10 Rules for Business Success

Loïc Le Meur’s 10 Rules for Business Success, from the great piece Chris Nutall wrote for the Financial Times. Some do sound counter-intuitive, that makes them even more interesting. So read, and THINK before you do them.

1. Do not wait for a revolutionary idea, the idea of your life will never happen, just focus on a simple exciting empty space you see and execute as fast as possible 
2. Share your idea as much as possible, the more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors. 
3. Build a community around you through blogging and social software 
4. Listen to your community, answer questions and build your product with their feedback, involve bloggers as early as possible and get their feedback, if negative, adapt your product permanently 
5. Gather a great team with a very different skill set than yours, look for people who are better than you without being afraid of it 
6. Be the first to recognize a problem or a mistake you have made. Never hide it behind the carpet. Address the issue in public, learn and correct it. 
7. Do not spend time on market research, but launch as early as possible in alpha or beta versions. Keep improving the product in the open. 
8. Do not focus on a large spreadsheet business plan, you are so sure it is not going to happen anyway 
9. Do not plan huge marketing, growing with your community loving the product is much more powerful 
10. Do not focus on getting rich or selling your company, focus on your users, money is a consequence of success, can’t be a goal.

Remember though that military strategy, and business strategy recommends discretion. However once an idea is close to fruition, I do agree sharing, and using social media sounds like solid advice.