In our series on startup hints & tricks here the final to hints 21 & 22:

21 – Learn to live with the ups and downs of every startup

During the last weeks Memonic received a number of awards, closed a financing round, got a lot of new users, all in all a very successful period with positive energies flowing freely. A few weeks before it was all different: A few rejects at startup competitions, no-I-not-in from potential investors, user feedback they like the competition more, a negative commotion.

As a start-up team it is important to be able to deal with both moods. After a lean time follows with hard work and a bit of luck a winning streak. And even the boldest winning streak will end some time.

As a founding team it is important to celebrate success yet not loose contact with reality and deal with setbacks without giving in and giving up.

22 – Use memonic.com – Summary

May be some of these hints are useful for some of you. Pulled together as one set you may find them here. Exactly this is what Memonic is all about: Collect snippets of information, pull them together and share them with others. Try it out yourself!

Here a brief summary of the topics covered:

1. Start with a simple plan: A (business) plan summary requiring more than one (1) A4 page is probably too complex to understand.

2. A few commonly shared rules: A set of collective values is as important for success as your product

3. Get a businessperson into your team (and vice versa): Techies don’t sell…

4. Get a professional bookkeeper: (financial) numbers matter.

5. Time tracking pays: You need to know for what tasks need what time.

6. Start with a good founding contract: If divorce looms, you’ll not fix terms and conditions à l’amicable; better fix them at start.

7. The best 10$  you’ll ever spend: All the tools you ever need to start.

8. Use cloud computing: Don’t buy infrastructure, rent it on pay-as-you go.

9. Never buy hardware at list prices – Never: To pull someone’s heart strings helps – You know, we’re a poor cash strapped startup.

10. It’s a virtual world: Virtualization of computers saves you even more cost.

11. Bend the rules: No cheating, but drive a hard bargain and watch for offers.

12. Forget tapes, do online backups: “Yesterday all my backups seemed so far away,” is no backup strategy for valuable customer data.

13. Don’t waste time that others do better:  Use those online apps out there for mail, wiki, task tracking and more (plus it’s free or almost free).

14. Get early agreement – do mockups: Nothing is worse than this comment on launch day: “Oh, this isn’t what we wanted.”

15. Do usability testing: Your team is clever, the crowd is smarter.

16. Consider using agile development methods (such as scrum): Because six month release cycles or a no-go for any startup nowadays.

17. Use puppet: No we don’t talk about a doll, but about automated server setup and configuration.

18. Automated testing: You have to break an egg to make an omelette.  So better fix your errors early one. Automated error recognition helps.

19. Catch those warnings – Use Splunk: Your own log files are true gold mines. So mine them – Splunk is your shovel.

20. 80% of success is showing up. The Olympic motto pays for startups, too.

21. Learn to live with the ups and downs of every startup: Each high is followed by a low, followed by a high.

22. Use memonic.com – There is no simpler way to keep the essential snippets of information.