Do any of these rookie mistakes seem familiar?
This question originally appeared on Quora: What are avoidable mistakes that first-time entrepreneurs make repeatedly?
1. Stop drinking your own Kool-Aid. If you are not brutally honest with yourself, you can't make informed decisions that will truly improve your company. You will hide behind excuses and spin stories to yourself explaining away why you have to keep doing the rest of the things on the list. You can't believe all the stories you tell. You need a healthy dose of skepticism (which is not the same as self-doubt or lack of self-belief) to make real forward progress.
2. Stop being so busy all the time. Does an early-stage startup founder really need to spend time evaluating every HR alternative instead of focusing on customers and product? Some people think that being the CEO means being involved with everything. But what they are really doing is getting in the way and usually just slowing down progress. Surround yourself with smart people and delegate, delegate, delegate. There are only a few things you should not delegate in the early stages of a business: for example, customer engagements, raising capital, and finding product-market fit.
3. Stop working yourself to death. As the founder, you often feel like the world is on your shoulders and you have to be working 100-hour weeks to set an example for your employees. Startups are a marathon, not a race. The average successful exit takes 7 to 10 years. If you don't take time for yourself and take care of yourself, nobody else will. Relax; take breaks, take walks, take days off, get massages, pamper yourself. You can't take care of others if you do not take care of yourself first.
4. Stop half-assing it. On the other hand, I have tried countless times to build a startup idea as a side project, and it doesn't work. I am not saying that it is impossible to start a startup on the side. I am saying that to make a real play at doing something investable, you are going to have to make the leap and do it full time sooner than you will feel comfortable doing so. It always works this way. Nobody will invest in you if this is not what you do all the time, no matter how good the idea is.
5. Stop hiding behind fake traction. Founders often highlight what looks good and hide what looks bad. This is fake traction. For example: "All of my users love my product!" Sounds great, but if you only have 12 users, your sample size is two orders of magnitude too small. If you find 1,000 people who can't stop talking about your product, you are onto something big. Or another is, "I have 300 people on my waiting list to buy my product!" Awesome. How many of them are willing to pay you for it up front? None? Haven't even asked yet?
6. Stop counting your eggs before they hatch. An investor who expressed interest in investing but hasn't called back in a few weeks isn't money in the bank. Close, close, close. Convertible notes aren't perfect, but at least you can do a rolling close cheaply. A potential customer who says he may pay if your product does such-and-such is not money in the bank. Close, close, close. What will he pay for today?
7. Stop trying to get around paying lawyers. You are running a complicated legal entity that may take funding from individuals and VCs, and could eventually IPO or be acquired. This is not a mom-and-pop business; LegalZoom and RocketLawyer are not good enough. Do it right. Don't even try to outsmart yourself here. Expensive in the short term? Yes. Worth it in the long term? Always. Your future self will hate you if you try to save too much money here.
8. Stop trying to serve two kinds of customers. You can't be great doing two things. You don't have the time, money, or resources to figure out the product-market fit for more than one product doing one thing. It is always so enticing to try to follow new opportunities that come up, but don't fool yourself. You can't be great executing two go-to-market strategies at once. The split focus will mean you will be at best mediocre, but probably terrible at both. If you really think the new opportunity is better, pivot the company and go all in.
9. Stop believing that your product is your company. Your company is the value you provide to your customers, not your product. Often your customers couldn't care less if what happens behind the scenes is done by the best Scala code in the universe or a thousand monkeys ... as long as it works reliably and in timely fashion. Your customer value and your team is your company, not your product. Focus on making your team happy and your customers happy and all else will follow.
10. Stop avoiding your customers. How long has it been since you last talked with a customer? On the phone or in person? Not to sell them stuff. Not to offer support. To listen. To build your relationship with them. To ask questions. Please don't tell me it has been more than a week or two. A founder, and especially a CEO, has no excuse not to be in continuous communication with customers. Don't have customers yet? Call your prospects.11.
