Say what you want about Cuban, but I love his no-BS approach. Here are his 12 rules for startups, and it’s hard to argue with any of them. He comes out of the gate with two I find to be the cornerstone of every successful business:

1. Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.

2. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.

Read the whole thing over at Entrepreneur.com.

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More links:

MIPRO Consulting main website.

MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.

About this blog.

We weren’t making a plan; I’ve never written a business plan. I’ve never written a business plan with any of my start-ups. With Meetup, I sketched, maybe wrote a few FAQs about how it would operate. We built it, went live, and people started using it. Then VCs called. Investors would rather invest in the real thing—with an obvious evolution path—than words.

—Meetup’s Scott Heiferman in a Wall Street Journal Q&A

(Via SvN)

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management) and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More quotes to read.

David over at SvN with an interesting bit about how companies, especially young ones, tend to worry about things that are immaterial to the company’s particular place in time:

To make something of yourself, you can only worry about so much. There’s a certain set of worry slots available and if you fill them with all these possibly-maybe concerns, there won’t be any left for things that’ll matter tomorrow.

Another way of saying that from a mental preoccupation standpoint, you need to choose your battles.

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MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More business posts.

Forbes’s Marc Kramer with an excellent list of questions that hearken any business’s fundamental reasons for existing.  The questions themselves are below, but you should definitely read Kramer’s whole piece.

1. What is our purpose for existing?
2. Who is our target customer?
3. Why does anyone need what we’re selling?
4. If there is a need, is it enough to support a profitable business?
5. What were our competitors up to?
6. Can you reduce expenses – without harming the product?
7. Do we have the right leadership?
8. Do we have the right employees?
9. How will we continue to drive revenue?
10. How are your employees holding up?

Full article here.

Paul Graham went back and asked the founders of all the startups he’s funded about what surprised them about starting a startup.  In other words, what did they wish they knew going in that they do now?  The list is intriguing.  Here are the biggest:

1. Be careful with cofounders.
2. Startups take over your life.
3. It’s an emotional roller-coaster.
4. It can be fun.
5. Persistence is the key.
6. Think long-term.
7. Lots of little things.
8. Start with something minimal.
9. Engage users.
10. Change your idea.
11. Don’t worry about competitors.
12. It’s hard to get users.
13. Expect the worst with deals.
14. Investors are clueless.
15. You may have to play games.
16. Luck is a big factor.
17. The value of community.
18. You get no respect.
19. Things change as you grow.

Perhaps the best quip is this one, under the Persistence Is The Key category:

I’ve been surprised again and again by just how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence.

Read the whole article here.  It’s worth your time.

Jason Fried:

Making money takes practice, just like playing the piano takes practice. No one expects anyone to be any good at the piano unless they’ve put in lots practice. Same with making money. The more you practice the better you get. Eventually making money is as easy for you as piano is for someone who’s been playing for 10 years.

This is one of the reasons I encourage entrepreneurs to bootstrap instead of taking outside money. On day one, a bootstrapped company sets out to make money. They have no choice, really. On day one a funded company sets out to spend money. They hire, they buy, they invest, they spend. Making money isn’t important yet. They practice spending, not making.

Bootstrapping puts you in the right mindset as an entrepreneur. You think of money more as something you make than something you spend. That’s the right lesson, that’s the right habit, the right imprint on your business brain. You’re better off as an entrepreneur if you have more practice making money than spending money. Bootstrapping gives you a head start.

As usual, some nicely crystallized advice for startups/entrepreneurs.