Β #StartupLessons #EntrepreneurshipTips #StartupAdvice
Hey there, fellow entrepreneurs! π Let’s chat about some valuable insights that could have made a significant difference before your first startup took off. What do you wish you knew before diving into the world of entrepreneurship? Here are a few questions to get the conversation going:
– What key lessons have you learned that you wish you had known earlier?
– Were there any unexpected challenges that caught you off guard?
– How did you navigate the ups and downs of starting your own business?
From my own experience and conversations with other founders, one common theme that emerges is the importance of thorough market research and validation. Before launching a startup, it’s crucial to understand your target audience, competition, and market trends. This knowledge can help you make more informed decisions and increase your chances of success.
What are your thoughts on this? Share your insights and tips for first-time founders to help them on their entrepreneurial journey! Let’s learn from each other and grow together. π‘πͺ #KnowledgeIsPower #EntrepreneurMindset
Sales is a ten times more important and harder than the product.
Sales & Marketing >>> Product
Example: There are companies making billions of dollars selling vegetable packaging bags.
No one is your friend. People will use you, lie, cheat, and steal, if it gets them ahead at your expense. Be vicious. Cutthroat. Show no mercy or remorse because none will be shown to you, but be ethical and have integrity. If someone crosses you, destroy them.
Always have a good lawyer. VCs especially are not your friends, neither is your cofounder, or your employees, or the customer.
Your job is to deliver a product or good and get paid for it, that’s it.
Put as little into writing as possible. Get security cameras, people will steal from you, even your cofounder.
Never give up control of your company, ie reject any deal that’s loses you control of the board or via share votes.
Read the 48 laws of power and follow none of them, but know psychopaths do and you’ll run into a lot of them.
You’re on your own and no one else truly cares about you or your business, they care about what they can get from you or your business, this is the truth.
It’s ok to let go of your first hustle. (Aka calling the baby ugly) Move onto the next idea.
I wish I knew how crucial a robust financial plan is for scalability. I learned the hard way, but it’s a mistake many startups can avoid.
being an introvert is a Pain. if you can’t start a conversation, don’t start a start up.
**DO NOT** get into bed with lazy founders, crypto-bros, people with no functional work experience outside of a corporate structure where they had no need to innovate, manage, or responsibilities beyond their lanes.
You really see how much grit people have when things go off the rails, as they will with a startup, and who actually has the mindset of an entrepreneur – specifically, creativity, resourcefulness, and grit to keep going and to pull more weight than their responsbilities.
Watching lazy asses quit after the first hurdle is something you should see coming – and therefore, you have the power to not get into relationships with people of low ability. Everyone on a startup must be a star – you cannot carry the weight of lower-than-average individuals who think it’s going to be easy.
It is way better to focus on enterprise sales than one off low-dollar subscriptions in the B2B space.
You can’t manage all at your own. You need a team.
People seem to have lots to say about what not to say or doβ¦
Itβs all about people. Find people who you can trust with your livelihood and who have values and incentives that are similar to yours. You need to be excited to wirk with these people, and they need to be excited to work with you.
My dream team is composed of people who have genuine, deep admiration and respect for one another, and who are willing to put in the work to fight through the hard times together. These people will want business success over ego stroking, and will hire people who are more competent and capable than they are. Focus on finding people who love to do each part of the business: sales, marketing, product delivery, operations, finance, etc.
Also, sell before you think youβre ready. Create a trickle of cashflow, and then optimize it. Perfect is the enemy of great.
Sales is definitely harder than product, so make sure you can sell it before you waste time building something that won’t sell.
That not, everybody is me. I had the mistaken impression that because I can do a thing that other people can do that same thing and itβs not true. Therefore, when I selected partners, none of them were my equal. And as a result, they became thieves.