Two arti­cles of fun­da­men­tal startup tips, from two peo­ple who know what they’re talk­ing about:

Star­tups in 13 Sen­tences, by Paul Gra­ham of Y Com­bi­na­tor. Of the 13 sen­tences, which one does Paul believe is the most important?

Under­stand your users. That’s the key. The essen­tial task in a startup is to cre­ate wealth; the dimen­sion of wealth you have most con­trol over is how much you improve users’ lives; and the hard­est part of that is know­ing what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it’s mere effort to make it, and most decent hack­ers are capa­ble of that.

How to Save Money Run­ning a Startup, by Jason Cala­ca­nis of Mahalo, Weblogs, and Sil­i­con Alley. Purely finan­cial, this post details some sim­ple ways to save money run­ning a startup. Many may not be suit­able, but you can get the gen­eral gist of it.