You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly.

The thirteenth search engine- and without all the features of a web portal, most people thought that was pointless.

A related advantage of mission oriented ideas, is that you yourself will be dedicated to them.

Many of the best YC companies have had phenomenally small number of employees for their first year, sometimes none besides the founders.

AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.

The tenth social network, and limited only to college students with no money, also terrible. Myspace had won.