I found a great post on the wepay blog that talks about the things that they “knew” but didn’t fully understand until now.  FYI: wepay is a Y-combinator startup that has raised a little under 2 million.  They cover 5 interesting points i’ve heard before:

1. If you are not full time, then you are at a huge disadvantage - I’ve heard this one before, but in all honesty i’m not sure it’s practical unless you’re coming out of school and don’t have a family.  The moment you have a mortgage, need to save money for kids, etc this usually goes out the window.  I’ve some how manage to finagle a part-time job that pays me a decent salary.  This gives me about 40% of my time to work on my startup.  It never feels like enough time, but I can definitely see an advantage to working on something full-time.  You can give it your undivided attention to things, and not be bothered by other things that would pop-up if you had to freelance/work part-time.

2. Picking the right cofounder is the most important early-stage decision you will make – I can attest to how important this is.  The two projects i’ve been involved in with a little traction has always been big fails because my cofounder’s weren’t willing to put in the time to make them work.  Eventually they just did what was safest and focused on their day-jobs.  I don’t blame them, they both had high paying salaries and one had a family to raise.  It sucks because in the end I wasted a year of my life on both endeavors.  I would say if you enter into an arrangement, that both people quit their professional day jobs to focus on the startup.  it think it’s the only for a team of people to get something off the ground.  both people have to be hungry and both have to be willing to throw everything at the startup.

3. Traction is the only thing that matters – this is pretty self evident.  in the end, if you can’t get users you’re pretty much screwed.  no users, no money, no possibility of money.  i’ve been watching http://tractionbook.com and mixergy to see if I can figure out how to get users.  In my opinion it’s the toughest part of a startup.  in the beginning, i definitely had a little bit of the ‘if i make it, they will come’.  this ain’t no field of dreams for sure! hopefully one day i’ll be able to share with everyone my first hand experience of how I really got users.  most of the stuff so far that i’ve seen has been sort of this fluffy bullshit approach of getting users ‘oh make relationships with bloggers’ or ‘build a better product’.  im sure all of that contributes to getting users, but i’m looking for solid plans that lead there.  hopefully i’ll find it.

4. Unless you’re part of the Silicon Valley in-crowd AND you have traction, you’re not going to raise venture capital – i really hope that this isn’t true.  if it is, then everything everyone is doing outside of silicon valley is pretty much not going to get funded.  i’m pretty sure this isn’t the case.  in ny several companies have gotten funded once they’ve gotten traction.  del.icio.us, 4sq, gilt, etc.  the list goes on…  so i’m going to have to disagree with this one.  i do think that you need to know someone that knows someone who has money they’re willing to give you.

5. Customer Acquisition is tough – this one reads like #3 to me.  without customer acquisition there’s no traction.  again, when/if I figure this out i’ll share my thoughts on the matter.