- Two main clients did not pay bills on time, causing me to run out of runway. Getting them to pay became the single most important issue, and after they finally did, I was stuck with a 2.5 month backlog, two important clients who couldn't be trusted to pay on time, and a broken spirit.
- Created a b2b app, spend too much time on making it work great, not nearly enough time/effort on marketing it. Found that the people who could understand the technical superiority were not our target market, but just people who estimate technical superiority from marketing. Couldn't and wouldn't compete on that. Then we landed a big client who paid us handsomely to lose our focus and turned us into a non-scalable consultancy business which we sold for an almost symbolic value.
- Used networking to get together a team of 5 researchers/engineers in a hot field. Found funding prospects, but only on the condition that they pay us (slightly below market average), but the equity would be in the single digits (even for me). So this blew up, and a few months later the most promising researchers got jobs at FAMG. I think most $$ potential was lost here (would have been an easy acqui-hire).
Learned:
- The cheaper the price, the cheaper the customers. I took pride in offering great customer service, but spend hours looking into issues for 15$ accounts (would have been cheaper to fire them).
- The smaller the startup, the lower you are prioritized come pay-day. Would be more aggressive in collections/SLA.
- It is not how good your product is, it is how much people are willing to spend for it (how good they perceive it to be). Non-technical people are easier convinced by a sales call, than an impressive demo.
- Learned how to deal with financial stress and to keep a good sleep/workout schedule, else my output drops way too low.
- 15% equity of 0$ is 0$, but you also can't expect the really good people to work for your startup without any potential upside or throwing them a bone. Strike while the iron is hot.