Some startup lessons we learned the hard way
Sahil Patel
22 replies
1. Intuition isn't a spiritual, non-tangible thing. It's the highest form of competence. Therefore I should trust my intuition/gut 100% of them when I'm in my zone of genius and zone of competence (look these 2 zones up)
2. Every hire either accelerates a startup's growth or death. No employee has a neutral contribution. Before making a hire, we now ask ourselves "if I had only 3 months of cash runway, would we hire this person today?"
3. Pre product market fit, it's important to alternate between having a plan and being curious, and have a feedback loop (ideally customers themselves) that won't let you swing too much between the two
4. Founders make great angel investors
5. When in doubt, focus on the product
6. When in doubt, if you're unsure about your product, do anything in your problem space. It gives you new information.
7. Once in a while you come across a decision that has an extremely high consequence, for which you have extremely low conviction. It can make you lose sleep, feel an extreme amount of fear and stress, possibly procrastinate or turn to some form of escapism or a bad habit. It takes sophisticated mental model and a CEO peer group to stay sharp and not lose momentum.
8. Read "Thinking in Bets"
8. Get a CEO peer group from day 0. People who poke holes in your decision-making, ask you questions about your biggest upcoming decisions, listen to you think out loud incoherently, until you get coherent and make 10x better decisions. They save you weeks or months of inaction, or mediocre actions.
There are many such peer groups, including www.learningloop.com
9. Every successful startup needs to grow 5-7% weekly or faster at some point, but most startups solving the world's hardest problems in energy, transportation, automation, healthcare, finance, education, culture, justice, defense, food, freedom and so on will take years to get to that rate of growth. Do not quit an important problem space that has tons of demand and value to be unlocked but takes a lot of time to succeed in, just because an accelerator told you they don't like your startup now. They don't like you now because their LPs can't like you now but will later. The keyword is now. Accelerators make money if your valuation is gonna jump in 3 months
10. Ignore most content produced by startup accelerators in the current decade unless it's useful to your current context and increases your decision making speed/quality
11. Ignore every VC post that starts with "The best founders..." whether or not it is in your favor. If it's in your favor, it may inflate your ego and distract you. If it goes against how you are, it may make you overthink and distract you again. They can't possibly know the answer. The only such statement that can be said with reasonable certainty is "the worst founders are the ones who commit crimes". Other than that, you can't possibly make a best/worse founder statement and actually be right. If we could, they'd have more unicorns & some Da Vincis, too
Replies
Lorenz Sell@lorenzsell
Sutra
I like the point about hiring. And it's so true. You can tell within days if a person is the right fit or not. And, if they're not the right fit, it's your responsibility to let them go as soon as possible both for your sake and their sake. Sometimes this is really hard. But I've learned time and time again, that you just have to do it otherwise it's seriously damaging to the company.
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Getting customer feedback is important but also who has given it, and what was the incentive for them to give that feedback is important.
That can save you much dealys
Learning Loop
@janak_patel56 Great point!
hire and fire... don't hire and hope.
i might sound harsh... but this is just my opinion.
Learning Loop
@andrewcanday 100%
Imo, don't underestimate the importance of customer feedback early on. It can save you from building the wrong product.
Learning Loop
@lucas_edwards2 i believe you should also trust your intuition/gut sometimes. Henry Ford once said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
Thanks for sharing this! Now it is very valuable to read personal opinion, instead of what artificial intelligence writes!
In my opinion, there is one more point that you partially mentioned when writing about hiring. You don't have to do everything alone. If the volume of work indicates that it is necessary to scale, then you should not take on the work for two, three or four people. A partnership with a tech vendor can be a good solution. Then you can not hire a person in the staff, but cooperate temporarily, part-time or involve as needed
Here is a good article on how it works:
https://jetsoftpro.com/blog/when...
Thanks for haring such insightful tips. These can be very helpful to me in future. :)
Trusting intuition is essential when decisions range with expertise. It helps make more confident choices and accelerates progress.
Hi Sahil! These are great lessons. Trusting your gut and being careful with hires really resonate with me
Your points are super helpful, especially about intuition and hiring. I’m just starting out, so your advice on alternating between planning and curiosity is something I’ll definitely keep in mind
We learned that not having a clear target audience from the start can be a huge setback. Understanding who you’re building for is crucial.
This is very insightful information, thank you so much for sharing, it will help a lot to others founders like me who are working on to build their own startups.
Learning Loop
@boreas_kruger i'm happy to hear that you found this post insightful!
Thank you for this, would certainly have this in mind
Learning Loop
@enwemuche_martha I'm glad you found these lessons helpful. Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss any of these points further.
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Learning Loop
@md_shihab_uddin2 Thanks man!
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