A Blog by Gutata

I’m not one with much entrepreneurial experience, so I’ll try to summarize what others (such as Paul Graham and 37 Signals) say you need to do to start your own web business.

First, you need an idea. Any idea works, although some are better than others. Start with something that you enjoy. Something you love working on. If you do this, you’ll want to work on it everyday. As long as you make incremental improvements, you’ll slowly achieve your goal, even when you don’t think you’ll have enough time to work on it.

Next, stick with an idea that solves a personal problem, a problem that really irks you. If the problem is so personally troublesome, you’ll want to use your application yourself. Your application will become better with you as the end user.

Third, do something simple. As 37 Signals says, there’s enough complexity in the world and you probably don’t have the resources to tackle the harder problems. Work on the simpler problems where you can put something together that is really polished. Let the big boys (Microsoft, Google, etc.) work on the really tough problems and fail. Also, keeping your idea simple means less complexity, less software, fewer dependencies, and fewer resources. All of this allows you to fund yourself and change quickly when the need arises.

Finally, prototype quickly. You probably don’t have a sense of what works or what doesn’t (with respect to solving your idea). Try some things, make mistakes, and reiterate. That way, you quickly refine what your idea and solution will be. A number of companies don’t end up working on the original idea. One example is Microsoft, who planned to sell programming languages, not packaged software. Another is PayPal. The founders were interested in sending information securely, not performing financial transactions.