the hours

One the problems I have always been concerned about is the hours you need to put in. When you are developing the software there are really no limits to the start and end hours, and when on a role you just don't want to stop (if software you wake up the next day and things all go wrong - it's now accepted practice).

The question is, do you need to put in 7 day, 18 hour days? What do you do when you have a family - does that preclude you from creating a startup?

The answer i always come to is to consider that disruptive innovation almost always comes from small companies, or niches of a larger enterprise. The larger companies have all the man hours in the world, but they don't have the focus. I recently heard Paul Graham say that a good software hacker can be worth 100 times a poor one. So make yourself believe you are now a 100 string company. Putting in a 10 hour shift can give you the equivalent of 10 days work - this is very true as the project gets going. I have been in many an enterprise where the process is so slow as to be painful - i once did something in 3 hours which had two weeks planned against it.

I tend to work based on inspiration and i feel that is key to most startup's success. We all know the chances of failure and success so the more you can inspire yourself the better. Use blogs, sites and news to inspire yourself - "That is just wrong", "They just don't GET it" and so on. Remember, if your idea is really that good then maybe everyone else is doing it wrong (so say Google).

Also focus. Select something no-one else is doing. Of course the irony is that there is always someone doing the same thing as you, and quite often they have more money. So as discussed yesterday, make sure you focus and get something out. The market always knows best and you can spend your highly productive time working on the things people actually want!