Real Founder Lessons
The best startup advice from experienced founders...one real-world lesson at a time.
Going from doer to manager
(at minute 4:09)
Founder Lesson
Everyone knows that startups are “hard.” Ask anyone why this is the case and they’ll say things like “startups are risky” or “raising money is difficult.” While those things are true, they are only surface-level characteristics of startups. They don’t truly pinpoint why founders find the startup journey much more difficult . . .
What's your unique insight?
(at minute 14:01)
Founder Lesson
The more time I spend around startups the more I value the origin story of the founding team. And I’m not alone here. Pay attention to the VCs that you most respect. When you listen to them interview startup founders and the founders immediately launch into a product demo or describing traction, you’ll often hear the . . .
Pivots can be executed very quickly
(at minute 19:29)
Founder Lesson
Every startup pivots.
If you are founder - particularly if it’s your first startup - this is an incredibly daunting statement. You are smart. You’ve had this problem for a long time. Your initial product solves your problem. Plus you’ve been thinking about and working on this idea for 6/12/18/24 months (or longer). . . .
First few hundred customers is about product
(at minute 7:10)
Founder Lesson
Sequoia is one of the top venture firms and Roelof Botha is one of their top investors. As with all members of the PayPal Mafia, I pay particular attention when I hear them speak because that group is so thoughtful about how disruptive companies are created. And Roelof in particular is very thoughtful.
In this . . .
The three B's of creativity
(at minute 1:002:56)
Founder Lesson
I spend most of my time working on startups for consumers. To people new to startups, the differences between startups that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses might not seem big, but the playbook for validating, launching and growing B2C versus B2B startups is very different.
One (of many) . . .
Most features don't matter
(at minute 7:04)
Founder Lesson
One of the most counterintuitive lessons that I’ve learned about startups is that most features don’t matter. Having learned this lesson the hard way and talked with lots of startups founders, I can confidentially say that the vast majority of startup founders can’t pinpoint the one feature that their customers will love . . .
The three parts of organic growth
(at minute 4:05)
Founder Lesson
Anyone who reads my blog knows that I’m a product-first founder. I just looked at the various tags that I use for my blog and 40 of my blog posts (over half) are tagged “product.” I love product.
I focus so much on product because I believe it’s like the foundation of a house. If you make the foundation amazing, . . .
