Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

by Jessica Livingston

They all were determined to build things that worked. In fact, I'd say determination is the single most important quality in a startup founder. If the founders I spoke with were superhuman in any way, it was in their perseverance. That came up over and over in the interviews.

Try to have a good cofounder. I think it's all about people, and, if you are doing it completely alone, it's really hard. It's not impossible, in particular if you are a loner and introverted type, but it's still really hard.

Maybe somebody has a need and, in our case, we had a need. That's what triggered the idea. Sometimes ideas are born out of necessity: you solve a problem for yourself, and you hopefully solve it for a number of other people too.

if we're not failing at something on a regular basis, we're just not trying hard enough.

So I changed my spreadsheet to say $50 million. And they said, "OK, that's pretty interesting."

para mostrarselo a nando

In short, I'm nervous about everything. If you're doing a startup and you're relaxed, you should be very worried.

Things never work out right the first time. You've always got to do it two or three times to get it right. And things always go wrong. So persistence is the key to success.