Your project won’t necessarily be a success because you have all of these, and it won’t be a failure because you haven’t thought about all of these (almost no startup, even successful ones, do). These are just a few issues that you will likely run into during the first few months.

The “answers” provided to some of these questions are resources that you can take a look at as your are discovering the real answers for yourself.

(This is by no means an exhaustive list. If you have suggestions, leave them in the comments)

Ideas

• Do you have a original idea? [one answer]
• Have you taken a look at a few sites with similar ideas to make sure?
• Is your idea still a valid one? [one answer]
• Do you have the right mentors? [one answer]

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Time

• What are your other obligations?
• Do you have the time for a startup? [one answer]
• Do you have the right team to help you make the most of it? [one answer]

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Team

• Do you have the technical talent? [one answer]
• If not, do you know where to find it? [one answer]
• Are they willing to work for free? Equity? Cheap? [one answer]
• Can they produce your first, quick prototype on their own? [one answer]

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Logistics

• Do you know how you are keeping track of your expenses? [one answer]
• Do you know how you are going to keep track of your code? [one answer]
• Do you know how you are going to keep track of your ten thousand business cards? [one answer]
• Do you have business cards yourself? [one answer]
• If you’re a service, do you have a way to invoice your customers? [one answer]
• Where are you going to put up shop? Why? [one answer]
• Who are your local competitors? How are you different?

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Legal

• Have you picked a legal structure?
• Do you need to be an LLC? S-Corp? Partnership? [one answer]
• Have you thought about a board of advisers? [one answer]
• Have you thought about hiring?
• Have you thought about insurance? [one answer]
• Have you thought about how you will handle payroll? 1099? Payroll company? In house? [one answer]
• Will you be ready for tax day?
• Have you filed for the permits you need to operate? Licenses? [one answer]

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Design

• Can your designer do pages and logos? Print? [one answer]
• Do you have mockups of your pages?
• Have you revised them a few times?
• Did you look at them again, putting yourself in your users shoes? [one answer]
• Is your user interface simple enough to use? [one answer]
• Do you have a preliminary map of your pages?

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Coding

• Do you know what your database schema will look like? [one answer]
• Have you thought about it again, just to be sure?
• Have you set up your coding environment?
• Have you set up a way to track revisions? Bugs? [one answer]
• Have you separated back-end from front-end tasks? [one answer]
• Do you have the talent on-site to do both?
• Can you outsource the rest? [one answer]
• Have you thought about APIs and Data Portability? [one answer]

Infrastructure

• Have you thought about infrastructure costs? [one answer]
• Do you have an idea of how you will scale?
• Have you thought about other costs? Office? Software? Servers? [one answer]
• Have you thought about how you are going to turn a profit? [one answer]
• Have you revised your profit estimates to be more realistic?

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Marketing

• Have you thought about where your startup sits in the market? [one answer]
• Have you built in features to make your application easy to spread?
• Do you have an idea of where you will market your product? To who? Why? [one answer]
• Have you talked to a few people about your idea? [one answer]
• Have you taken any of their advice?

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Launch

• Do you have your IP in order?
• How much capital do you need to raise? How will you raise it? [one answer]
• What’s your burn rate? Profitability? [one answer]
• Have you thought about your exit strategy?
• Are you ready for launch? [one answer]

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