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Could you share a mistake you made early on that turned out to be a valuable learning experience?

Amit Arora
15 replies
Hello PH community, I thought I'd share some news and lessons I learned recently that might help other makers and entrepreneurs. As a new entrepreneur, I early on in my journey underestimated the importance of market research. Rather than fully understanding my target audience's needs and preferences, I dived headfirst into product development. As a result, I believed they wanted something different from what they really needed. Keeping close track of customer feedback and conducting thorough research were valuable lessons I learned. What’s yours? Would love to know and learn from your mistakes.

Replies

Richard Rubenstein
CuratedLetters
CuratedLetters
Launching soon!
I'd say not hiring quality over quantity. The faster you can hire top talent that replaces your tasks, the quicker you can scale.
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Akeju Tioluwani
I think for me the biggest lesson is building products that people want but not what people actually need. I think for us young founders, we have all these fancy cool ideas but always forget to ask ourselves if it is an actually "Need" or something people just found cool.
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Amit Arora
The Action Tracker - Life Planner
@akeju_tioluwani agreed, only if something is cool does not mean people want it and would love to spend money. Idea for which people are happy to pay and regret when the product is not around is very powerful.
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Bridie Lee
mDash
Internalizing outside advice too much and that translating into a limited view of how to move forward with my startup. Follow your gut and don't worry about how it's "supposed" to be done.
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Amit Arora
The Action Tracker - Life Planner
@bridie_lee beautiful. 🙂 I also think trusting the voice within aka the Intuition can be very powerful.
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Michael Stan
Uniflow
Uniflow
For me, it was not trusting that the accountant will help me manage my business finances. Understanding them was the best thing I could do to make my business more profitable and efficient.
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Afiya Chohollo
@michaelstan How did you go about understanding them?
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Michael Stan
Uniflow
Uniflow
@a_cho_cfocloud To be fair, I started from my personal finances and making sure that they are in order then I started learning about the business one and in the same time reconciling my own transactions so I exactly know where the money goes. and step by step, I got there
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Amit Arora
The Action Tracker - Life Planner
@michaelstan very interesting. Now when you understand the reconciliations, do you think now if you create a process to manage those reconciliations, then even having an accountant manage those will be helpful? Like now you can easily overview in minutes and see where is the ship moving. :)
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Michael Stan
Uniflow
Uniflow
@amit_arora To b fair, if you are able to do your own reconciliations, and understand the basics of numbers inside of the financial statements(which each of the people who run their business should know, the accountant is not really necessary anymore. or at least I think so, at least not for the small businesses, You would need more an assistant or someone who will deal with all of the returns and emailing companies, rather then finances especially nowadays in the age of automation.
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Afiya Chohollo
@amit_arora @michaelstan Interesting what I am building aims to help owners and leaders with that understanding and automation it would be great if I could get some feedback from both of you https://www.producthunt.com/prod... or www.cloudfo.co
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