23 Things That Don't Matter When Starting a Startup and 2 Things That Do

When you are just getting your startup off the ground there seems to be an infinite amount of tasks you have to do to be successful. But the truth of the matter is very few things actually matter on day one of starting a company.

Here's a list of things that after starting Zapier I realized didn't matter on day one of the company.

If you're persistant and continue to grow your company, some of these tasks might eventually matter, but when you're getting started there are usually more pressing things to attend to than these tasks.

23 Things That Don't Matter

1. Your Business Name

Names matter, but not that much. When we initially started we came up with the name Snapier in about 5 minutes, bought the domain and went back to work.

Two months later we changed our name to Zapier for competitive reasons. Both names are good names (short, memorable, available dot com), but not great (confusion on how to pronounce it. FYI, Zapier makes you happier if you're wondering. :).

Could there be a better name? Probably. Is it worth spending time on? Not right now.

2. The Perfect Domain

Like every entrepreneur over the last few years, you probably can't get the perfect domain. Maybe the dot com isn't available. Or you have to settle on some weird spelling.

Welcome to the internet.

Just grab a good domain and start working on your business. Once you have enough revenue coming in the door you can make a run at buying the domain you actually want.

3. Your Business Logo

A Logo is an important part of a companies brand. But on day one your company doesn't have a brand. The only people that will look at your logo are you, your co-founders and your collective mothers.

Once you have a modicum of success it probably makes sense to go back and revisit the logo, unless of course one of your co-founders is a designer and nailed it with a few minutes of work the first time around.

4. Your Business Colors

Mike spewed a random hex code out to create the classic Zapier orange. It's changed a few shades here or there, but the color has worked out well for us and we like it.

Now you don't necessarily need to pull hex codes out of a hat to choose a color, but you could easily just find something you like on COLOURLovers and move on.

5. Company Structure

When you start a company there will be plenty of people worried about how the company is set up. It doesn't matter.

We initially formed as a Missouri LLC and operated that way for 9 months. Later we realized that for most investors we needed to be structured as a Delaware C corp. So a few hours of work and a few days later we were a Delaware C corp.

Anything you do can be amended pretty easily so don't worry about it too much.

6. Your Ownership Cut

Ownership matters. But for a company with zero value, if you have 1% or 99% it doesn't matter. You still have zero value in shares.

Instead, come up with something agreeable between you and your co-founders and get back to work.

7. A Bank Account

When we made our first sale we didn't have a bank account. I had to scramble and figure out how we were going to get paid and eventually just decided to have the customer send $100 to my personal PayPal account.

The world kept turning, the government didn't yell at me, and our accountant (when we got one) eventually fixed it.

8. NDAs

Your idea isn't unique. At any given time there are probably a half a dozen other people working on it. Don't ask people to sign NDAs; it's plain silly. Especially since you want customers and you'll have to tell your customers about your idea. Why keep hiding it?

9. Office Space

Unless your company lives and dies by walk in customers then office space is pretty inconsequential. Office space is one of the highest expenditures your company will have on day one so ask yourself if you really need an office or if you can get by with a home office, coffee shops and libraries.

10. Furniture

Furniture just piles on more expenses for a company with zero revenue. Ask yourself if you really need this.

11. Ping Pong and Foosball Tables

See numbers nine and ten above.

12. Butts in the Seat

Remote working or co-location? It's all the buzz these days with the Yahoo! decision to cut remote workers. For your startup ask yourself if it's really important that you, your co-founders or your employees have to be working in the same place at the same time every day.

Unfortunately, most startups don't have any slack in the system and the hit by bus factor is very high. If a random life event causes someone on your team to have to leave your office for a week or for a month make sure to give your teammates the tools to work from where ever they happen to be. Requiring butts in the seat doesn't help when teammates aren't able to have their butts in the seat.

13. Where You Are Located

There have been successful startups created all over the United States and all over the world. Where your company starts doesn't matter. I'd just start working where you are and worry about if it's the best place to be later when the company actually has some value.

14. Getting Famous

Running a company isn't about being the next poster boy for the startup world. There's only one Mark Zuckerberg.

Get over being famous and work on making your startup famous for your target customers.

15. A Quick Coffee Meeting

Once you start a company there will be plenty of opportunities for the "quick coffee meeting" or "short Skype call." It could be someone trying to sell something to you, someone mildly interested in what you are doing, or an associate at a VC firm interested in "hearing your story."

Feel free to take the meeting if you want to, but unless these meetings are with a potential customer, realize that 99% of these meetings aren't going anywhere.

16. What the Experts Say

When you start a company there will be plenty of people willing to give you advice. Some will have good advice, but most will probably be bad. Realize that you are the expert when it comes to your company. Keep an open mind, but don't blindly follow what every person says.

17. Investors

Some companies by necessity will need investors. Not every company can be bootstrapped and nor should it. But when you start a company, take some time to validate the idea and figure out who the ideal customer is before running around to nab the quickest and easiest check.

18. Mimicking Other Startups

It's common for early companies to worry about competitors or to try and mimic other companies you might like. The problem is those tactics are likely based on how that company is setup and that company might not even be happy about it.

The right marketing tactics for your company may not be what the other guy is doing. Make sure what you do, is based on what your customers want.

19. Optimization

A some point in your startups lifetime it will be important to optimize what you are doing. On day one, it's impossible to optimize anything because you have no baseline for anything.

Just start doing something and see what works. If you make it far enough optimization will make sense, but on day one don't worry about crappy code or the perfect headline. Just get something good enough out the door and iterate.

20. A/B Testing Your Site

Unless you are magically bringing in a statistically significant amount of traffic to your site on day one, A/B testing a site with a few hundred visitors a month is a waste of time.

Focus on growing the number of leads you get through quality traffic. Optimize later.

21. Design

Design is an important piece for every company. It might even be the make or break component for yours. But on day one, like anything else, it doesn't have to be perfect.

Check out the Zapier MVP. It was terrible. Our first users literally required Skype demos to setup their Zaps it was so bad. And that was the design we had for our first 500 customers.

You can validate that your company can be successful with bad design. Like all these items you'll need to fix your design eventually so iterate on design as you grow.

22. Cool New Tech Stack

Most engineers love working on the coolest new tech. Avoid the temptation. You have enough risk in your startup. Don't add support for a new open source framework as part of the risk.

Instead build with what you know. At Zapier, Bryan had been building django/python apps for years, so naturally Zaiper is built on django/python.

23. Reading This Post

Odds are reading this post isn't helping your startup. Instead, work on making something people want and find a way to get those people to be customers.

2 Things That Do Matter

So if none of those things actually matter when starting a company, what does? In my experience, very little matters on day one other than these two things.

1. Making Something People Want

If you can't make something that somebody in the world wants then everything else is pointless.

2. Acquiring Customers

If you can't find a way to turn those people into customers then you're in trouble too.

TL;DR