5 Startup Tips From Paul Buchheit, The Father of Gmail and FriendFeed

Posted by Erdem OZKAN on 12 March, 2010

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This item was filled under [ Business Development, Entrepreneurship, Internet Entrepreneurship ]

Paul Buchheit is the mastermind behind Google’s Gmail and AdSense, and founder of FriendFeed (now part of Facebook). As one of the earliest Google employees. Buchheit first uttered those three words “Don’t be evil” during a meeting convened to discuss how Google should communicate its corporate values… Then “Don’t be evil” took on a life of its own, spreading rapidly through the Googleplex, and ultimately it was included in the company’s 2004 initial public offering prospectus.

As a successful developer and an entreprenur, here are 5 startups tips from Paul Buchheit:

Launch a scaled-back version
It’s always possible to do a scaled-back version of what you have in mind without the need of a lot of money.
Notice sluggish competitors
If your competitors are actively making their products worse, it is a really good indicator of an opportunity. When Paul Buchheit considered building Gmail, he saw that Yahoo! decreased their [email storage capacity] from 6 megabytes to 4 megabytes and Gmail started with 1 gigabytes.
You don’t need virality if your product is good
“I think the best kind of virality,” he said, “is a product that people like so much that they just want to tell people about it.”
Follow your passion
Instead of setting goals, he said, “I have a different approach. I look to see what things I enjoy doing and just try to figure out how to spend my time doing things that I enjoy.”
Sometimes you have to go off on your own
It’s very good thing to work in a big Company like Google; but sometimes you have to go off on your own to release what you want. Big companies can limit you, because what you’re releasing can harm their brand over time.

* This post is a rewrite of an older Mashable post written by Andrew Warner.

Andrew Warner is an Internet entrepreneur and the founder ofMixergy. He interviews successful people to learn how they did it.