drawn from 13 years in start-up contexts across different business sectors. I had different roles: founder, CEO, business unit leader, marketing manager, information architect, product-manager
The chemistry and proximity are key in an early phase. later on oursourcing might result in benefits. Perfect team yields great ideas on the go!
outsourcing
A startup needs a CEO who gets what the product and the market is all about. He needs to evangelize internally and externally.
This one is a standard. focus is most relevant to evrything. easy to say hard to execute. Excel in one thing and leave the rest to others.
Sometimes is sufficient to do things better than existing ones do. Best approach is to solve a critical problem with a unique technology or processes that others can't match easily
From my experience all those very expensive reports are helpful to get an idea of the recent discussions and issue at hand. Deriving a business idea from it leads to failure. To triangulate take your reading, blend it with your problem you like to solve and most important talk to you presumptive users.
While it's necessary to calculate everything. It wont get you the VC money you might be looking for. Investors invest in people and ideas not spreadsheets. Conclusion: don't waste too much time on spreadsheets.
This is fundamental. Most innovation comes out of product- or technology-orientation. I think it's critical to get very fast to a marketing orientation as the markets decides/tells what is helpful and worth attention
product development
marketing/pr
user build