13 Sentences for Startups

Paul Graham started with advice from Paul Buchheit: "it's better to make a few people really happy than a lot of people semi-happy," and ended with "understand your users," as the most important advice. In between, he developed a set of 11 other things that are crucial for running a startup. My favorite is "get ramen profitable".

"Ramen profitable" means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. It's not rapid prototyping for business models (though it can be), but more a way of hacking the investment process. Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors. It's also great for morale.

(via lonegunman)