Ask HN: Which of your start up mistakes has taught you the most?
Learning from your faults is critical. Adapting with necessary adjustments can be powerful. Which of your start up mistakes has taught you the most?
25 comments
I made many mistakes, the common pattern in all mistakes was WISHFUL THINKING. I think a really good businessman operates without ANY wishful thinking. I came to the conclusion that a good business plan (which by the way should be typed up and hung on the wall so that it is explicit) contains no more than one "wishful" part. VC money might allow for more, I don't know.
Anyways, for me it was:
* not doing customer development at the very beginning
* concentrating on technology instead of customers
* not taking into account market forces
* not taking into account my economic environment (Eastern Europe != California), reading too many SV blogs
* not starting the company when I was younger (started at 27, should have started at 25)
I think not concentrating on customers is a common mistake, which could be avoided if for example the book "Four steps to Epiphany" would come up more often, and people would read it before spending 6 months writing code =)
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
EDIT:
I actually think reading lists like this is not that helpful, at least it wasn't for me. A technical person doens't even know what customer development is. What's technology, it's different in different contexts. What are market forces in your segment, you probably don't even know when you're starting out.
I would recommend to talk to a friend who has started a business and has experienced the realities. I have been on the advice-giving end of such a conversation a couple of days ago, and it was shocking to see my mistakes (mostly wishful thinking and lack of ecomomic realities) repeated in my good friends line of thinking. I spent a whole night (8 hours) telling him my insights, it was pretty shocking for him, several times he walked out and then came back, but I was only telling him what I learned the last 2 years. In the end it was a good deal for him.
Anyways, for me it was:
* not doing customer development at the very beginning
* concentrating on technology instead of customers
* not taking into account market forces
* not taking into account my economic environment (Eastern Europe != California), reading too many SV blogs
* not starting the company when I was younger (started at 27, should have started at 25)
I think not concentrating on customers is a common mistake, which could be avoided if for example the book "Four steps to Epiphany" would come up more often, and people would read it before spending 6 months writing code =)
http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
EDIT:
I actually think reading lists like this is not that helpful, at least it wasn't for me. A technical person doens't even know what customer development is. What's technology, it's different in different contexts. What are market forces in your segment, you probably don't even know when you're starting out.
I would recommend to talk to a friend who has started a business and has experienced the realities. I have been on the advice-giving end of such a conversation a couple of days ago, and it was shocking to see my mistakes (mostly wishful thinking and lack of ecomomic realities) repeated in my good friends line of thinking. I spent a whole night (8 hours) telling him my insights, it was pretty shocking for him, several times he walked out and then came back, but I was only telling him what I learned the last 2 years. In the end it was a good deal for him.
I think pretty much everyone interested in startups knows what "customer development" is by now :)
Counterexample: myself 2 years ago.
"by now" != 2 years ago.
Pretty much everyone = most people, not everyone.
Pretty much everyone = most people, not everyone.
I'm not a startup guy by any means, but I have to say that it's surprising how many well established businesses don't get it right.
* Not having multiple clients lined up (in Round 1 of my company I made this mistake and had to get a "real job" for a while).
* Not starting early and having to pull all-nighters as deadlines approached.
* Not communicating with clients on a daily basis (this also helps to keep you from procrastinating).
* Not starting on your crazy side ideas/weekend projects as soon as possible. The longer they sit on your to-do list, the more they'll bug you but also the less likely they'll get done. If you at least get them to a prototype stage, you won't feel like you missed out even if you decide not to finish them.
* Not starting early and having to pull all-nighters as deadlines approached.
* Not communicating with clients on a daily basis (this also helps to keep you from procrastinating).
* Not starting on your crazy side ideas/weekend projects as soon as possible. The longer they sit on your to-do list, the more they'll bug you but also the less likely they'll get done. If you at least get them to a prototype stage, you won't feel like you missed out even if you decide not to finish them.
> * Not starting early and having to pull all-nighters as deadlines approached.
It is easy to beat yourself over this point, but procrastination is extremely common. I'm highly guilty of it. In school, work, and life, without hard deadlines approaching, it is too easy to wait until the last minute and be forced to pull all-nighters.
It is easy to beat yourself over this point, but procrastination is extremely common. I'm highly guilty of it. In school, work, and life, without hard deadlines approaching, it is too easy to wait until the last minute and be forced to pull all-nighters.
