once you get started, you’ll start learning more and your ideas will get better. But you have to get into the game and start doing things in order for your idea/startup to get better. Don’t sit on the sidelines waiting for the perfect idea. Get started early and improve the idea.

2. Don’t try to raise VC funding too early: Most student entrepreneurs (or recent grads) with early stage companies should not try and raise venture capital. The odds of succeeding are low and for most, it’ll be a waste of time and energy. Instead, work on the product/offering and work on finding some great people you’d love to do something spectacular with.

3. If you do hit the VC circuit…remember that there are two possible outcomes: One. You spend months being miserable and depressed instead of doing what you love (working on the company). Or two, you spend months being miserable and depressed and you get some cash.

4. Modest goals are just fine. Too many folks think that startups are all about buying your ticket in the $1 billion outcome lottery (and be the next Facebook or YouTube). You don’t have to do that. I think it’s sub-optimal for a first-time entrepreneur. Look for successive wins — even if they’re modest. The only people that tell you that you have to build a huge company are VC investors. The reason is that they need all of their entrepreneurs building gigantic businesses (so that at least one or two will actually do that and give them the gains they need). The example I used: If this is your first company (you haven’t had a “liquidity event” yet), then shooting for a 10% chance at a $50 million outcome (E.V. = $5 million) is much better than a 1% chance at a $1 billion outcome (E.V. = $10 million). The reason is that for you personally, the value of the extra millions above a certain point diminishes quickly. Trust me.

5. Find Your Co-Founders: Student entrepreneurs are in a unique position in their careers where not only are they starry-eyed optimists (we all should be), they’re around other starry-eyed optimists. Find the best and brightest of these folks and start something. Join up!

6. You don’t need a business plan: Nobody cares about business plans. Investors won’t read them. They take a lot of time. Just work on the idea, work on the team and work on getting customers (or understanding why you’re not getting customers).

7. Don’t overestimate the risk: If you’re just about to graduate (or have recently graduated), you might tend to overestimate the actual risk in a startup. Sure, it’s not going to pay you what you’d get at a big company, but the odds of you being able to find some job later, if things just go horribly are pretty high.

8. GET STARTED NOW: It doesn’t take much effort to get a company started (though granted, actually growing one successfully is non-trivial). But, the first step is really, really easy and there’s no reason not to take it. Your best lessons, ideas and opportunities will start showing up after you’ve started a company. So go do it.

This entry was posted on May 25th, 2008 and is filed under , startup, student, tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.