Startup Notes provides guidance on planning for startups in decades, thinking in years, working in months, and living in days. It also discusses basic startup principles from Harvard Business Review including failing fast and thinking big. The document then discusses how to build a 20 Mile March for a startup by constraining growth, preparing for risk, focusing on execution, and achieving milestones consistently over an appropriate timeline.

1. Startup Notes
Plan in decades.
Think in years.
Work in months.
Live in days.
Valid but source not known.

2. Data Information Analysis Insights Decisions
Challenge
Question
Hypothesis
Data
Model
Statistical
Significance
Basic startup principles from HBR

3. Fail Fast It’s Cheap
Huge
Problem
Breakthrough
Technology
Radical
Solution
How Google x works.

4. Great by Choice
Fanatic
Discipline
Empirical
Creativity
Productive
Paranoia
• A 20 Mile March uses performance
markers that delineate a lower bound of
acceptable achievement.
• A 20 Mile March has self-imposed
constraints.
• A 20 Mile March is tailored to the
enterprise and its environment. There’s
no all-purpose 20 Mile March for all
enterprises.
• A 20 Mile March lies largely within
your control to achieve.
• A 20 Mile March has a Goldilocks time
frame, not too short and not too long
but just right. Make the timeline of the
march too short, and you’ll be more
exposed to uncontrollable variability;
make the timeline too long, and it loses
power.
• A 20 Mile March is designed and self-
imposed by the enterprise, not imposed
from the outside or blindly copied from
others.
• A 20 Mile March must be achieved with
great consistency. Good intentions do
not count.
• Build Cash Reserves and Buffers -
The 10x companies didn’t wait for the
storm to hit. They knew it was
coming…they just didn’t know when.
So they prepared carefully and
methodically for its arrival.
• Bound Risk- “They constrained
growth in the 20 Mile March. They
fired bullets before firing cannonballs.
• Zoom in and Zoom out - The 10x
companies possessed a “dual-lens
capability” in which they could zoom
out to see changes in the environment
and assess risk and then zoom in to
focus on the superior execution of
plans and objectives.
• A bullet is low cost (the size and cost of the bullet
grows as the organization grows)
• A bullet is low risk (there are minimal consequences if
the bullet goes awry)
• A bullet is low distraction (it will not pull the
organization as a whole off focus)
From the book great by choice.

5. Project
• Pros: Will start from the problem. They are likely to talk about their customers and what problems they are facing. They will then briefly mention the product, putting emphasis on the features that are most valued by their
customers or beta testers.
1. What are we doing?
• Pros: See a real need that their expertise is able to solve for a large enough group of people to justify putting in 10,000 hours of their life. Are aware of the high startup failure rate but have estimated that their competitive
advantage and product-market fit makes the risk acceptable.
2. Why are you doing it?
• Pros: You will find them in a year working on the same problem, likely with the same team. They may have pivoted and be trying to solve the problem differently. They will proudly share what they have learned and
whatever little progress they have made.
3. How long have you been doing this?/What were you doing before?
• Pros: Most often have solid industry experience and understand who their customers are. They have talked to many potential users and have signed up a shortlist long enough to justify creating the product.
4. How many users do you have?
• Pros: Will give you clear, business-specific milestones. Are likely to provide a timeline, with room for ambiguity. Will know what this ambiguity depends upon. Will know and share the numbers that they know.
5. What are your next milestones?
• Pros: Have considered several monetization options and know their pros and cons. They have talked to potential stakeholders involved (customers, advertisers, business partners etc.) and gauged their interest.
6. How do you plan to monetize?
• Pros: Pros will never proclaim they are unique. First of all, they will mention the way their customers are currently dealing with the problem. Then they will compare it to their product. After that they will mention how they
were looking for competitors and what the search returned.
7. Who are your competitors?
• Pros: Choose the events they visit strategically. If you ask them to name the last 5 events they have been to, they are likely to be bigger conferences or relevant meetups spread over the last few months.
8. What were the last 5 startup events you went to? / Which was the last cool startup event that you missed?
• Pros: Know what they need to do, when and how much it costs.
9. Have you ever paid wages to someone else?
• Pros: Only keep the team members that are committed. Discuss commitments clearly and let go of people who do not deliver. List mentors as advisors, not team members.
10. Have you fired anybody yet?
• Pros: Listen to advice from every more or less knowledgeable person. View the advice in the context of who the advisor is, whether he is speaking from experience and what proof he has to give this advice.
11. Who are your advisors?
• Pros: Understand the concept of competitive advantage. Talk about their expertise, access to market, unique technology or customer understanding.
12. What do you understand about this that nobody else does?

6. Pitch

7. Competition
Attention
EmployeesFunding
Customers
That comes after surviving the
other types of competition long
enough to have a product out in a
validated market. Most startups
will never have the luxury of
reaching this stage.
Because there are more products
and services that ever before,
there is a significant chance that
nobody will learn about what
you’re doing.
That’s perhaps the closest thing to
a startup league competition.
Investors must decide where to
put their money, and often choose
among startups that are unaware
of each other’s existence.
If your startup makes backup
cameras for bicycles (“parallel
parking your bike is now easier
than ever with BikeSeatCam!“),
you want to hire the people lots of
other companies in completely
unrelated markets also look after.

8. Launch Plan
• Niche Financial Model
• Niche Evaluation
• Product Selection
• Product Architecture
• Functional Design
• Database Design
• Graphic Design
• HTML/CSS
• UI Development (Ajax/JS)
• Payment integration
• Business Tier Development
• Database Development
• Creating Unit Tests
• Creating UI Tests
• Manual Testing
• Debugging
• User Documentation
• Creating Profiles & Menus
• Setting up Hosting
• Setting up Mail Server
• Setting up Analytics
• SEO Optimization
• Create Marketing Media (Images, Videos)
• Launch Marketing Plan
• Press Releases

9. Net Promoter Score
Sort Customers
•Why would you recommend
to a friend
•Promoters, passive,
detractors
Close the loop
•Customers to front line, managers & execs
Make loyalty top
priority
•Line of sight for all
employees
•Celebrate loyalty champions
•Link NPS with financials

10. Create a Dashboard
Activations
•+30%
•From last Monday
Active Users
•-5%
•From last Monday
Orders
•+8%
•From last Monday
GPV (Group
Performance
Value)
•1,092,134
(Transactions)
•$758,003 (Total)
•$3.36 (Average
Value)
•From last Monday
Measure how many of your staff look at it every day
Similar to Uber and AirBnB Dashboard.