Insights For Startup Founders

I’ve been researching a lot on startup related topics as founders, funding, strategy and so on. I’ve been finding some really good resources while doing this. Noam Wasserman’s “Founder Frustrations” blog is one of my favorite and includes well document research on founders issues. I highly recommend reading it as it’s full of useful advice.

SHiFT08
In a startup everyone should be aligned in the same direction!

Occasionally I also find some honest and relevant lists of things to do or not to do. Most are rubbish but some I can identify myself with. This list of Insights For Startup Founders is a great resource and I agree with it 100% so let me share it with you:

  • 1. Seek transparency and understanding with your partners early. Issues get harder as time passes
  • 2. Startup founders work long hours for a reason. There’s more work than there are people. If you’re seeking balance, seek it elsewhere.
  • 3. Bad customers will drain you of passion. Really bad customers will drain you of both passion and profits. Unfortunately, most bad customers will degenerate into really bad customers if you don’t do something about it.
  • 4. If you’re changing direction often, worry a little. If you’re changing people often, worry a lot.
  • 5. It’s lonely at the top, but even lonelier at the bottom. In the early days of a startup, hardly anyone wants to talk to you (except some desperate vendors).
  • 6. Eventually, your product will need to work and do something useful. No amount of marketing or strategy will get you around this.
  • 7. At the end of each day, ask yourself: “Did the product get better for customers today?”. If you don’t have a good answer, stay up until you do.
  • 8. Until you are profitable, time is working against you. Once you are profitable, time is on your side.
  • 9. Learn to take calculated risks. The market rarely rewards safe bets.
  • 10. To improve the quality of your output, improve the quality if your inputs. Read, converse and connect with the right people.
  • 11. Force yourself to write, as it will force you to think.
  • 12. At least once every year or so, your startup will almost die.
  • 13. The problem you solve should be ugly. The solution you build should be beautiful.
  • 14. Even the most successful startup ideas had 100 reasons not to pursue them. There is no perfect idea.
  • 15. If the pain doesn’t kill you, it just hurts a lot.
  • 16. You choose your destiny, because you choose your team.

Last but definitely not least: Be who you are. Do what you love. Join people you like.

October 21, 2008 | Tags: , ,  

comments

2 Responses to “Insights For Startup Founders”

  1. Pedro Sousa on October 21st, 2008

    Nice advice. Really good insight. :)

  2. Paulo Traça on October 22nd, 2008

    Hi Andre,

    Nice post, a lot of that resonates with me too, especially nº3 , that one I learned the hard way, and let me tell you that there are a lot of those in Portugal.
    I recommend Guy Kawasaki book “The Art of the Start” and “Rules for Revolutionaries”, both excellent books that have some real pearls, and besides that guy has a very entertaining style of writing.
    I would also recommend Guy Blog - http://blog.guykawasaki.com.

    Nice Work.

    Cheers

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    andre_ribeirinho_t.jpg I'm André Ribeirinho, an entrepreneur in Lisbon, Portugal. I'm a co-founder of Adegga.com, an advisor at Tarpipe and an organizer at SHiFT.
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    Tarpipe makes it easy to share content across different social media applications.

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    Yozik is a service that helps artists and labels promote and sell their music directly on their own site, own blog or in a social network.

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