Tony Wright of RescueTime has a wonderful post at FoundRead talking about his lessons learned from his RescueTime / Y Combinator experience. It should be a must read for early-stage tech entrepreneurs. A couple great tidbits:

I think we were the first YC company in our session to launch. Our product now is pretty polished and has a nice long (and accelerating) growth curve… Which nips the, “Does anyone want this?” question in the bud. Launching is an admission that your users are smarter about what they want/need than you are. Or at very least, it’s an admission that you have a lot to learn about your users. Dive in!

This sentiment maps to a mini-thread I’ve been pursuing with regard to speed vs. quality. The moral: fail faster.

Also:

The most common question neophyte entrepreneurs ask is, “Now that I’ve built it, how do I market it?” If you’re asking that question, I think you need to go back to the drawing board. In low-cost / high-distribution markets that we’re all playing in, you need some combination of SEO-fu, viral loops, and tremendous word of mouth. Alternatively, if you actually have a product that you’re SELLING, you need to have some proof that you can bring in buyers without a sales force…

The moral here? Build for customers, not for the ideal product in your head.

Great stuff. Tony is a regular poster on the Seattle Tech Startups listserv and seems like he really has his entreprenurial act together. Go read this post and see if you don’t agree!