The document provides advice for starting a small business or startup by finding a niche market, pricing products affordably, using marketing strategies like search engines and mailing lists, outsourcing tasks to virtual assistants, and building the business to eventually sell or run itself with documented processes. It is aimed at developers who want to start their own business but do not want to rely on investors or work long hours like startups in Silicon Valley.

1. Startups for the Rest of Us
Based on Rob Walling's Book
“Start Small, Stay Small”
David N. Welton

2. It's full of good advice

3. Business Book Fluff
Do... less!
WTF...
www.73primenumbers.com

4. Friendly, Easy Kindle Publishing
Kindle Formatting/Conversion Service

5. Who?
 You are a developer
 You don't want to/can't live in Silicon Valley
 You don't have investors lined up out your door
 You don't want to work 80 hour weeks

8. Market First
Is there a group of people willing to pay for it?

9. Niche Markets
 Profitable for small businesses
 Uninteresting for Microsoft/Google/Valley
startups
 Less risky, less exciting (no TechCrunch!)
 Stay far away from “the tech world”
 “I could build that in a weekend!”
 Niche marketing is more cost effective

10. The narrower you can make your product while
still maintaining a large enough market, the more
profit you will generate.

11. Finding a Niche
 Make something your friends or relatives would
pay to use
 Use search data to look for niches
 Is there a magazine dedicated to it?
 Is it easy to sell to everyone in the niche?
 Try a landing page and Adsense to gauge
interest
 There is no magic formula

12. As a self-funded startup you want a market that is
already looking for your product, even if it doesn’t
exist.

13. Price
 Competitors
 Time value for customers
 3 tiers
 Higher!


14. Some Numbers
 Hobby consumer products: $29 fixed-price or
$14/month
 Consumer products - make or save money: $49
or $19/month
 Small businesses: $400 or $99/month
 Larger businesses: $1,000 or $199/month

15. Marketing
 Search engines
 Your niche should be an 'easy mark', if possible
 Mailing list
 Blog
 Adsense
 Use with discretion
 Social networks are probably not as important

16. Virtual Assistants
 Work on your business, not in your business
 Outsource what you can
 Philippines
 Odesk / eLance

17. Every hour spent writing code is wasted time if
that code could be replaced by a human being
doing the same task until your product proves
itself

18. Built To Sell
 The market values profit and automation
 System should 'run itself' – you should not be
an integral part of it
 “Documenting repeatable processes for
anything you will do more than once is essential
to your sanity.”

19. Resources
 davidw@dedasys.com
 http://www.softwarebyrob.com/
 http://news.ycombinator.com
 www.liberwriter.com