Real Founder Lessons
The best startup advice from experienced founders...one real-world lesson at a time.
Put simple rules around creativity
(at minute 22:09)
Founder Lesson
Even though startups are businesses, I’ve never thought of myself as a “businessman.” Like all college business majors, the Wall Street Journal was interesting to me for a few years after graduation, but I quickly realized that I was drawn to startups due to what happens with them during their earliest moments - when they . . .
Resiliency is the most important founder trait
(at minute 18:22)
Founder Lesson
There’s a lot written about the importance of the resiliency of startup founders. I don’t like to write blog posts unless I can contribute something unique to the topic, so when I first heard the people on this podcast talk about resiliency, I was expecting the same old same old with nothing much blog-worthy here. But about . . .
A good startup education for anyone
For this post, I decided to switch things up a bit to give a little backstory on where I get most of the content for my blog.
I frequently have coffee meetings with first-time founders where they ask for advice on how to learn the basics of startups.
Here are the best four ways to learn about startups...
1) Best way . . .
Expect a new startup to take 18 months to find product-market fit
(at minute 8:25)
Common Founder Issue
I didn’t believe this when I started and this constantly surprises first-time founders, but a good general rule is that new startups will take about 18 months to find decent product-market fit. Sometimes it happens as quickly as 12 months and often (of course) it never happens, but 18 months is what I’d expect if I . . .
A business is just a byproduct of solving a problem
(at minute 45:55)
Common Founder Issue
The very early stages of a startup look more like passion projects of the founders. Many times it’s just a single, small problem that they want to solve or just a general area of the world that needs some attention with no consideration for being a business. The addition of things like a company name, employees and . . .
The best predictor of startup success is getting lots of small stuff done
(at minute 35:55)
Common Founder Issue
I tend to focus on startups that are very early stage. This typically means just a few passionate founders working 24/7 on an idea. Over the years I’ve struggled with how to identify the most promising teams before their businesses have had enough time to show traction.
Before even seeing this video, I . . .
