Starting a startup is hard. This thread will contain some key advice I think are particularly noteworthy:

1. “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” - @paulg The first version of my product was not great, but hey, it worked.

1) Core attributes of a promising founder worth following:
- Progress/trajectory over time
- How well they lead a team &
- Make the vision happen
- Most impressed when someone is way ahead of where you thought they would be when you check up/see them a few months later.

2) Indie Makers have such a benefit of being small, fast, nimble workers in comparison to big companies.

We can easily pivot and vastly change a project of ours. We can change as we learn more about our users.

Big companies can take months/years for even the smallest of pivots.

3) Before you find a product market you can pivot your project as many times as necessary until you find something that works.

Then you only have one thing to do: scale, scale, scale.

4) Be obsessed with the little details.
- listen to every single person who uses your product
- reply to every single person who emails you about your product
- ask them what they like and do not like
- iterate your product, make changes, pivot if necessary

5) Paul Graham's (@paulg) name came up with a feeling of great admiration! Naturally! It was Paul who said:

In the early stages of a company just;
- write code
- talk/sell to customers to stress test your idea

Nothing else.

🔥 A lesson in pricing

THREAD ...

Peter Thiel spends 6 months writing down everything he knows about business. His book sells for $10.

Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger spend 6 months writing down everything they know about design. Their “book” sells for $79.

Believe it or not, both prices make perfect sense.

Thiel is selling to the masses and the masses are sensitive to price changes (price elastic).

If he raises the price to $30 they wouldn’t think twice before substituting his book for one of the many cheaper alternatives on Amazon.

Adam and Steve are selling to hardcore fans and hardcore fans are insensitive to price changes (price inelastic).

They've all been following the Twitter tips, watching the screencasts, reading the Medium posts.

In their minds, there are no substitute resources available.

When demand for your good is inelastic, you raise your price.

In the case of Adam and Steve, all the way up to $79.

As the diagram shows, a 8x price increase ($10 to $79) results in just a 2x drop in books sold (20k to 10k) and 4x more revenue (area of the rectangles).

1/ Come for the Content, Stay for the Community. A thread.