When I started a company a year and a half ago, I also started a list of things that would’ve been useful to have known ahead of time. My plan was to publish the list several years later in hindsight, but now that I’ve reached a nice round number (37) and half of my friends are starting companies, I thought it would be appropriate to start blogging a few of the less embarrassing ones.

I’ll be focusing on one item in each post, but don’t worry — after you read tip #1, you won’t have to read any of the others. Here are the first five I’m going to write about:

1. Don’t Listen to Me or Anybody Else
2. You Will Always Be One Step Away…
3. Your Friends Won’t Be the Rabid Beta Users You Think They’ll Be
4. It’ll Never Be “Obvious” in Six Months
5. Technical Cop-Outs are Lame