Founding a startup: what are the first steps (other than building the product)?

I'm 9 months in to my startup (consultancy/product combo for enterprise), probably 2 weeks from having the first signed deal. I quit my day job June 2012. Then I wasted 6 months spinning my wheels.

What got me back on track? patio11 (http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/) and Amy Hoy (http://unicornfree.com/). The way they think about these things is a much better match for how I think about the world than say Eric Ries (that said, great book, and anyone involved in building a gragh db has my whole-hearted admiration.)

Key things for me are:

-holy shit, you can charge $x0,000/week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4805091)? What am I doing wrong? What can I do to charge that much? No seriously, what can I do to charge that much? Thinking about that pretty solid for about a month changed the way I view things (both consultancy and product).

- if you're doing it right, you're customers will tell you "shut up and take my money" (http://unicornfree.com/2012/shut-up-and-take-my-money-or-how...). I started off with an idea and was looking for a customer. That wasn't fun. Starting with a customer and solving their problems is much nicer.

Also: I'm reliably told that you don't need to quit your day job if your smart about it. That said, doing this full time is pretty sweet.

Don't build anything yet.

Go out and talk to your potential customers. If you don't know who those are, figure that out first. Learn about their problems, their pain points, how you could fix things for them.

Then start with the simplest of simple products. Could be a simple Google Form that submits info to a Google Doc spreadsheet. Or maybe it's a barebones HTML one-page site with a single feature of your idea.

Don't build anything complex until money is coming in the door.

We wasted almost a whole summer on matchist (http://matchist.com/talent) building features we thought our customers would want, only to talk to half of them after and realize we should have been talking to them the whole time. Needless to say, we'll never do that again. :)

I got a better idea - figure out the goal of your startup before you do anything.

Do you want the freedom of owning/running your own business? Do you want to make lots of money? Do you want to experiment with new technology? Do you want the satisfaction of building something from start to finish, making all the decision?

I think that is my biggest regret in building my startup - I did not have a clearly defined outcome. Sure I want to make tons of money, add new skills, learn ruby on rails, build something from scratch, add something to my resume, learn how to start a business. But I think more than anything I wanted to build something and see it to the end.

I did make some compromises along the way but building something and showing it off as my own has been the biggest rewards.

If money was the most important thing I should have done things a lot different, i.e. talk to customers early. Do you want to build something you believe in even if people tell you it's not a good idea (I did) or do you want to fill a need in the marketplace? Figure out what your highest priority BEFORE you start building your startup. That is the best advice I can give you, considering that I've been flailing away at my idea for 2.5 years, on and off.

I would do whatever I can to reduce the risks of it failing. You first need to identify the things that could keep you from succeeding and eliminate those obstacles. With an app, the most risk is probably product market risk. There's probably very little technology risk. You need to build something that people want. The only way to do that is to show it to people and see if they want it. If you're waiting in line for something, you can show your app to people around you. Watching people use your app also helps a lot with iterating. You have some concept of how your apps works, but other people may not. Also marketing to a specific target niche to gain traction. A good book for this is Crossing The Chasm.

Talk to people, ASAP. Hone an elevator pitch, go to a coffee shop, and pitch strangers the idea in exchange for buying them a cup of coffee.

Tell them it's your "crazy cousin's" idea, and that you don't think he should quit his full time job for it, but you wanted to see what other people thought of it before you got back to him. (This will make it so that they'll be more honest with you. If they know it's your idea...they'll feel bad telling you it sucks).

Are people giving you their business cards and asking you to email them when it launches? That's the litmus test, make it so that people want what you're pitching so bad that they GOTTA HAVE IT TODAY.

Otherwise, don't even bother building it.

It's been said below, but the first thing we did was throw up a 1-page "sign up" site that included a 1 question survey as part of the process. It has told us a TON. The data we've been able to capture has given us all the direction we need to figure out where to go next. We're now working on getting v1 up and running based on what we learned. And then we'll do it all again.

Start talking with your intended target market to see what their thoughts are about the idea. Make a mockup and a landing page (Visuals help tremendously). Show both of these to your intended target market. Also reading books like The Startup Owner's Manual by Steve Blank and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. (I know everybody say's read these books but they really are helpful)

I would start making sales. You don't need much else. Product delivery can be arranged once the check clears.

The biggest and best advice, is to sort out your relationship/responsibilities with your partner in the business.

Make it clear from the start and don't argue about it later.