I resonate with some of the things I quoted, though, because they're close to working principles that have the ability to keep you on track when you forget what the product is and why you ever loved your customers in the first place.

The focus on customers as actual people might be the most important thing coming from the “social web”, VRM, blogs, social media, etc.

I feel the same way about a) being ramen cheap (and profitable) and b) depending on deals

“Go out of your way to make people happy. They'll be overwhelmed; you'll see.”

“Most startups fail before they make something people want, and the most common form of failure is running out of money. So being cheap is (almost) interchangeable with iterating rapidly.”

“Once you cross over into ramen profitable, it completely changes your relationship with investors.”

“Nothing kills startups like distractions. The worst type are those that pay money: day jobs, consulting, profitable side-projects.”

“Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.”

“We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated.”