How to Speed Up Your Startup

J. Neil Weintraut, a leading player at 21st Century internet Venture Partners, isn't really in the venture-capital business; he's in the speed business. "Success is not just about being fast," he argues. "It's about doing all of the things that allow you to be fast." According to Weintraut, there are at least three defining strategic elements to speed: fast hiring, focused offerings, and smart partnering. And there are also lots of tactical issues.

Fast startups use simple contracts.

"When you operate at Web speed, by the time the ink is dry, a contract is pretty much obsolete," Weintraut says. "So, instead of telling your lawyers to write a 10-page contract in a week, ask them to generate a 2-page contract in two days."

Fast startups spend fast (but smart).

"Historically, the fundamental challenge for the entrepreneur was to conserve capital," notes Weintraut. "Now the challenge is to spend smart, because there's so much of it." Consider HotJobs.com, one of countless Web-based career sites before it ran an ad during the 1999 Super Bowl -- which, at the time, was considered an extravagance. That one ad helped propel the fledgling company into what is now nearly a billion-dollar publicly traded concern.

Fast networking beats big spending.

Big Words, a Web-based textbook seller, spent just $50,000 and took just one month to set up relationships with more than 25 publishers. It then put up a Web site, ran ads in eight college newspapers in California -- and wound up selling books to students at more than 250 universities across the country. "Before the Internet," says Weintraut, "a company like Big Words might have achieved sales at 8 or 10 universities at launch time. But Big Words reached 250 in one month. That's fast."