Paul Graham in his gyan on startups says
“You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.”

Main Ideas from his article:

1.What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can’t save bad people.

2.People :Could you describe the person as an animal?Call the person’s image to mind and imagine the sentence “so-and-so is an animal.” If you laugh, they’re not. You don’t need or perhaps even want this quality in big companies, but you need it in a startup. Three filters to be applied:Was the person genuinely smart? If so, could they actually get things done? And finally, since a few good hackers have unbearable personalities, could we stand to have them around?

3. The rulers of the technology business tend to come from technology, not business. So if you want to invest two years in something that will help you succeed in business, the evidence suggests you’d do better to learn how to hack than get an MBA

4.The only way to make something customers want is to get a prototype in front of them and refine it based on their reactions.

5. Stephen Hawking’s editor told him that every equation he included in his book would cut sales in half. When you work on making technology easier to use, you’re riding that curve up instead of down. A 10% improvement in ease of use doesn’t just increase your sales 10%. It’s more likely to double your sales.

6. How do you figure out what customers want? Watch them. One of the best places to do this was at trade shows.

7.It’s wise to take money from investors. To be self-funding, you have to start as a consulting company, and it’s hard to switch from that to a product company.

8. Before you consummate a startup, ask everyone about their previous IP history.

9. Valuation wasn’t just the value of the code written so far. It was also the value of the ideas and of all the future work

10.The main reason VCs want to talk about your idea is to judge you, not the idea.

11.Unless you’re in a market where products are as undifferentiated as cigarettes or vodka or laundry detergent, spending a lot on brand advertising is a sign of breakage.

12.Get all the users, and the advertisers will follow." More generally, design your product to please users first, and then think about how to make money from it. If you don’t put users first, you leave a gap for competitors who do.To make something users love, you have to understand them. And the bigger you are, the harder that is. So “get big slow.”