Top 14 startup tips

1. Have Clear Vision and Objective

First-time startup founders need to set their objective from the very start. “Most startups dive straight into their shiny solution ideas without thinking about why they’re doing what they’re doing or considering the change they want to see in the world,” Laurence McCahill of the Happy Startup School says in his entrepreneur tips on Quora, adding, “Without a clear purpose, a startup can meander along without much momentum.”

He says vision keeps the focus of the startup aligned with real-world challenges.

Consider the vision statements of two tech giants:

To be the pulse of the planet —Twitter

To be the earth’s most customer-centric company —Amazon
you need to awaken an emotion with your early customers so that they feel something.”

Most buying decisions are based on emotion, rather than logic. If your customers believe in your vision, they are going to see what you are offering.

2. Focus on Revenue Generation

Number three, focus on revenue generation on day one. Brian explains that he doesn’t care if you’re building your product, building your design or building your brand. He doesn’t care if you’re building your team or just trying to build your life. Every single company who is successful is successful because of their users, and they are people who either pay to use their product, or people who love their product. So focus on the user on the first day. How do you get them to your business? How do you get them on your website? How do you then convert them into a paid customer or someone who’s of the most value to whatever your product is?

3. You can’t wait to be “ready”

As an entrepreneur, if you overthink, over-plan, or wait to be “ready,” you’ll never make that first – hardest – push off the ground. My co-founder, Avi Flombaum, taught me the value of inertia. The time between meeting each other and putting down a deposit on our first classroom space was a few short weeks. One of our first steps wasn’t slowing down to do research, write a business plan, or anything else drilled into my head in business school; it was renting a truck and heading to Ikea to buy desks. If we hadn’t kept up that velocity, I don’t know that we’d be here today. Even if you think you’re moving fast, there’s still a good chance you’re not moving fast enough.

4. Ignore shiny objects and stay focused

Entrepreneurs tend to be a little frazzled. We’ve got big ambitions; we love change and experimentation and when shiny new opportunities arise, our imaginations run wild and we are tempted to jump on them. We had countless ideas to expand what we were doing at Flatiron School beyond our main focus. But in exploring those opportunities, we learned that it’s incredibly hard to do one thing well. Doing more than one thing effectively? Nearly impossible.

5. Never ignore your startup’s greatest asset: people

As a former investor, I always looked for strong founding teams but I didn’t truly appreciate it until I started Flatiron School. All a startup is is a collection of people. Having the right people on your team, especially early on, is the single biggest determinant of your success. So find the best people. Invest in them. When you’re a startup, they’re likely the only real assets you have.

6. Don’t compromise your values for short-term gains. Later on, it may be too late.

You can push off hard decisions, like whether to commit resources to cultivating inclusivity, increasing diversity – or, in Flatiron’s case, foregoing paychecks so we could fill 30% of our early classes through scholarships. But remember that it’s increasingly hard to steer your company’s culture toward your ideals as you grow. Even Apple, with $215 billion in annual revenue, decided a proposal to prioritize their diversity efforts was “unduly burdensome and not necessary.” It’s a hard decision to put your values over the bottom line in those early days – but it’s even harder to change later on.

So, if you’ve started a company and you’re aiming to make it to that five year milestone, get ready – it’s going to be the best education of your life.

7. Set out to solve a problem, not just start a business

A lot of entrepreneurs simply want to start a company to start a company. That’s the worst way to go about it. What drives you and your business should be a desire – an obsession, really – to solve a problem. Founding a company is hard; if you’re not obsessed with what your company is doing, you’re not going to make it. Education was my obsession. Neither of my parents went to college, but they instilled in me the idea that I should get an education no matter the cost. But over four years of undergrad and two years of business school, I didn’t learn either of the two most essential business skills: how to build or how to sell. I spent a tremendous amount of time and money buying into a dream that didn’t give me a concrete way to add value to a company. So I didn’t set out to just start a company with Flatiron School – I aimed to tackle the problem of ROI in higher education, and that lofty goal still drives us.

8. Stay Focused

Most first-time startups focus on too many things at the same time. This mistake can lead to devastating consequences. Many startups try to market the message to the widest target audience without realizing that the exercise is counterproductive.

Remember that when the startups try to appeal to everyone, they appeal to no one. McCahill says, “By trying to appeal to everyone, left, right and center, you will actually dilute your message and could end up with a complex, bloated product.”

His advice for young entrepreneurs is to check out the case studies on Dropbox and Instagram that succeeded by appealing to a single class or segment of an audience only.

9. Don’t Chase Investors – Focus on Building Your Product

A great idea doesn’t always receive funding. The surest way to success for a startup is to have a business model where a product makes its own money.

From the very beginning, most startups focus on getting ‘funded.’ However, funding means that you are sharing your company with an investor. The money comes at the price of losing control over your “baby”.

Instead of making a product to impress investors, focus on creating a product that customers love. When customers love the product, investors will come automatically.

10. Surround yourself with the right people

There’s a lot of people in this game who are way smarter than you at getting their objectives done. So surround yourself with friends. Surround yourself with mentors who give you good advice. Search out for people who come recommended elsewhere.

Mr. Mac Mahon normally start on that journey with investors. A lot of people ask for money from investors, but Brian always says;  “if you ask for money, you get advice, but if you ask for advice and say you don’t need any money, than you get great advice and you also get a higher chance of getting everything that you possibly want.”

So get those investors around you and make sure that the investors are actually giving you advice. The ones that give you great advice, have them part of your advisors, have them part of your team. If they’re exceptional people who have exited multiple businesses, and they can help you in your growth, see if those people can actually join you as official advisors in your team.

11. Have a Growth Strategy

There was a time when you build it and the customers would flock in. However, the market has become saturated enough to offer strict competition in every niche.

Serial entrepreneurs now focus on three things: sales, marketing, and growth hacking. In order to succeed in your niche, you need to have a growth strategy in place as well.

First-time startup founders get too engrossed in their business and often disregard the growth and marketing aspects, or (in best case scenarios),  delay them until the product is complete.

This is a grave mistake. It usually means that if the startup fails, they are left with a useless product and many wasted years.

12. Use data to make informed decisions

When you make decisions you want to use data and careful research using quantitative and qualitative information so your decisions are as informed as possible. If you are taking risks and decisions on the behalf of you and your company you will want to make sure you are carefully planning the choices you make. 

13. Never stop networking 

Understand your feeling might get hurt from time to time but remaining strong and keeping your sights set on the thoughtful plan you have devised will be what gets you through tough criticism and rejection. Just remember never stop networking and seeking solutions to the challenges you find toughest. The larger your network the better and the more resilient you are, the better your chances of survival. 

14. Continue to Grow Outside Your Company

Another advice for early stage CEO’s, is to continue to grow outside your company. We get so insular with the day-to-day things that we need to do, just to survive, especially in the early days, that we forget continual learning. It is really important that you surround yourself with people who are going to help you grow, or you read books, or you go to seminars, or you have a great coach. You have to make sure you’re training for the next level.

It’s the same as a great athlete. If a great athlete has learned how to run in a specific period of time, they don’t continually measure themselves to that period of time. They train so they can go stronger and faster. That’s what you have to do as a CEO. Always look at where you’re going and train yourself to be amazing at that before you get there.