Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
medium.ikuznetsov.com
Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#2Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though.
You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or most importantly you're happy for things to take longer. You don't need PR or bizdev either if you have a wide network or good creative skills for generating marketing chatter. The idea that you have to buy that is nonsense. Very few early stage startups hire in PR in my experience.
Point 4 is right though. Raising is a full time thing that requires focus. You pretty much have to stop working on your business to raise a round. That's a big part of the risk of doing it, and one reason why it's far better to have more than one founder.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#3Fifth thing you should have known:
Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#4Fifth thing you should have known: Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.
We haven't had an explosion in mental illness. We've had an explosion in the number of people being able to recognize they have an issue, understand that help is available, and being willing to speak about it publicly. The problems have always been there.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#5Points 1 through 3 are off. Point 4 is bang on though. You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway. A longer runway puts off the scary point where you have to launch something. You can bootstrap a startup with very little capital if you have the skills to do the work yourself, or you have co-founders with those skills, or most importantly you're happy for things to take longe…
"You don't need 250k to 300k, and if you had it you'd wish you had 500k or 750k anyway."
Spending a quarter mill on a prototype seems like a horrible decision, TBH...
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#6Fifth thing you should have known: Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.
We haven't had an explosion in mental illness. We've had an explosion in the number of people being able to recognize they have an issue, understand that help is available, and being willing to speak about it publicly. The problems have always been there.
I don't believe that to be true, mental health amongst teens has had a rapid decline in the past 10ish years, social media and always connected seems to be a major part of that.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#7Building something from nothing is very hard. The only thing that prepares you for it is building something from nothing. Being an employee at another start up doesnt really give you the right experience. I am on my 4th try and have learned many lessons. Each time applying those lessons to the next venture. Finally we might be close to success. The number 1 lesson is to do as much as possible yourself before raising money and hiring people.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#8Fifth thing you should have known: Trying to improve mental health using an app is like trying to cure alcoholism with vodka. Societal addiction to devices is the reason why we've had an explosion in mental illness.
We haven't had an explosion in mental illness. We've had an explosion in the number of people being able to recognize they have an issue, understand that help is available, and being willing to speak about it publicly. The problems have always been there.
exactly.. in the luddite era dyslexia wasn't recognized and people assumed you were dumb. Likewise in the 70s and 80s ADHD/Depression/Anxiety etc were thought to be harmless and associated with "laziness/bad parenting" etc.
Now, we are more intelligent and the average person knows better than to downplay mental health challenges.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#9> If you are a good seller, your product will always be worse than your narratives. Everyone you sell your product to will be disappointed when they start using it...
> The market lives in an atmosphere of inflated promises... Anyone who can only tell the truth about their projects will not look ambitious and convincing enough. Nobody will invest in those projects.
Agree? Disagree? I personally have limited experience but tend to dislike startups that oversell and promise lalaland with nothing to back that up. Not every startup is like that imo.
Re: Things I wish I knew before founding my mental health startup
#10Cynical better title: Things I wish I knew before paying other people to build my startup for me.
If you don't have the skills or co-founder(s) to get a prototype off the ground with ramen money, that should be your #1 goal. Or, if you really hate that idea and want to pay other people to develop things for you, at a minimum look at paying developers in cheaper places to do it so you can at least vet your idea for a low price before going all-in on expenses.