The partners you work with can make or break the best idea; don't let your enthusiasm cloud a colder view of the people you'll be making important commitments with. I've read that it's like a marriage, and I thought that was an exaggeration but it isn't...don't be paranoid, just be careful.
Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
141–150 of 256 posts
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#142Here's 30 years of experience for you: 1. Few business problems can't be solved by more sales. 2. Cut expenses when the storm is approaching, not when you're soaking wet. 3. You can't eat assets or inventory. Don't get emotional about what you own, only about your cash balances. 4. Banks are your friend only when you don't need them. Corollary: One bank for borrowing, one for cash balance accounts. 5. 70 completed ca…
Sales fixes everything. Very hard to learn for engineers and designers often.
I want to emphasize an important distinction between Actual sales, and the sales department. Actual sales fix problems, the sales department may or may not be relevant to what causes that to happen.. although they will surely fight for the credit either way.
AFAIK Engineers have an axe to grind with the sales department, not actual sales. Giving credit for a sale is a very subjective matter, and more often than not every sales person who so much as sent an email to the opp want credit - effectively taking advantage of the subjective nature as much as they can get away with. Even if in reality the customer had to pretty much talk around everyone on the sales team and speak with an engineer to gain confidence in the product. Then the engineer has to go play catch-up from the 1 hour meeting while the sales member gets % of the sale.
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#143Keep your customers, listening them, they know better what your app or service need !
Agreed it's crucial to listen to your customers.
OTOH, if Ford had asked people what they wanted, they'd have said "a faster horse". And there's risk of taking the stated needs of your most vocal customers as representative of the whole.
As with everything, there are tradeoffs / counterexamples, and knowing which applies when is more art than science, and usually involves some luck.
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know... I might be having a reverse-survivor bias seeing, being in and contributing to failure, but I've _never_ seen a case where "let's increase our sales headcount" strategy actually did anything (EDIT: i.e. when things are bad. Of course, if things are good, sales is a key driver to growth) If you need "more sales" to fix it, the problem often lies somewhere else.
I meant “sales” as transactions, not “sales” as in the department or role.
The commenter with the advice clearly mean "sales" as the department or role.
To a founder or CEO the word "revenue" is used where you're using "sales", it isn't wrong except in context but the intention was unambiguous to me.
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#145I've learned that creating a solution for a X problem doesn't really scale as I though. I focus more now on creating a neccessity more than trying to solve problems for people.
If those needs solve one or several problems, great, but my main focus is to create products that people need, or once they use it they adopt it because it became a neccessity. For those interested I extended my rationale here http://minid.net/2019/07/30/on-building-products-for-necessi...
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#1461. Care about technical matters and show that you care about technical matters - if you're selling something technical it's good to have complicated opinions on technical matters
2. Someone who is difficult in good times will be a monster in bad times
3. Repeating the words of other's back to them is eerily effective
4. Every client is in the middle of some sort of political drama, you will be some minor part of that drama - this is normal and not that meaningful
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#147Always be talking to your customers.
Always be selling.
Surviving is succeeding. Make more money than you spend.
read this : https://basecamp.com/shapeup
Find a LEGIT accountant. Expense everything.
FIND health insurance ( if it means getting a part timer for health insurance)
hire 1099s
there will always be bugs.
Set up an alert to be notified if your site go's down.
Workout daily. Go outside walk. whatever find something MOVE your body.
Good lucky.
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#148Here’s one that is counterintuitive. As you start to scale yourself, hire first for the things you know/do best. You will only be able to identify what good looks like if you understand the job. It will be tempting to keep doing those things yourself, because you want to feel competent. Startups are all about allowing yourself to be incompetent, but overcoming it.
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#149These are more enterprisy: If you sell through a channel, that channel is your customer, not the end user. They have needs and actually those needs (not desires, needs) are more important than the end users' -- if your channel doesn't sell the product it doesn't matter how much you've worked to add that end-user feature. Have the entire exec team go on a sales call once a quarter (not all together on the same call!).…
Is it really a bad thing if you hyper-grow by just focusing on one client? It takes time to get a lead, so why not focus on the leads you don’t need to get?
Re: Ask HN: Important nonobvious startup/business lessons you've learned?
#150Always be talking to your customers. Always be selling. Surviving is succeeding. Make more money than you spend. read this : https://basecamp.com/shapeup Find a LEGIT accountant. Expense everything. FIND health insurance ( if it means getting a part timer for health insurance) hire 1099s there will always be bugs. Set up an alert to be notified if your site go's down. Workout daily. Go outside walk. whatever find som…
ShapeUp is about product development and not ‘Selling’