These read rather like a horoscope, mainly vague or tautological statements. I'd prefer a blog post of the same length that explores just one of these ideas.
You could make a list of 50 short statements that contradict all of these:
1. Take the time to research your idea and its potential market, customers and profitability before jumping into code.
2. Knowing the basics is not enough, someone on your team is going to have to actually do the work, and they need to have a deep understanding of what's involved. Everyone can learn, and startups are a great place to learn, but you need to have a solid foundation.
3. Your technology stack will be critical to your future success. Don't skimp on this decision, research it well and don't be afraid to learn new techniques.
These are just examples, they're not necessarily any more or less true than the OP. The point is without even anecdotal evidence, they're not much help.
Number 35 has an amusing sentence: "A happy and motivated team is dangerous." :P
So I guess the main point of this article was to get some ideas down and provide a quick summary of things I've learnt in the past year. Getting feedback is helpful as it shows where I can drill down in to more detail in future posts.
For now quick responses to your points:
1. We spent a lot of time playing around with ideas, thinking big, making assumptions about what people wanted. We should have just built something small, quickly, put it out there and got feedback. Basically build a smaller MVP.
2. Knowing the basics is a good place to start - it at least makes it easier to hire the right people if you understand the role a bit.
3. Agree with your counter point. Specifically we spent a lot of time agonising over Rails or Django - when for our project there wouldn't have been much difference between the two - either would have been just as good. Getting the MVP built would have been a more constructive use of time.
Great post! Lots of interesting points, but I disagree with:
"You need to pick a large market if you want to raise venture capital investment. A business that makes £10m profit per year may look great to you, but it's small fry for a VC."
If one is making 10MM a profit a year, the company is clearly worth >= 10X the amount. I am no VC, but I would assume most VCs would be drooling over investing in such a company.
I was especially interested in this comment given the OP's choice of target market. Is the UK secondary market big enough... do you think you can take the business off the auction houses? My understanding of them is that a big part of their service, and why they might be able to justify larger fees, is the cellar valuation, all-in-one service e.g. for clearing out a dead relative's estate.
I definitely think there's something in the individual's secondary market and the competition that exists, e.g. B4W and also the online forums, prove this. It would also be nice to arrange selling of smaller quantities than cases. Just wasn't sure if that would reach the numbers in the OP's point.
There are quite a few large players in the market and many middle men between the producer and consumer. The secondary market is very inefficient - the default is to sell to a traditional merchant who will take 10-25% of the price. Auction houses take around 25% and prefer volume to single cases.
This gives us several angles to attack. Market size was a concern when talking to investors - and we took money from people who would be happy with that kind of scale.
It's a matter of whether the company can make that into a billion within a few years, and most companies who get to 10 million yearly won't ever get there either due to a business model that doesn't allow that kind of scalability or a market than can't grow that much. So I'd think VCs wouldn't be that interested if such was the case.
I too decided not to do a postgrad. I'd rather spend money starting my company than paying a university to acquire knowledge which I can get for free on the Internet. Moreover the practical experience I get from starting a business far exceed the theoretical stuff.
Sort of unrelated but I really like your Vinetrade site. This is how Bootstrap sites should be done, it's obvious enough to someone looking at it who is in the know that you used it and for someone who isn't the UX is familiar enough that they can jump right in but it's differentiated enough to keep YOUR style front and centre.
Did you do it up yourself or did you hire someone?
Thanks for the comment - we have a full time designer on the team. Bootstrap is a great base and allows us to build quickly - but it still takes a lot of work to get the customisation right.
You could make a list of 50 short statements that contradict all of these:
1. Take the time to research your idea and its potential market, customers and profitability before jumping into code.
2. Knowing the basics is not enough, someone on your team is going to have to actually do the work, and they need to have a deep understanding of what's involved. Everyone can learn, and startups are a great place to learn, but you need to have a solid foundation.
3. Your technology stack will be critical to your future success. Don't skimp on this decision, research it well and don't be afraid to learn new techniques.
These are just examples, they're not necessarily any more or less true than the OP. The point is without even anecdotal evidence, they're not much help.
Number 35 has an amusing sentence: "A happy and motivated team is dangerous." :P