The document provides lessons learned for starting a project or company, including to make something you would use yourself, know your audience, and have clear goals. It advises respecting beginners, documenting work, and expecting challenges like resistance, complaints, and conspiracy theories. It also notes the difficulties of open source business models, quality assurance, naming, and managing a startup that gains traction.

1. Lessons Learned

2. Don't make something
you don't use yourself

3. Know who you're
making it for

4. Know what you want out
of it

5. Make projects,
not platforms

6. Respect the intelligence
of the beginner

7. Experts are not the best
advisors when you want to
make tools for beginners

8. Good hardware, good
software, good explanation
and generous users make a
great project

9. Document what you
make

10. Change is painful

11. Expect resistance

12. ...and conspiracy
theories...

13. Never ascribe to malice
what can be explained
with stupidity.

14. If nobody complains
you’re doing something
wrong

15. Including people
is hard
(but necessary)

16. If you are five people in
three different countries,
you are a multinational
company

17. If you're not prepared
for someone else to
adapt your work,
don't share it online

18. If you're not prepared
for someone else to
improve your work,
don't share it online

19. If you're not prepared
for someone else to
clone your work,
don't share it online

20. If you're not prepared
for someone else to
trash your work,
don't share it online

21. Organizing a startup is a
lot harder once the idea
has traction

22. You can't run a startup
part-time

23. Mistakes will get
institutionalized

24. Pick your name carefully

25. *duino is not creative

26. Especially if your board
is not even compatible

27. Register every domain
that you can

28. Hire a lawyer, you don’t
know why but she does

29. Be careful when
somebody is just too
eager to help you

30. Even your friends might
become a competitor

31. It’s good to be friends,
better if it’s in writing

32. Open source software
doesn't necessarily
translate into a
business model...

33. Open source hardware
has to.

34. If a defective board
makes it through QA...

35. ...it will be delivered to
the most vocal
customer...

36. ...who will publish
electron microscope
pictures of it...

37. ...pointing at every atom
that is out of place...

38. ...Twittering that every
board you ever made is
seriously flawed...

39. ..whose follower will
robotically RT and in 8
hours someone will declare
your company doomed.

40. Your most important
customers are not the
most vocal ones

41. You might need to travel
the world to meet them

42. but, most of all

43. Don’t let the fact that
you don’t know what
you’re doing stop you