Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

At the earlier stages of the company, when you're actually out trying to get some customers, do whatever the hell the customer wants. If they're going to pay you, the customer is right. Because you need that initial money. You need that customer on the list to go get the next one. If you have to give away whatever you're doing, give it away. Get th

The default of how you do these things is very powerful, if you've been in the industry for a long time. So we were sort of beneficiaries of our naïveté. We thought, "We don't know how to do this; let's just invent it."

Livingston: Why did users like Viaweb? Graham: I think the main thing was that it was easy. Practically all the software in the world is either broken or very difficult to use. So users dread software. They've been trained that whenever they try to install something, or even fill out a form online, it's not going to work. I dread installing stuff,

Even up to the time when Excite was several hundred people and we were the fourth largest website in the world, it didn't feel real. It doesn't feel like you're really doing something huge. On some level it feels like you're fooling people—like, are we really doing this? It's the whole sausage and sausage factory problem: when you're outside and yo