How to Get Started, Doing Things that Don't Scale, and Press (How to Start a Startup 2014: 8)

TL;DR

Three founders (DoorDash, Teespring, Twitch) share early-stage startup tactics. Stanley emphasizes testing hypotheses with minimal experiments and launching quickly (DoorDash's landing page in an hour). Walker argues that unscalable actions (personal user acquisition, manual customer service, speed over clean code) are critical advantages.

Key insights

• Treat startup ideas as experiments; test demand with the cheapest, fastest prototype possible.
• Doing things that don't scale (e.g., founders delivering food, manual customer support) builds expertise and is a competitive advantage early.
• First users are always the hardest to get; there is no silver bullet for user acquisition.