TechCrunch:

1C Corp or S Corp or LLC?
C-Corp if you ever want to take on investors or sell to another company.

2) What state should you incorporate in?
Delaware.

3) Should founders vest?
Yes, over a period of four years. On any change of control the vesting speeds up.

4) Should you go for venture capital money?
First build a product, then get a customer, then get friends-and-family money (or money from revenues which is cheapest of all) and then think about raising money. But only then. Don’t be an amateur.

5) Should you patent your idea?
Get customers first. Patent later. Don’t talk to lawyers until the last possible moment.

6) Should you require venture capitalists to sign NDAs?
No. Nobody is going to steal your idea.

7) How much equity should you give a partner?
Divide things up into these categories: manage the company; raise the money; had the idea; brings in the revenues; built the product (or performs the services). Divide up in equal portions.

8) Should you have a technical co-founder if you are not technical?
No. If you don’t already have a technical co-founder you can always outsource technology and not give up equity.

9) Should you barter equity for services?
No. You get what you pay for.

10) How do you market your app?
Friends and then word of mouth.

11) Should you build a product?
Maybe. But first see if, manually, your product works. Then think about providing it as a service. Then productize the commonly used services. Too many people do this in reverse and then fail.

12) How much dilution is too much dilution?
If someone wants to give you money, then take it. The old saying, 100 percent of nothing is worth less than 1 percent of something.

13) Do you listen to venture capitalist?
Yes, of course. They gave you money. But then don’t do anything they ask you to do.

14) What if nobody seems to be buying your product?
Then change to a service and do whatever anyone is willing to pay for using the skills you developed while making your product.

Economists:

Peter Drucker, a management guru, summed up the mood of the refuseniks: “One of the secrets of productivity is to have a very big waste-paper basket to take care of all invitations such as yours.” Creative people’s most important resource is their time—particularly big chunks of uninterrupted time—and their biggest enemies are those who try to nibble away at it with e-mails or meetings.

Inside:

新創公司成立初期，沒法做出人們想要的產品是導致公司失敗的罪魁禍首。（排名第二的則是共同創辦人間的糾紛。）要想做出人們想要的產品，只有聰明和決心是不夠的。你必須與使用者溝通，並且根據他們的回饋來改進你的點子。通常，即使你的點子原本就不錯，你還是得做出不少修改。

Inside:

年紀較長的創業家其實是常態，而不是特例。高度成長的公司創辦人平均於 40 歲時創業，他們也成立家庭有妻有兒，曾有 6-10 年為他人工作經驗，腦中有實際的點子。他們不想再看老闆臉色幹活，並且想要增加自己的財產。