Not really. Just make sure what you are about to start is a totally new solution or 10x better than existing solution. Doesn’t take much time to answer this, it’s a yes or no question.
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Lifestyle businesses get a bad rap but they aren’t terrible. If you can build a business that pays your bills and lets you care for your loved ones, it might not matter if it’s not HUGE and transformative. Sometimes, “go and big or go home” is not for you. Maybe go ok and then go home to the family.
Peter was talking from the perspective of creating great (read memorable, transformative) businesses. The truth is that’s not for everyone.
I’m insane (or @lordbanks insists on it) so I have to achieve some scale or I’ll feel I failed at life. Doesn’t mean everyone should try that.
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That being said, I think that if you’re going to build a big business - or try to - then the idea of avoiding competition like the plague is a good one.
Facebook wasn’t the first social network. We had myspace etc… Techcabal and Techpoint were not the first tech blogs in Nigeria! . My point? Peter thiel’s suggestions in zero to one isn’t an end to itself. Am sure Slack had a competition but they didn’t go about looking for how the make their product better, they just did things differently. Was Tesla the first electric car manufacturer? Definitly not.
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(1) Never EVER take money you do not need.
(2) Never run out money.
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- Listen to people (Everyone has something to say)
- Don’t listen to anybody (We are all scared)
- Try make sense out of 1 and 2
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I thought this was legendary: http://blog.samaltman.com/startup-advice
I kinda agree with @iaboyeji on the escape competition, same gospel with Peter Thiel in his zero to one on how to build a monopoly and having last mover’s advantage.
As much as there are great businesses built every year in very competed spaces like office collaboration as @onyeka and @xolubi pointed out with Slack, I still think it pays to avoid competition and pursue big stuff. Don’t build the 100th ecommerce service. We should have close 100 of those now.
My own tip will be that, address a very important market and work with the best people you can find. Plus find an important mission.
One last thing, it is better to join a great company than to start a mediocre company. I actually really think there are too many persons starting companies that will be best joining and helping those with higher mission. Until you find a higher mission, quit your startup and join.
I believe there is a higher fulfilment in being the 100th Engineer at Google/Facebook/Dropbox/Stripe than being Cofounder/CEO in a mediocre food-ordering company. Left to me, we should have few but important companies.
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@Eftee : Why would you recommend “implementing 10% of customers’ feedback” ?
IMHO, the feedback counts and one needs to analyse the most-complained faults to ensure that it doesn’t repeat itself.
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A lot of entrepreneurial advice is contradictory and will be inapplicable to your journey / situation.
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Many startup entrepreneurs are incredibly boring people because they spend most of their life trying to be a version of somebody else…That somebody else is usually a 30-40 something-year-old white male?!@!@! [Read Zuckerberg, Page, Cheskey, Thiel, Musk etc].
Don’t make friends with these types of entrepreneurs, in-fact ignore everything they say…They will bore you to death and confuse you by speaking in riddles and cliche startup/entrepreneur speak 
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Define your version of success because comparison is the thief of joy!
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Embrace yourself, believe not just in your startup, but in yourself. Listen to less people and more music
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Back to lesson as an entrepreneurs, check out these from a couple of folks here in Dublin including myself as shared during the last Startup Weekend - http://blog.up.co/2015/04/12/swdub-mentors-share-failure-stories/
In this quote i disagree a bit, like @henryC said some innovative product comes from and existing ideas or existing companies like that of facebook but the diffrence is that for the set of companies they started very small, fail fast, and scaled up, eating up their competitors asses. My advice to innovative products based on an existing product/idea by Techpreneurs start small + fail fast + scale up and your competitors will be scare even with their resources and connections, but as for your new product you will have a large part of their market with time.
That was what zukerberg did.
In a team of two just the founder and co-founder without the presence of the first 10 employees Dont; Like mine.
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Put a coming soon page with a timer public when you know you are still at 50% on alpha stage of the product.
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Seek for large sum of angel especially from friends and family, your family and friends don’t know what startups are, The smaller angel you can get the better, which will be used to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
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I’d love to hear this story!
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On a side, maybe related, note: why don’t more Nigerian startup founders work together? Like, merge companies to become something larger.
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That, my friend, is the question.
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I have a pending article as related to this development.
Please take the money you do not need ooo…
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I love love love lesson 2.
There is really no point if what you’re doing is not going to make massive impact.
Do hard things. It’s harder to copy and difficulty levels gives a gap between you and the competition.
Do it faster. Everyone keeps trying to get it “just right”. Don’t, get it out, get traction and iterate on it from real customers telling you what they want.
Realize that no one is hungrier than you as the founders in the company. Don’t rely on anyone else to care to make it work as much as you. Work harder, drive it further, push longer than anyone else.
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