I have an all new appreciation for everything that needs to get done to start a company. Going forward, I make the following public pledge:

1) Far fewer unsolicited opinions for friends with startup companies 🙂
2) Far more tolerance for slow email and phone replies from friends at startups
3) Much more understanding for people’s inability to stay current on all of the goings-on in the blogosphere/TechCrunch world
4) Strong appreciation for how impossible it is to stay up-to-date on Twitter 🙂

With that said, here’s some more unsolicited advice for people contemplating starting a company, who are still employed elsewhere:

a) Spend 10% of every week networking (with potential engineers, designers, marketers, fundraising sources, etc. — basically, anywhere you’d have a skillset need in your startup).  I did a B to C level job of this, before jumping in — if I had to do it over again, I’d have emphasized this much more during my tenure at Amazon, rather than just establishing relationships in work situations, I could have reached out beyond my direct groups/teams

b) Spend 5% of every week learning something new, to a point where you know enough to be dangerous (e.g. which email marketing tool is best for 80% purposes, and how to use it).  I did an B job at this — it’s paid off tremendously (SEO, email, blogging, accounting, Wikis, etc.)

c) Sleep… a lot… because you’re going to get a lot less of it when you make the plunge 🙂

Onward!