Real Founder Lessons
The best startup advice from experienced founders...one real-world lesson at a time.
What's your earned secret?
(at minute 8:07)
Founder Lesson
Talk with a dozen successful founders and you'll hear a few very common themes of general startup advice...
Team. Nothing matters more than great people. The hugely successful Techstars accelerator values team so much that they say that the five things they care about (in order) are "team, team, team, . . .
Make one doughnut
(at minute 13:01)
Founder Lesson
There’s a doughnut shop in my neighborhood called Revolution Doughnuts. As a neighbor I can attest that they are a tremendous local success story and their ratings on Yelp put them in the top 15% of all restaurants in town.
I lived nearby before they launched their first location, so I saw how the owner . . .
You can't skip steps
(at minute 4:19)
Founder Lesson
I was recently talking with a founder. Last year he and I were spending a bunch of time together as he manually tested his theory of human behavior. At the time he had a full-time job and the manual test that I helped him execute had some holes, so I don't believe that he validated an intense enough consumer use case in . . .
Don’t pay for customers for years
(at minute 12:37)
Founder Lesson
One of my first blog posts was called "Paid advertising is the tax you pay for not being remarkable." I got so many "what the hell are you taking about?" comments from this early post that it fueled my desire to continue to blog about counterintuitive/advanced startup concepts.
This notion that . . .
Founders need a theory of human behavior
(at minute 13:03)
Founder Lesson
A trusted startup friend came to me the other day with a new idea...
He just bought a house, so he's thinking a lot about paying contractors for large projects and doing smaller projects himself. There are lots of videos on YouTube about small home projects (eg cutting down vines on the side of your home), but . . .
It takes 3 years to know what you have
(at minute 2:24)
Founder Lesson
I'm talking weekly with a very good founder who's working on a startup to disrupt hiring. He checks all the boxes. He loves the problem...check. He's a visionary...check. He's smart with a strong work ethic...check. He has very relevant experience...check. He has a proven track record of building . . .
Creativity loves constraint
(at minute 19:11)
Founder Lesson
I don't know where I first heard this notion, but on a monthly basis I think about the counterintuitive concept that creativity loves constraint.
On a personal level I'm a moderate procrastinator for most things. Over the years I've found that forcing myself to get 50% of the work done in a tight . . .
