One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.

To get the very best people- they have a lot of great options, and so it can easily take a year to recruit someone.

You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.

As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company.

Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large companies.

Really dig into projects people have worked on and call references; that is another thing that first time founders like to skip.

The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.