1. Not building for myself.
2. Not addressing a universal consumer market.
3. Extrapolating too far and pivoting unnecessarily.
4. Not focusing on the bare minimum of features.
5. Not keeping things simple.
6. Not having a big "Fordian" vision (read Ford's autobiography).
7. Not getting prospective customers to cover development cost.
8. Focusing too much on "talking about culture" rather than culture itself which is values plus action.
9. Not pushing employees enough.
10. Not insisting on timeliness (being "before time" not "on time") or outcomes enough.
11. Worrying.
12. Not working a fixed 8 hours a day (max 40 hours per week).
13. Not exercising consistently.
Needless to say in spite of these, the outcome so far has been good, but if I were to advise someone, I would mention the above.
2. Not addressing a universal consumer market.
3. Extrapolating too far and pivoting unnecessarily.
4. Not focusing on the bare minimum of features.
5. Not keeping things simple.
6. Not having a big "Fordian" vision (read Ford's autobiography).
7. Not getting prospective customers to cover development cost.
8. Focusing too much on "talking about culture" rather than culture itself which is values plus action.
9. Not pushing employees enough.
10. Not insisting on timeliness (being "before time" not "on time") or outcomes enough.
11. Worrying.
12. Not working a fixed 8 hours a day (max 40 hours per week).
13. Not exercising consistently.
Needless to say in spite of these, the outcome so far has been good, but if I were to advise someone, I would mention the above.
Listen to your customers.
I was doing stuff I found interesting even though it wasn't what my customers were asking for, and in doing so I've left a lot of money on the table.
This is being corrected now, my users have been screaming for me to add advertising for a while (strange, huh) and I'd been against it because I didn't think it was important and because I thought I had more pressing things to do (adding new features).
But in the area I'm in (highly loyal niche community) most of the users are involved in cottage industries of their own and want the advertising to not only help ensure the sustainability of the community but also to give their products exposure and a springboard. Likewise users of the site have been asking for adverts so that they have a kind of slow beacon showing what new stuff has emerged that they might've missed in the ebb and flow of fast moving conversation.
So the lesson I've learned is to quit holding an anti-advert bias and to listen to the users more. They really want adverts and they really want to give me money, and I should really let them do the latter ASAP.
Another one would be to make larger pivots faster.
I started the company to own the pet project and to use that to fund what I feel are larger more complex things. However, the pet project has £3k revenue per month with almost no effort (maybe a couple of hours per week), clearly it's the one with traction and I should be behind that 100% instead of mostly ignoring it. There's so much I could still do with the pet project and haven't been doing because I've been researching more complex things... this is dumb of me in the short term as I could be building the pet project into the main entity and sustaining a proper income from it.
Both of these lessons lead to the same thing: Quit being blind about your realities. Stubbornness to only do the things you want to do, without listening to your users and customers, may be stopping you from actually do what you can do.
I was doing stuff I found interesting even though it wasn't what my customers were asking for, and in doing so I've left a lot of money on the table.
This is being corrected now, my users have been screaming for me to add advertising for a while (strange, huh) and I'd been against it because I didn't think it was important and because I thought I had more pressing things to do (adding new features).
But in the area I'm in (highly loyal niche community) most of the users are involved in cottage industries of their own and want the advertising to not only help ensure the sustainability of the community but also to give their products exposure and a springboard. Likewise users of the site have been asking for adverts so that they have a kind of slow beacon showing what new stuff has emerged that they might've missed in the ebb and flow of fast moving conversation.
So the lesson I've learned is to quit holding an anti-advert bias and to listen to the users more. They really want adverts and they really want to give me money, and I should really let them do the latter ASAP.
Another one would be to make larger pivots faster.
I started the company to own the pet project and to use that to fund what I feel are larger more complex things. However, the pet project has £3k revenue per month with almost no effort (maybe a couple of hours per week), clearly it's the one with traction and I should be behind that 100% instead of mostly ignoring it. There's so much I could still do with the pet project and haven't been doing because I've been researching more complex things... this is dumb of me in the short term as I could be building the pet project into the main entity and sustaining a proper income from it.
