1: doesn’t rely on partners or third parties to work (or is flexible enough to switch easily)
2:is all about collecting, arranging and presenting data
3: can be plugged into existing sites/communities

The thing that changed over the years for me in developing businesses is that you can’t generated a single walled garden site anymore and instead have to go with the flow and join the customer on their journey. Kelkoo was all about getting people to the site and out again (relying heavily on partners and collecting data). Now, with Crowdstorm it’s all about being in front of people wherever they are when researching products (facebook, twitter, firefox search bar, a blog site, expert review site) and letting them interact with the product review platform.

Perhaps one thing to add:
-Have a goal and ensure the business helps to achieve this (is it to make lots of money, to change the world, to have a better quality of life for a while….)

pretty much agree with all of those except numbers 10 to 12 — they’re really not _that_ important. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I now realize that not thinking outside of our own little engineering box is a common mistake we crazy tech people like to make. Of course we’re all looking at places like Facebook, YouTube, Google etc, thinking “yeah, widgets and APIs are the sauce”, but these things really don’t matter that much to *most* people.

I really like plentyoffish.com as an example. Seriously, that site “sucks”. But it’s crazily successful, both in terms of user count as well as financially (supposedly tens of thousands of $ each month through AdSense and pay-per-lead referal links — and it’s run by a single person). It does get number 9 right big-time, of course. Most of the time, it turns out, the user needs waiting to be filled aren’t mashuppable widgetry microformatfeedthingmajigs.

That and #14 are probably the most important points. If you don’t love your own project (or business), it will show. If you do, it will, too.

Oooooooh, all this startuppery talk is making me so excited. :P Looking forward to the next Farm meetup. (I’m the big German guy who attended something like two months ago, maybe you remember me.)