>How do you pick an idea (from the many) to follow?
Well to be totally honest, I just pick the one that I would most like to do that is still doable... The important thing is to stick to it once you've decided.
>How do you pick your team and hire?
I try to find people that I know, or people that I have heard of in some way. That way I know a little bit about their track record. It is really really hard though, and if I knew the perfect answer I would be writing best-sellimg management books :-)
The thing is that you get into it expecting it to be a huge success, and if you are a good entrepreneur you really do have to believe it. Otherwise it won't work. You have to invest in it emotionally.
When things start to go wrong you just won't admit it, and think that it must be the market, the customers, the investors. Anything...
The thing is that the line between failure and success is a very fine one, and it is hard to tell which side you are on. Basically you don't know until you either failed, or succeded. Eventually you have to realise you failed, give up your baby and move on. But it is really really hard because you invested so much in it emotionally, told your friends and family about it, convinced yourself that this would make you rich and famous, and all that.
I don't think you can really prepare well for it though.
Wow, that's a bracing bit of honesty. Speaking as someone who is just at the starting stages of trying to make a go at their first entrepreneurial endeavor, I suppose it's good, if a touch disheartening to hear about what it's like to fail.
Of course I'm not going fail. My plan is perfect. Right? Right?! Crickets
I guess I can kind of empathise with the feeling, but not really.
I have found I can get past failure easier if there is less of a physical reminder of it - but was it crushing financially? did you loose anything that made you think that you couldn't go through it again?
Well it's really hard to point to one, or even a few things that made the difference. But I'll give it a shot in no particular order:
1) Build something people want now - Notice the "now". My first startup revolved around searching and indexing information (think somewhere in between Google and del.icio.us). We did this before google came onto the scene and while altavista was still the king. Nobody understood what we were trying to do because we were a few years ahead of the pack.
2) Know your tech - I don't know how much it applies here since this is a pretty technical crowd. I'm a business guy (was anyway, in the startup I'm working on now I do the damn programming myself...) and in my first venture I didn't really have a grasp of the technology involved, which led me to some bad decisions. In the second one I purposefully absorbed technical information, and had a good grasp of what was going on in the technical department. Which wasn't easy since it involved both embedded programming, Phone carrier networks, hardware development and web programming. The same probably applies if you are the tech guy - learn bookkeeping, marketing, etc. if you don't know it.
3) Luck
4) Experience - having failed the first time it was much easier to see upcoming problems and what to do about them in the second.
5) Execution - In the first startup we thought we had the greatest product on earth and that it would sell itself as soon as somebody gave us the money to build it. In the second one I had learned that what matters most is execution. Making sure investors are happy, taking care of cashflow, making and keeping schedules, bookkeeping, extuingishing fires of different sorts, etc. The idea isn't really that important - it's all about how you execute it.
6) Don't get too many ideas. In the first startup we had a great idea, and then another, and another, and another. And we lost focus. In the second we stuck with the idea, unless there was a good business reason not to.
7) People - My first startup was with a guy that was really smart, but in the end just didn't have the stamina to go through all the boring everyday stuff and all the downturns that inevitably faces a startup. This dragged the whole venture down, since I eventually ended up having to do everything. Second time around all three founders worked their asses off. Oh, and make sure you start a company with people that can do stuff you can't. If you are the tech guy do a startup with a business guy. Make sure you have as many bases covered as possible in this respect.
8) Patents only matter to investors. Give me a week and I will come up with ten ideas that can be patented. But nobody really cares about that. All customers care about is your product. And ultimately your customers will decide whether you are a success.
