If you could give only 1 advice to yourself at the beginning of your startup, what would it be?

Sveta Bay
66 replies
Let me start! Advice: Start building your audience ASAP and #buildinpublic Why? By doing these, you get support, feedback, and even first customers. These are the core things for Indie and Solo entrepreneurs in the beginning!

Replies

Joshua Wöhle
Advice: Although you want to launch as early as you can to collect feedback on your execution, start tweaking your original idea only once you've hit the minimum stage where you think your product actually solves the problem you set out to solve well. Why? Too often the feedback from users on very early products comes from the fact they're not able to see exactly what you are trying to do just yet. In turn, you run the risk of misinterpreting the feedback as relating to the fundamental idea as opposed to your current execution of it. A balance to strike of course, but I'm seeing this happen (and have made the mistake) more often nowadays
Fuad Murad
@joshuawohle Ooh this is SUCH great advice. When you're in the weeds of building your product, you're on a mission. You probably haven't revealed that entire mission yet or what you're building or what your end game is. Someone coming in early and giving you feedback could be distracting from your vision. Trust your gut, follow through, take feedback with a grain of salt. Great approach.
Sveta Bay
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@joshuawohle Joshua, that's brilliant! If the product is too abstract, the feedback will be also like that
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen
All advice in this discussion is valuable. My advice to myself :) would be - set constraints on resources, especially time but also money. Track these resources carefully because you need both to get users. Hope this helps.
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen
@basv - Good point. As someone bootstrapping money is perhaps more important than in a VC backed startup?
Sveta Bay
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@ebrahimkhalil great one! Especially for those startups, who just raised money
Mak Mo
Identifying the market is every thing and it is the hardest thing.
Sveta Bay
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@youssif_maxzoom yeah, I also can say the same about product market fit
Boulama K.
1 - Things don't need to be shiny at the beginning. I found myself overbuilding stuff that had no traction, no user, and ended up with a great product that zero people wanted. Now I start with reaching out to potential users and maybe getting revenues before building. That helps a lot in staying motivated, too! 2 - Be consistent. Just keep improving. It's crazy how that compounds really fast!
Brenna Donoghue
Be okay with good enough. It can be so hard to ship something that doesn't feel perfect or anywhere near what you envision, but getting quick feedback is so much more valuable than going all in on getting something that may not be right.
Sveta Bay
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@brenna_donoghue absolutely agree with you, Brenna! Perfectionism is the worst trait for startups
Marko Balažic
Small chunks, fast iteration, don't commit and commit, push and merge soon😎
Marko Balažic
@basv Might be yes. Definitely it matters to be on schedule. For me new products feels like writing a new book, usually I don't have the issue with motivation.. commitments 🤓
Sveta Bay
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@markobalazic but commitment also matters! It helps to be on schedule 😊
Mr.Pugo
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Ultimate Life Planner
Advice: Prepare your MVP to generate money ASAP, not growth. Why? By following the growth in the early days, you may end up burning money and not earning a dime. You can have a startup with millions of users and yet lose money. These will force you to close the doors or raise more money and lose the share of your startup too early. in the early days of your startup look for ways to make money from your early users and then focus on growth so you can support that growth.
Lucy Heskins
Oh, great question. Advice: Go where the research takes you. Don't try to fit your perception of a problem onto a market's actual problem. Why? As founders our bias can over ride decisions on days it gets a little tough.
Sveta Bay
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@gingerbeer84 Yeah, deep diving into research can lead to even bigger problems to solve!
Param Shah
Set up financial systems and reporting properly from day one and track it vigilantly week over week. As you scale this will be one of your strongest tools and discipline will save you significant time and headache in the future
Sveta Bay
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@paramdshah great advice! Operations is a must to keep everything clean
Ash Rahman 🎮
Advice: Avoid the noise, focus. Why? During the very early days, when you are out in the wild with your product, you will notice you don't know many startup related buzzwords. You will feel like you are missing something and will start attending startup related programmes. You may lose focus on your own business. Unless this programmes, including incubators are bringing you some leads specific to your business, or actively introducing you to investors - don't be their products.
Roberto Morais
Don't get attached to your project. If it's not working, either go to a different one or pivot.
Sveta Bay
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@robertomorais this is the best one
Ceeya AI - Personal Brand Builder
Believe in your gut feeling and do not let others influence over your mastery.
Thomas
Reachfluencer
Reachfluencer
create your mafia. find complementary products, discuss with founders, start partnership day 1.
Rahul Patel
Don't run for the perfection of features. Build them and roll them out so that you can gather feedback at an early stage.
Philipp Schwengel
Advice: Build something that few people love instead of something that many people like and don't run after people that will never love your product. Why? It's much easier to scale a product that is loved by its first 100 customers than something 1000s of people somewhat like. Asking for payment early on (even if it's scary), helps a lot in separating the "lovers" from the "likers" :)
Sveta Bay
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@phil_schwengel Philipp, your advice is golden! Great companies are built with this method. Love it
Tim Parsa
I've built many startups, some of which have achieved hypergrowth like Uphold, Airtm, and Cadoo. I wish I'd built an incentivized community of collaborators with skin in the game prior to building an MVP on all of them. Community is the platform for your Network. The two M's in community stand for memes and money. That's why I built Slyk-- to make it easy for any project, startup, founder, or community to reward growth with their own coin and redeem that coin for whatever they want to offer the world. Build something people want by rewarding them for helping you build the thing they want. Makerbox needs a CPC (coin-powered community) ASAP.
Anne Robertson
Coming from the social media/community field, don't wait to build the hype or until the product is official launched. Start teasing and building the community - those early adopters will be your army :)
Elsie Alkurabi | Micro
Start where you are. There will never be a perfect time of the day, month, or year to get started. If you keep waiting for "perfect conditions," they'll never come, and you'll keep putting it off. Just start. And keep showing up.
Sveta Bay
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@elsewhere this MUST be a home screen wallpaper!
Building something people want is crucial for a business to succeed. It doesn't matter how many users you have if they aren't the right ones. It doesn't matter how many tweets you get if they aren't positive ones. Focus on building something that people want.
Rich Watson
NVSTly: Social Investing
NVSTly: Social Investing
follow your instincts
Sveta Bay
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@richw dangerous advice 😅