Both of these lessons lead to the same thing: Quit being blind about your realities. Stubbornness to only do the things you want to do, without listening to your users and customers, may be stopping you from actually do what you can do.
* working with an investor who wants to do all of your customer relations for you
-> This leads to a situation where you see customers asking questions in a forum and you (as a developer) are not allowed to answer because this is what the investor's support team is supposed to do. Thus, answering will be slow and of low quality. This builds a bad reputation. I will never do that again.
-> This leads to a situation where you see customers asking questions in a forum and you (as a developer) are not allowed to answer because this is what the investor's support team is supposed to do. Thus, answering will be slow and of low quality. This builds a bad reputation. I will never do that again.
You absolutely, 100% cannot get angry at your users. If they misuse your product, it's your fault. If they don't understand something, it's your fault.
* Build for your customer, not for yourself.
* Make one thing very good, ignore trying to do hundreds of features at launch.
* Make one thing very good, ignore trying to do hundreds of features at launch.
Rebuttal: Be your own customer.
You want customers, not a customer. You can only be one customer. It's probably best to build for customers, since that's how you make money.
The biggest lesson I learned was this : really consider the long term viability of a co-founder. You need someone to work with initially, but that may not be the same person who will last out in the long-term. So be very careful when collaborating with anyone. Also, I've found it very difficult to predict what will work well and what will not. Use intuition, but find out as quickly as possible if your ideas were correct.
Raising funding too early. This was educationally productive for 2 [opposite] reasons.
1) We knew far less than their average investment, which led to us experiencing more and faster improvement from the same help (while remaining worse than experienced founders, I would imagine).
2) We really weren't ready for the momentum funding put behind us. We had a business model that could support the founding team (we had broken even bootstrapping for the past year) but with the money comes the compulsion to hire and so on. It also put our focus on sales and revenue instead of learning, which caused some short term optimisation (eg. "Let's polish this product we suspect has no future so we can sell it now").
So raising that round was a mistake in terms of that particular business, but it taught me things that are hard to learn without taking investment and, more importantly, convinced me that startups really, truly, honestly do have distinct stages of growth that you can't force your way through.
1) We knew far less than their average investment, which led to us experiencing more and faster improvement from the same help (while remaining worse than experienced founders, I would imagine).
2) We really weren't ready for the momentum funding put behind us. We had a business model that could support the founding team (we had broken even bootstrapping for the past year) but with the money comes the compulsion to hire and so on. It also put our focus on sales and revenue instead of learning, which caused some short term optimisation (eg. "Let's polish this product we suspect has no future so we can sell it now").
So raising that round was a mistake in terms of that particular business, but it taught me things that are hard to learn without taking investment and, more importantly, convinced me that startups really, truly, honestly do have distinct stages of growth that you can't force your way through.
Not carefully choosing co-founder.
Learning that my guess as to what might work or not is just as accurate as anybody else's, that is, not very accurate.
I used to think that somehow kicking around ideas on places like HN made the ideas better, when in fact all they did was create ideas that hackers thought were cool. Different thing entirely.
You only know an idea is good or bad once you start executing. The market is always different from what you imagine (or want it to be)
I used to think that somehow kicking around ideas on places like HN made the ideas better, when in fact all they did was create ideas that hackers thought were cool. Different thing entirely.
You only know an idea is good or bad once you start executing. The market is always different from what you imagine (or want it to be)
What I should have done: Focus on Task 1 exclusively. Task 1 = the basic core product (what the customer really wants). Only do other tasks if they are absolutely required by Task 1.
What I did: A million tasks, only 14 of which were absolutely required by Task 1.
What I did right (that many others don't): Find out from prospective users what Task 1 should be. (Although it still hurts when you find this out but still don't do it.)
What I did: A million tasks, only 14 of which were absolutely required by Task 1.
What I did right (that many others don't): Find out from prospective users what Task 1 should be. (Although it still hurts when you find this out but still don't do it.)
Never waste time pursuing Indian VC's.
Agreed. but that's something you have to go through to shatter naive illusions about what building a startup means.
Could you elaborate on this?
Apparently Indian VC's do not believe in taking risks. It's very rare of them to invest in companies which are not making money.
Thus screwing the whole notion of Venture Capital. Indian VC's act more like a Private Equity Firm than a VC in a traditional sense.
