Dave Shen

I agree with your sentiments, and have also been frustrated by this. I don't have answers but can only offer apologies and rationalizations: 1) I think the smart phone mismash disaster was largely because of carrier's keeping phones lock down. Carrier's wanted a cut of every transaction so kept locking out features that could jeopardize their place as a gatekeeper and toll collector. Apple--high on success of iPod--had enough mojo to get AT&T to play ball. After Apple broke the carrier lock down the other carriers had to follow suit. 2) Finance is as much sales and marketing as any other business (perhaps even more). VC's want to buy a company and sell it for a profit (hopefully quickly). Once they see ABC startup being sold for $100 million, they'll start looking for the copycat DEF startup to buy a piece at $10 million that they can flip for $20 million. VCs have to look at the technical risk as well as the financial risk and arguably the financial risk trumps all. E.g. say you handle all the technical risks, come up with a great company/product, but the VC finds out there is no market for them to sell your company. The financial risk trumped the technical risk. What does the VC do now? Hold onto the company for a few years and running it as a cash flow positive business until the market turns? That's what I'd personally do, but I'm not a VC.... and VC's aren't in the conglomerate business (running cash flow positive companies like Berkshire Hathaway,…

The article is is too vague and its advice unbalanced. Sure, you don't want to JUST be ticking off programming related todo list items. Yes, you need to do your marketing (adwords,blogging,emailing,etc.) and you need to watch your burn rate (fiscal management). However, the best marketing is having a great product. The users you do get to sign up you need to keep and in turn have them then do word of mouth. How do you do that with not-so-special software? I don't like the analogy either as there are not enough details. A lot of restaurant startups I have noticed that tank think quality is everything. The have a two-month burn rate and need to be smash hit by the third (I am speculating). I don't want to contradict what I just said about web application quality but you got to balance and hang around for at least certain duration. I like this article on the subject of duration http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/lasting_two_years.shtml. IMHO 30% Marketing. 30% Fiscal management and creativity. 40% Continued application development and enhancement.