Adam Wiggins, one of the co-founders of Heroku, and one of the authors of The 12 Factor App content, has a gist that contains his Heroku Values.
Ideas are cheap. Make a prototype, sketch a CLI session, draw a wireframe. Discuss around concrete examples, not hand-waving abstractions. Don’t say you did something, provide a URL that proves it.
Nothing is real until it’s being used by a real user. This doesn’t mean you make a prototype in the morning and blog about it in the evening. It means you find one person you believe your product will help and try to get them to use it.
Just because we’re building bad-ass infrastructure and tools doesn’t mean it can’t be cool, stylish, and fun. Aesthetic matters. See The Substance of Style
Slick and fun meets powerful and serious.
Adam’s list has been around for a few years, in face back in 2013, Paul Graham even tweeted for startups to read it:
Adam Wiggins' Heroku Values: http://t.co/lTLBcEXPTW
— Paul Graham (@paulg) June 1, 2013
And I absolutely agree with him, I forked this gist a few years ago and it’s been on my required reading list since.
I wanted to share Adam’s Values list today since it aligns nicely with what we are striving to do here at Flybase, and as Paul said, it’s definitely something for everyone involved in startups to read and keep in mind.
You should also make sure to read The 12 Factor App, it was an eye opening read when it first came out and is still valuable today.
Ready To Build Awesome Apps?