{"id":3629,"date":"2023-11-02T11:16:53","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T17:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=3629"},"modified":"2023-11-05T17:50:15","modified_gmt":"2023-11-05T23:50:15","slug":"advice-for-startup-founders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/3629","title":{"rendered":"Advice for startup founders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On an email list I&#8217;m on, someone was recently accepted to an incubator program. They asked for advice about startups. I couldn&#8217;t resist!<\/p>\n<p>I wrote this (lightly edited) and wanted to post it here so it&#8217;d have a permanent spot on the internet.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been a founder or early employee\/contractor of six startups over my two+ decades. Some are still kicking, but none have had an exit. Please consider that when contemplating my advice.<\/p>\n<p>When building an early-stage startup:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>talk to customers, talk to customers, talk to customers<\/li>\n<li>revenue &gt; funding<\/li>\n<li>know your business domain. If possible, co-found with someone who is an expert in the area if you are not<\/li>\n<li>choose boring technology whenever possible<\/li>\n<li>choose technology that you know whenever possible<\/li>\n<li>be prepared to consult or find other ways keep the company alive if you don&#8217;t have immediate revenue<\/li>\n<li>take advantage of in-person support systems to keep your spirits up<\/li>\n<li>exercise: it&#8217;ll help you be a better founder<\/li>\n<li>when you have an ask for someone, make it easy for them to say yes (be specific, do your research, scale the ask to the relationship strength)<\/li>\n<li>remember, building a company is a marathon not a sprint (but sometimes you need to sprint!)<\/li>\n<li>VCs and founders have shared incentives (both want a successful business)<\/li>\n<li>VCs and founders also have misaligned incentives (you get one bet, they get N bets; you need $X, they need $10X-100X)<\/li>\n<li>understand your financial runway<\/li>\n<li>understand your emotional runway<\/li>\n<li>if you have a spouse or partner, make sure they are on board with the big decisions you make<\/li>\n<li>being lucky is usually more of a factor than being good<\/li>\n<li>you can sometimes make your own luck through hard work<\/li>\n<li>all founders should take part in the sales process, no excuses<\/li>\n<li>your company&#8217;s biggest competitor is customer inertia (or Excel)<\/li>\n<li>all advice is contextual, always understand the context of the giver<\/li>\n<li>talk to customers<\/li>\n<li>talk to customers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Best of luck!<br \/>\nDan<\/p>\n<p>PS Talk to customers.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On an email list I&#8217;m on, someone was recently accepted to an incubator program. They asked for advice about startups. I couldn&#8217;t resist! I wrote this (lightly edited) and wanted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3629"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3632,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629\/revisions\/3632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}