A while back I did a short presentation at Startup BarCamp Sydney on how to most effectively drive your startup into the ground. This list is a mix of things I’ve read, experience from people I’ve spoken to and a little bit of personal opinion. This post has been sitting in my draft for a while as I was going to add more info. But here’s is just the list I used:
Team
– Single founder
– No technical team member
Idea
– Refine your business model before you start
– Do in-depth market research
– Write an impressive 40-page business plan with awesome graphs, charts and projections
– Build a “nice to have”
– Be in it for the money
– Stick to your idea no matter what
– Don’t tell anyone about your idea, they will steal it
– Don’t network, it’s a waste of your time
Funding
– Seek funding before you start
Development
– Outsource all development
– Don’t quit your day job
– Make it perfect, don’t launch until it is
– Spend lots of development time making sure your app is scalable before you have any traffic
– Add lots of cool features (twitter/facebook integration etc)
– Give up when you hit a barrier
Growing
– Don’t talk to your customers until the product is finished
– Assume that when you build it, they will come
– Don’t waste time on your hiring process, any coder will do. If they don’t work out, give them a second chance
– Don’t listen to your customers/users, you already know what they want and need
– Don’t worry about the business model
Keep in mind… this is the perfect recipe for guaranteed FAILURE…. so you might want to try the opposite 
How many of these are you guilty of?
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Knowing which sales person assisted the customer is important for tracking the number of sales made by each person. It also provides a contact for the customer in the event of a inquiry about the product or service provided.
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If you have entered a sales person it is listed on the printed invoice and quote (sample below). There is no change if the sales person wasn’t added so this doesn’t take up space on your invoice.
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