The Financial Times has a profile of French (now Silicon Valley) entrepreneur Loic Le Meur today.

Loic is an accomplished entrepreneur – he founded uBlog (merged with Six Apart), organizes the annual Le Web conference and has now created Seesmic (note that I’m an investor in Seesmic). So even though he’s French, his advice, when given, is worth listening to.

Included in the article are his ten rules for startup success. Reprinted below.

1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

Crunchbase

• SEESMIC
• SIX APART

Company: Seesmic

Website: seesmic.com

Launch Date: January 6, 2007

Funding: $16M

Seesmic is a powerful suite of social media management and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online. With applications on every platform, including mobile devices, and a marketplace of over 80 third-party plugins, Seesmic is the most comprehensive solution on the market. Seesmic is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded by French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur.

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Company: Six Apart

Website: sixapart.com

Launch Date: January 9, 2001

Funding: $22.6M

Six Apart Ltd is a blogging and conversational media company, empowering publishers and marketers around the world to inspire and produce influential online content, conversations, and communities. Six Apart’s award-winning blogging software and services, including TypePad, Movable Type, and Vox, complement Six Apart Media, the #1 blogging and #2 conversational media property with a reach of nearly 93MM monthly unique users in the US (comScore May 2010). By combining a powerful suite of conversational marketing and social publishing services...

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