A startup is not just about the idea: it's about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival.

The president's idea was dead on arrival. Now it is well beyond rigor mortis.

Face-to-face customer feedback refines or validates every component of the startup's business model, not just the product itself.

The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers.

VCs like acquisitions as much as IPOs because the acquiring companies often can rationalize paying large multiples over the current valuation of the startup.

Most people appear to live an unexamined life, cruising through the years without much reflection about what it means, and/or taking what life hands them and believing it's all predestined.