61–70 of 88 posts
This is a good list (except for 11, survivorship bias means that investing in startups is not as universally profitable as investing in VTI). All of these though have been covered extensively in lots of books over the years that I'd assume even a cursory search of "how to get started with entrepreneurship and startups" would uncover, like Lean Startup, Mom Test, etc, for those who don't want to learn the hard way as…
> 3. Don't chase investors, chase users, and then investors will be chasing you. > 9. Sell features, before building them. Ask existing users if they want this feature. > 15. Don't build consumer apps. Only b2b. Consumer apps are so hard, like a lottery. It's just 0.00001% who make it big. The rest don't. Even if I got many users, then there is a monetization challenge. ^ these in particular stand out and all connect…
I'd say this is #1 error that I see around
> 3. Don't chase investors, chase users, and then investors will be chasing you. > 9. Sell features, before building them. Ask existing users if they want this feature. > 15. Don't build consumer apps. Only b2b. Consumer apps are so hard, like a lottery. It's just 0.00001% who make it big. The rest don't. Even if I got many users, then there is a monetization challenge. ^ these in particular stand out and all connect…
I'd say this is #1 error that I see around
so is it an error? or a necessary phase of growth
but yes it is good to graduate beyond it
> 6. Hire only fullstack devs. There is nothing less productive in this world than a team of developers. Huh? And those "fullstack devs" will do everything alone or what? Maybe if you are building a proof-of-concept prototype with a useful half-life of 6 months before you sell the company to someone else (and let them deal with the mess under the carpet) but not once you actually start selling the product - and mainl…
I don't disagree, because you're mostly talking about mature startups and corporations. My experinece comes from early stage startups and small saas companies. Where scrum and dev teams aren't helping and having just one dev doing the whole thing is actually very productive. But your points are good, if the reader is coming from a bigger company
1. Agree
2. Agree
3. Chasing VCs was required for us. I have been in 100s of VC meeting supporting our CEO through two companies and many rounds of funding.
4. Agree
5. Agree
6. Full stack devs preferred. The right UI and DB specialists are game changers though.
7. Agree
8. Invest in a marketing lead machine from day 1. e.g. Glengarry Glen Ross :)
9. Agree
10. I am not a hugger. I prefer to hire people who do not give up. Everyone wants to convince you what ever you are trying to achieve will not work. If you hire people who do not do well with failing, they will really struggle with a failing fast approach.
11. Cannot relate
12. Cannot relate
13. Big companies can be helpful. But, when you are small, the numbers you generate are round off errors in their financial reports. It is very hard to align a win/win situation that keeps them interested.
14. Cannot relate
15. Agree
16. Agree
17. Agree
18. Agree
19. Agree
20. I admire companies that have grown by bootstraping. Bootstrapped high growth companies are rare. You will most likely need funding to grow your idea - great talent is not cheap.
Add: You need both a developer and a sales person to start a software company. You have to build and sell software to stay alive. #9 is very true.
Ideally, you start selling before you build - definitely sell before the product is ready. This gives many developers anxiety. Do not underestimate how hard or how long the sales process is. The worst situation to be in is that you wait for the product to be ready before you try to sell it - this is death to a start up.
"Ask existing users if they want this feature" is a bad idea because users are going to say "yes" to everything, especially in a B2B SaaS app. It means nothing.
You should be very lucky to have 3 friends with their startups turning into unicorns. For most of us, crypto/stock market investment has more gains though.
Exec at a B2B software company. Joined when it was 12 people with no money, customers, or product - Unicorn company today with same exec team. 1. Agree 2. Agree 3. Chasing VCs was required for us. I have been in 100s of VC meeting supporting our CEO through two companies and many rounds of funding. 4. Agree 5. Agree 6. Full stack devs preferred. The right UI and DB specialists are game changers though. 7. Agree 8. In…
> There is nothing less productive in this world than a team of developers. First, yikes. Also, I'm quite curious about how productivity was measured here. For a (successful) software business, the work output of developers is highly productive because the marginal cost of selling another copy of the software is so low. SaaS delivery models may result in somewhat higher marginal costs compared to non-SaaS distributio…
They aren't saying developers are unproductive. They are saying teams of developers are unproductive. In the words of my great grandfather. "one boy is one boy, two boys is a half a boy, and 3 boys is no boy at all"
I am not qualified to judge the rest.
It is very odd that I do not disagree with anything you said.