State of Local

The Financial Times has a great profile of French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur in today’s edition (free registration required to read it).

Le Meur has a lot of experience with successful startups, and his current project is Seesmic, a site which he is promoting via a series of daily, often odd YouTube clips.

In the FT piece, he offers up 10 rules for anyone wanting to be successful in business, and I include them here because I think many of them apply to local online news and advertising.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible.
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognize a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.