What do you wish you'd known when you founded your startup?
It's almost 5 years since I founded my first startup - that one failed and so did the next one. I finally succeeded with my third. Looking back now, I see I made so many rookie mistakes even though I thought I knew it all. The biggest was probably that if I created a good product it would sell - haha, little did I know how much marketing I would need to do to even get my first customer.
What do you wish you had known back when you became a startup founder?
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🔥 Roast My Landing Page
Success doesn't happen overnight. You need to give yourself at least a couple of years.
2 major things:
I wish I'd have known that I first need to start with a landing page and see if I can get some customers before I go and code the actual software, that would have saved me a lot of time and frustration.
Next time, give kocobee a shot. I made the same mistake, so I built a product that allows you to start validating your product in minutes (doing exactly what you said, but also providing all the analytics for you).
I wish I could launch ASAP and validate the ideas before building it, at least knowing if it's really in demand or not.
Lessons learned and I've wasted so much time and money building products that no one wants to try. sigh...
Made this mistake too. Just wrote a post yesterday about what I'm gonna do differently next time → Redefining MVPs: A faster way to derisk new product ideas
I wish I picked a problem that I was familiar with, or I had myself.
Know that, there are up's and downs. Nothing will happen immediately. Analyze our business ideas and list out the pros and cons. Act accordingly!
I wish I knew how hard it would be, that for days and weeks I'd absolutely hate it, struggle with, cry over it. When you're an employee you can always bail but when it's your own business, you have to keep turning up if you want to succeed. I'm not saying it's not worth it, just that it's not all fun and games every day.
Completely agree.
When the novelty wears off, and you're all alone building something that a lot of people don't understand, that's where the self pity can set in. But it's good to recognize when you're at this point because then you can pick yourself back up, take a break, and fu****** kill it!
My first company was a marketplace, and I did a very typical mistake – I prioritized the wrong side of it.
The common wisdom for marketplace startups is understanding which part is more difficult - building supply or acquiring demand. I guessed wrong. ┐(￣ヮ￣)┌
TLDR – I wish I gave it more thought and talked to more users before actually building the product. Would have saved me time and money.
The people you thought would be in your corner will most likely not be there...and that's okay. You have yourself, your team, and believers.
some things people already mentioned, but 3 major ones:
on the last one, I just started a newsletter that breaks down growing b2b saas trends. it's free to sign up at categorysurfers.com
Building and audience comes before building a startup.
Almost everything.
I learned from 0, it was intense and often very difficult but in the end, I am very proud of era.sh.
I can't wait for new experiences and knowledge, that I wish to have known earlier.
Choose the right Co-founder who is equally hardworking and passionate as you are. There is Nothing Worse than being so highly motivated and having to work with someone who does the bare minimum in addition, you also end up doing half their share of work and there is Nothing you can do About it. Not forgetting the long process of replacing a co-founder, lawyers and all. I learned that very early Even though i am just a beginner.
Learning how to focus on doing one thing really well for a specific group rather than catering to everyone.
How important it is to talk to customers!!! I recently wrote about exactly this - what I wish I had known about ideas and execution :) https://saigalsn.medium.com/6-hard-truths-i-wish-i-knew-about-product-ideas-and-execution-6424ab900f5
Something you always hear and never follow - but really should:
That I can't do everything. I took far too long to hire and this really slowed everything down. As soon as I brought other people on board everything just got much better. Don't struggle alone. Identify your strengths and weaknesses quickly, and hire people that will cover your weaknesses.
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.
I'm glad that you mentioned this! I am working on starting vibits.co (which is more of a productized service than a product) But I took some time the other day to write down exactly all the processes that would be taking place, whether that was customer facing, or employee facing. That way I can start with the right roadmap in mind without it having to be all set up automatically yet.
That's a good idea, I think if you are looking to make revenue from day 1 then this is the right approach, identify where you'll have to spend your time and then look to replace it over time. If you don't do this, you end up in a situation where a big part of the perceived value comes from those customer touch-points and it becomes really difficult to remove/automate them. If you can identify it up front, you can then ensure the service delivered is high quality but kept at a distance that allows for it to be automated later.
Were you active in the B2B enterprise segment?
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.