Real Founder Lessons

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Founders often don't have a grand plan at the very beginning

(at minute 16:10)

Founder Lesson
History is often re-written over time. A great example of this is startups that are successful. After reaching a certain level - for a bunch of good reasons - the origin story of startups is altered for PR reasons. The re-written story goes something like “the underdog founder had grand plans from the very beginning and has . . .

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Talk with competitors

(at minute 15:54)

Founder Lesson
It’s common knowledge that talking with users is the best way to understand a potential market for a new startup. Less known, but also valuable, is talking with investors who invest in the space. Maybe even less accepted is a third way…talking with competitors.

In this podcast an experienced founder describes why . . .

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A good startup education for anyone

For this post, I decided to switch things up a bit to give a little backstory on where I get most of the content for my blog.

I frequently have coffee meetings with first-time founders where they ask for advice on how to learn the basics of startups.

Here are the best four ways to learn about startups...

1) Best way . . .

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Just fu@%&ng launch already (what's most engaging)

(at minute 33:47)

Common Founder Issue
Anyone who’s ever launched the initial product for a startup knows the drill. The temptation is to add lots of features because you don’t know which will be most popular and your ultimate vision for the business is huge, so you might as well start on that big vision now.

The reality is that your small startup . . .

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In the early days hustle is more important than scalability

(at minute 18:03)

Common Founder Issue
One of the best things that I’ve ever heard about startups is the connection between promising businesses and how much those teams are constantly getting done. Related to this topic, I’ve grow to believe that it’s so difficult to connect the dots in the very early days that teams just need to work their asses off and . . .

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You have to love the startup process

(at minute 22:24)

Common Founder Issue
Persistence (otherwise known as “just sticking around”) is a mandatory characteristic of startup founders. Part of “sticking around” is the motivation behind it. I’ve found that the most successful startup founders have just a few common reasons for sticking it out. One common reason is the strong belief that their . . .

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Competition doesn’t kill startups

(at minute 18:45)

Common Founder Issue
I decided to make my very first blog post this one because it’s the link that I send the most to founders. The topics “what matters most to my startup?” and “how should we think about competition?” are endlessly fascinating to me because startups by nature have very limited resources, so focusing on what matters is . . .

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Archive

All Categories: all(113) podcast(102) process(88) focus(80) product(70) counterintuitive things(65) product market fit(64) business model validation(60) solving a problem(58) mvp(57) unique playbook(48) traction(43) founders(40) my favorites(36) execution(35) first principles(33) hustle(33) video(32) value proposition(32) this week in startups(30) jason calacanis(28) ycombinator(24) persistency(24) engagement(23) lean startup(20) resiliency(19) super fans(19) psychological friction(16) vision(16) customer discovery(15) niche products(15) purpose(15) stanford university(13) growth(13) vc(12) creativity(11) raising capital(11) aaron harris(10) micromanagement(10) marketing(10) michael sacca(9) financing(9) nextview ventures(9) scalability(9) pattern matching(9) matt goldman(9) jay acunzo(9) pivot(9) delusion(9) team(8) competition(8) sidenote(7) rocketship.fm(7) advisors(7) bootstrapping(7) mixergy(5) risk(5) how i built this(5) retention(5) wharton business radio(5) joelle steiniger(5) hypepotamus(4) joelle goldman(4) andrew warner(4) sam altman(4) focus groups(4) timing(4) a16z(4) culture(4) brand(4) kat manalac(3) 33voices(3) distribution(2) recode decode(2) domain expertise(2) product hunt radio(2) dorm room tycoon(2) eric ries(2) network effect(2) listen to entire podcast(2) masters of scale(2) kara swisher(2) startups for the rest of us(2) twenty minute vc(1) fred wilson(1) tim ferriss(1) chris sacca(1) loose threads(1) joshua reeves(1) mentoring(1) founder's journey(1) indie.vc(1) mentors(1) accelerators(1) time(1) optimal living daily(1) home

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