I was wrong!
Wow, that feels good to get that out of my system. Maybe I should say it again, “I was wrong”. Nope, saying it one time was enough.
So what was I wrong about, so many things I guess. Founders often talk about making mistakes and moving on, the problem I have found is knowing what the REAL problem is.
Key mistakes I have made that you need to avoid if your in a startup or thinking about it:
- Leadership: If something is wrong, STOP EVERYTHING! Time and money will be lost if you don’t.
- Mistakes: they happen. Just make sure your partners/clients understand that.
- Hats: We have switched, moved, shifted, altered, turned, flipped, etc. job responsibilities so much I have no idea what I am doing. This will cause serious problems with your partners.
- Money: Over time you will quickly learn where and what has value, sometimes it is not always what you thought. This can be a problem for your clients/partners.
- Savings: Thought I was prepared for the long haul but we have made seriously large $$$ mistakes. Have 4 to 5 times what you think is needed. (see bullet #1)
- Social Silence: Get the word out, get it out often and don’t be shy!
- Comfort Zone: I’m not saying move your company, I am saying find partners/clients, attention, resources outside your startup city to get feedback from environments you don’t live in.
- Communications: From day one, give someone the project management hat. Project management is not a part-time, come and go job. It is critical to the business, without it you will have a list like this one
. - Track everything: Track your time, it helps you understand where and how your time is spent. In a startup, time speeds up and slows down without you knowing, track it so you can learn from it.
Having said all that, its been an amazing education, I hope that I can continue to contribute not only to the company but to the community in which we started it. Because of bullet point #5 I may have to step out for a while to catch up on things, it sucks but that’s how things roll sometimes.
Thanks for playing,
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