I just wanted to share that after spending a couple of decades building software for other businesses, today I gave my employer a two week notice so that I could focus full-time on my own startup. I've been working with another co-founder since last year. We have great traction and raised just enough capital for me to eat rice and beans for the next few months while I rebuild our prototype into something that can really go to market.
Best Answer
Good luck - having done a tech startup things I learned.
The product is probably ready before you’ll think it’s ready. Get it into the hands of users and let the audience help you improve it.
Start to charge for the product as early as you can, even if it’s a small amount for some additional functionality. Sooner you find paying users the better and calms investors nerves.
Sleep.
Eat well, and take time to eat. Sure there will be rushed meals grabbed between hacking sessions. But take time out with your team to sit and share a meal. Some of the best ideas come when people are not pressured to perform and are relaxing and feeling chill.
Speak directly to as many users as you can. It’s the small asides and little frustrations that make good into great user experiences.
Be honest with yourself and your investors. If you are gonna blow a deadline tell those who need to know as soon as you know. They are riding this thing with you, so make sure you share the responsibility and accountability. Nothing worse than knowing a deadline is gonna be missed, hiding it then having to tell everyone the day of the deadline. Plus you’ll feel shi77y every day up to the deadline.
Sometimes the investors like to offer “advice” have a process for taking it, exploring it fairly and making sure you feedback why it will or won’t work and cost implications. Nothing pi55es off an investor faster than feeling like their “great” ideas are being ignored.
If something fails, own it. Learn from it. Move on.
Deal with head 5hit. Have a mentor you can speak to who is not financially involved in any way. You need a confidential pressure valve to blow off when the mess in your head needs to be untangled.
Enjoy it, the whole crazy thing, every day is another day to be better than you were. You get to make your life better, those around you get to have better lives and your users lives are improved (or should be!) enjoy it, all of it!
Other points
Be ware and enjoy. Having a cofounder and capital is good! A careful advice if you care to listen, is to be ruthless in business! From day one, never play by the rules. Rules are set so others can predict your path and ambush you.
Second advice, only work for fat market. Be careful in a niche market that does not scale or metamorphosis - it becomes forever miniature and forever ungrowable.
I have many examples around me, and they all failed, the younger ones who did not burn the bridge can go back to old job or even become VCs, and older ones suffer. If you expect the best of human behavior you will fail. Many people develop product, have great customers, and then fail and lose every penny. I see many 40-50 year olds suffer. A guy who quit a national lab director job 20 years ago forever works in a shopping mall office.
I wish someone stopped me from quitting my job. Startup is fortunate incidents of heaven, not man made products. Startup is a skill, not a path to success. Startup is simple. It is like baking.
Here is a collection of startup failure stories. Most common reasons of failures are: (1) cann't grow after "success"; (2) does not have money to get into market.
When you go climb the mountain of gold, get a guide who knows where the skeletons are buried.
"Perfect it. Don't try to be fancy..."
Several of my entrepreneur clients have discovered that they can save INSANE amount of time when building their product if they are keenly aware of the exact level of quality the client needs, and then deliver just above that, rather than what the entrepreneur is CAPABLE of.
Of course, that requires getting out of the house and talking with the client!
We're all more capable than we think, and I have yet to meet someone who was unable to vastly exceed client expectations.
A product must gain access to a market and then bought by a customer who is comparison shopping in a safe place. The market validate the quality and safety of the product.
What are the steps to turn an idea into an innovation? there are at least the following steps. The idea must be turned into a product, and the product must enter the market. In the market, the target audience will examine the artifact - if they buy, then the product becomes a merchandise.
A first time entrepreneur always under estimate the difficulties. Each voyage is a ship with 2000 holes - each hole is only visible when the boat is in water.
Jack the entrepreneur is a creation of TeenSharks Startup School
A business plan has two parts, the aspiration and the traction. A business plan is about two parts: how the business runs, and how to start that business.
How to turn an interest into a money maker. How to attract people, how to stimulate people to pay, how to make profit, how to make relations, how to keep relations.
How much do I have to give my audience so they can pay me something in return? What do they value? what problem do they search for answers on your own? I want to solve that problem.
When you finally connect what you love to do to what a lot of people love to buy. When you can focus all you want and still have unlimited work and fun.
A general or CEO or founder who is tolerant and generous. Someone who recognizes own mistakes. Someone with big heart for hiring people better than him.
Brand means name recognition. A lot of people knows what your company does and what you stand for. Brand is result of long campaign of consistent value provision and media cultivation. Brand helps a company reduce marketing cost.
Whether there are buyer willing to pay or not. For that to happen you must provide extreme value. The entire startup process would be based on guess before the validation. Validation happens in a market, not on the street.
Value is what you give customers beyond the price you charge. Value is effective solution to a problem. The price your customer pays reflects whether the problem is big for them and whether your solution is uniquely effective. Value stems from quality and detailed work.
Marketing means bring your product to the market and bring your message to your customer. Marketing is not salesmanship. Marketing is to penetrate the world of commerce through many barriers and existing networks.
Minimally viable business, or MVC, minimally viable company. A company that scrapes by, full of guess and hope and no traction and sales. When you give your customers things for free they all take it. But they never pay and you can never rent a table at the market.
Minimal viable product. A full artifact of a real product. Something that works ALL THE TIME. You can demonstrate the real effect on real people - not to sell hope. The MVP may not have certain non-essential bells and whistles, but it needs to have appeal value.
A business lives at the mercy of its customers. You provide your customers 10 dollars worth of value and they pay you 1 dollar, not knowing that your company only costs 99 cents to provide the item. The value is not the item - the value is what is attached to the item.
Company culture is based on a company making money. Once your workers are paid, they need to have a mission and aspiration so they are not bored everyday and make trouble in the work place.
When you find a full universe within a grain of sand, a life time of work to do by focusing on one thing. There is enough people behind you to support your living and cause.
People's reaction when they know you have done something they could never do And they know this is not accident because you have done it a number of times.
A company valuation is cash investment divided by the percentage. As long as your story is good, the valuation will keep coming, and the investors will keeping falling into the line.
Investors are either behind family fortune (never work with them) or for rich clients as investment vehicle. Both need returns 2-3 times better than stock market darlings.
Having found what people want, not just what people may need. Your offering and their acceptance is sure, no longer a guess. You can provide it for profit, and you can indeed making living on it. Traction is sometimes called validation. You are no longer a theater. You have touched nature, and found cash vein.
