Starting a Startup

Notes, Quotes, Thots

 

Nothing really original, just a set of important ideas

Avoid Fake Work

Fake work is usually more fun than real work. Fake work is everything outside of 

 

A) Selling your product

B) Building & Improving your product

Examples of Fake Work

A) Interviewing accounting & legal firms

B) Designing business cards

C) Arguing over who's CEO

D) Holding a lot of meetings with people

E) Attending conferences

F) Ordering T-Shirts

Keep your team small for as long as possible

  • A Product Person
  • A Seller (Marketer, Sales)

If your team isn't in either these two categories

 

You should be super suspicious

Fundraising is not winning

 

  • Get it over as soon as possible
  • It's not selling or building
  • It's extremely time consuming

If you get a $100,000 investment...

Divide it by half, that's how much you really have

- Taxes, rent, other expenses

Give your first employees a lot of equity

They will make or break your company. 

Do not chase valuations.

Begin with a low one

Low Valuations

A company with sales beating a $3 million valuation is much easier than beating a $10 million valuation. 

 

If you beat a $3M, then you can skyrocket to a higher valuation later. 

Keep your promises small

Press is not winning

Many founders mess up when they overvalue fame than making sales. 

Other wastes of time

  • Startup Competitions
  • Networking at Conferences

Think like this:

Never think like this:

Our users don't love our product, all is lost!

Okay. No one loves our product. Lets see what we can do about it.

You will mess up

it will feel extremely depressing

"Don't worry about failure, you only have to be right once."

- Drew Houston

Everyone Will Lose Their Morale 

the loss of morale is the point where others quit

It will feel like you're about to die. But you're not going to. Our brains are oddly wired to think that every bad thing will cause death.

your job is to work through the drought of morale

Don't 
Burn
Out

"burning out" will damage your startup more than anything

The ability to recognize when you're burning out

is very hard to acquire

Health is Critical

  • Workout Everyday
  • 80% of your diet should be veggies
  • Make an effort to get into nature

Don't guess too much

ask a lot of questions

Always include analytics and metrics

Sometimes they tell much better stories than your customers

Launch as fast as you can

People are forgiving

of early products

Don't listen to them

Observe them

"If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product you've launched too late."

-Reid Hoffman

Get feedback as quickly as possible

 

Then immediately launch version 2.0

Get nitty gritty with growth

Always know your weekly targets

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