Thus screwing the whole notion of Venture Capital. Indian VC's act more like a Private Equity Firm than a VC in a traditional sense.
Thats coz most people just do copy cats of US ideas in India
Listening to advice from experienced and accomplished people who were just repeating standard advice or telling the story of their own experiences.
If you're doing something complex and different, you have to rely on yourself and largely ignore everyone else unless they've spent a long time thinking about your exact situation.
If you're doing something complex and different, you have to rely on yourself and largely ignore everyone else unless they've spent a long time thinking about your exact situation.
> Learning from your faults is critical.
Learning from others' faults is better. Oh, and don't forget to pass along what you have learned on your own anyway. Open-sourcing is not just about software ^_^
I'm not an entrepreneur yet, thus I can't pass along my wisdom. The fault I will try to avoid with all my strength when I will become one, will be thinking that hacking are just about software. I will try to keep myself surrounded by marketing hackers, communication hackers and so forth, everyone respecting the skills of each other.
Have fun ^_^
Learning from others' faults is better. Oh, and don't forget to pass along what you have learned on your own anyway. Open-sourcing is not just about software ^_^
I'm not an entrepreneur yet, thus I can't pass along my wisdom. The fault I will try to avoid with all my strength when I will become one, will be thinking that hacking are just about software. I will try to keep myself surrounded by marketing hackers, communication hackers and so forth, everyone respecting the skills of each other.
Have fun ^_^
If I would start over I would do the following:
* have at least 10 customers willing to buy my service when it's done. During the time of development they would commit to spend time with me validating my product hypothesis.
* prepare spec for a _REAL_ mvp.
* clearly _describe_ problem that I'm trying to solve. (now I know that it takes multiple iterations to achieve this - most importantly discussing the problem with your future customers)
* have at least 10 customers willing to buy my service when it's done. During the time of development they would commit to spend time with me validating my product hypothesis.
* prepare spec for a _REAL_ mvp.
* clearly _describe_ problem that I'm trying to solve. (now I know that it takes multiple iterations to achieve this - most importantly discussing the problem with your future customers)
My mistake: a lack of passion for the core business model. Focused on the technology I am passionate about, drove the startup through this passion and technology, failed to focus on and understand what the core demographic truly wanted.
By the time I realized my mistake, I was ready to move on to another startup. Wasn't able to create passion for a core business and the technology wasn't enough.
By the time I realized my mistake, I was ready to move on to another startup. Wasn't able to create passion for a core business and the technology wasn't enough.
To elaborate... if you are passionate about building web software, then building web software to run your women's fashion business is the wrong move. Build a business around web software itself, not something else that happens to use web software.
FYI... I see people make this mistake a lot and never acknowledge or realize it. It's usually blamed on something else (funding, timing, etc). If you aren't hyper excited about using the end-product you are building, there is a potential problem.
Release early, release often. Fund yourself and plan accordingly, if others want to fund you good, but don't count on them. Fail quick, get up in one piece and try again. Don't try to conquer the world at first, a thousand customers paying $10 a month will suffice for your next venture, and that one alone is the hardest part of all.
Trying to ram my cool idea down the customers' throats. (Instead I should be asking them what they want me to build)
[deleted]
start market validation exercise early on
* Not Launching Early. It's wishful thinking that your initial product is perfect. I read somewhere that if you're not embarrassed by your initial product, then you waited too long to launch.
Note I'm not talking about a "marketing launch", but a launch where your product gets in front of early adopters.
Note I'm not talking about a "marketing launch", but a launch where your product gets in front of early adopters.
My take on this
http://codemonkeyism.com/6-reasons-why-my-vc-funded-startup-...
1. We didn’t sell anything
2. We didn’t sell anything
3. We didn’t sell anything
4. The market window was not yet open
5. We focused too much on technology
6. We had the wrong business model
http://codemonkeyism.com/6-reasons-why-my-vc-funded-startup-...
1. We didn’t sell anything
2. We didn’t sell anything
3. We didn’t sell anything
4. The market window was not yet open
5. We focused too much on technology
6. We had the wrong business model
Never assume your potential clients think like you
All of them. If you learn only from one mistake, you've failed. Most likely in your first few businesses you will make numerous mistakes.
Not making sure my and my co-founders ambition and goals was aligned.