It's so hard that the few people who can manage it earn billions of dollars. So don't expect an easy recipe for success.
The founding team needs someone who understands the technology very well, and can build at least a prototype themselves. They need to be good at identifying the best people to hire, convincing them to join, and motivating them to solve the important problems for the business. And they need to convince customers to start using a half-baked version 1 so they can get feedback and improve the product.
Founders At Work [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141] has good stories about how things really happened at several companies.
I don't see this here yet, but I really enjoyed all of the stories in Founders at Work (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141).
Not sure how helpful it will be, but it is definitely a source of inspiration, and also possibly examples of how things can work. Either way, once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.
A pretty fantastic book I just started reading is called: "Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days"
and you can get it at http://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-Early/d...
Gives you in the trenches advice via a unique interview style that really gets you into the mind of these guys when they were just starting.
The founding team needs someone who understands the technology very well, and can build at least a prototype themselves. They need to be good at identifying the best people to hire, convincing them to join, and motivating them to solve the important problems for the business. And they need to convince customers to start using a half-baked version 1 so they can get feedback and improve the product.
Founders At Work [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141] has good stories about how things really happened at several companies.
Here's the link without a referal tag for anyone interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597141/
Not sure how helpful it will be, but it is definitely a source of inspiration, and also possibly examples of how things can work. Either way, once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down.
Gives you in the trenches advice via a unique interview style that really gets you into the mind of these guys when they were just starting.