First off, sorry about the terrible audio this week. This is probably related to the fact that Tyler is recording from his apartment instead of his office due to COVID-19. We'll get this figured out before next week.
Here are some takeaways from this episode:
- There are three possible audiences for a startup manifesto: customers, founders, and employees
- The customer-facing version is very different from the founder/employee version because it should focus more on the problem that your company is trying to solve. Write that type of manifesto can be a great way to get people interested in your company before you have a product. It's mostly a marketing play.
- The founder version is mostly useful as a way of keeping you focused on your core values which makes it easier to make decisions. It is especially helpful for knowing what not to do.
- When you hire your first employee, that's probably a good time to take an informal founder version and write it up in more detail so that you can share your vision with employees.
- Because Rick isn't primarily focused on marketing or internal culture right now, he's going to wait to spend time on a manifesto. Instead, he's going to write a press release about what his product might look like in a few months. This will help unblock his product work, but it's not really the same as writing a manifesto.