BC STARTUPS
Saved by @zmbnski

1/ Today I prepared for talking about common mistakes startups make (founding -> growth stages) by writing it in tweet form. I ramble too much when public speaking and hoped it would make the core ideas clearer in my mind and more concise. Think it worked. Here are the tweets

 2/ Earliest mistake is picking the wrong co-founders. You have to be value-aligned (don’t have conflicting personal goals) and respect each other. With both of these, any other differences are irrelevant - can be worked out. Without them everything else you do is irrelevant.
3/ If you launch, next mistake is chasing top-line vanity metrics (sign ups) instead of growing the number of users who *really* love you. @paultoo advice - better to have 10 users who depend on you than 100 who a lukewarm. This requires patience and killing your ego.
4/ If you raise a seed round, it’s tempting to ignore retention. With money, there are always ways to grow top-line (buy ads, launch a new location). Strong fundraisers can do this for multiple rounds (though investors are more savvy to this now). Eventually, the bottom falls out
5/ Once you’re growing without churn, you find you have a diverse set of customers and can’t make them all happy -it’s easy to fail trying. Commit to a long term strategy for going public and build for the users who get you there, even if you lose the others. You have to focus.
6/ With growth, retention, and focus - now you have to scale team. Two types of mistake, hiring too slow and too fast. Product focused founders likely to hire too slow (don’t want to delegate, like the details), business-minded founders likely to hire too fast.
7/ Hiring too slowly doesn’t kill you, it just caps your upside. Your competitor builds a team faster and signs up more customers with a slightly worse than yours but still good enough product. You’re left with a nice, small business.
8/ Hiring too fast kills you via bad decision making. You lose rigor in hiring process (bad people -> bad decisions), there’s no effective onboarding/setting people up for success (good people -> bad decisions), growth stalls, conflict rises (good people leave)
9/ Avoid all of these...and there's still myriad other ways you could fail so don't attach too much of your identity to the outcome of your startup :-)

More from Startups

Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson
@mijustin
If folks aren’t already buying what you’re thinking of selling, don’t start that business!

There should be be evidence that folks are already spending money in the space you’re thinking of entering.

Before AirBnB, folks paid money to stay at hotels, B&Bs, cottages, vacation homes, and hostels.

Annually, people spend $570 BILLION on travel accommodation.

Entrepreneurs need to follow the money:

“Where is it already being spent, and how can I get a piece of it?”

Don’t look for “problems that need solving.”

Look for categories where people/businesses are already spending money.

From an entrepreneur’s POV, if folks are willing to spend money on it, it’s a problem worth solving.

Apple has consistently followed this approach.

They didn’t make the first:

- PC
- Laptop
- MP3 player
- Smart phone

They saw the existing demand, and built on it.
STARTUPS
Jon Yongfook
Jon Yongfook
@yongfook
Candid and potentially controversial series of tweets coming up... (I hear twitter is good for that sort of thing 😅) read 👇🏻

Here’s what it feels like to launch something to the indie maker community:

Launching a free, open source tool:
“This is awesome! You’re awesome!”

Launching a commercial tool:
“TWO DOLLARS? You are literally Hitler”

I’m exaggerating for comedic effect of course. But there’s a lesson here...

I knew before I started working on Promomatic to be very wary of building a utility tool for makers. Makers are by definition problem solvers and their favorite hobby is finding a better / faster / cheaper way to do what your product does.

It’s so tempting to build things for makers because they seem accessible (thanks to PH, IH, Reddit etc) and you get an immediate feedback loop.
STARTUPS
Advertisement
cs. visualized. bot.
cs. visualized. bot.
@csvisualizedbot
Below are the top 10 RT'd tweets from the latest 1000 tweets made by @Hustle_Smarterr.

THREAD:

https://t.co/8EmLYHHbLo


https://t.co/aMyO7K3IbM


https://t.co/xv7QK5mdvD


https://t.co/Ww2s97Kw5x
STARTUPS
Gagan Biyani
Gagan Biyani
@gaganbiyani
At Udemy, we were 3 first-time entrepreneurs trying to raise seed capital. We made every mistake in the book.

We got 200+ no’s and wasted 12 months fundraising.

We eventually pulled through, just barely. 😅

This thread shares our mistakes as lessons for founders.

**Read On**

We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies.

We thought: we need money to build our vision, so let’s go talk to some investors.

WRONG.

Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money. We needed to prove we deserved their money.

We met some associates and intermediaries who might introduce us to investors.

Few decision-makers wanted to meet with us.

We should’ve stopped there.

If getting meetings is hard, it will take you forever to raise.

Instead, spend your time building product + getting traction.

I was frustrated with investors: treated them as adversaries who asked dumb questions. My derision turned them off.

Learn to understand and appreciate investors. Follow them on Twitter, listen to podcasts from @HarryStebbings or @eriktorenberg.

An investor's job isn't easy.

They kiss a ton of frogs just to find one deal that may make them money 10 years from now.

They only win if you become a billion dollar company.

Don’t kid yourself - if you aren’t the right fit, bootstrap.

Risk-adjusted, bootstrapping can make you happier and more successful.
STARTUPS
Gagan Biyani
Gagan Biyani
@gaganbiyani
Nobody talks about failure in Silicon Valley, yet 90% of startups fail.

Why?

3 yrs ago, @neerajberry and I shut down @Sprig, which raised $60M from @GreylockVC + @socialcapital & grew to $20m revenue.

Then, it all fell apart.

For an honest story about failure,

**Read on**

In 2013, I was @lyft, envious of how fast it was growing!

What about @lyft for food?

We looked @Postmates + thought:
- the food arrived sloppy / restaurants don't care about delivery
- it took forever (1hr)
- too expensive

We struggled through product iterations until we found "magic":

3 taps and $15 for a healthy meal delivered in 15 min

To make it possible, we had to run the restaurant ourselves; it would be expensive but worth it

We recruited @n8keller, Morgan Springer + @mattkent as founders

We launched and had immediate success. The buzz was unbelievable. Within months we were on track to do $1M revenue/year.

Our Series A was a hot round. I did 4 partner meetings on the same day. Raised $10M.

Great investors, great team, off to the races - @omal and @simonrothman

2 challenges arose:

1) Govt. SF health + planning made our lives hell. They didn't like our innovations. We had to bribe officials ("lobbying").

2) Gross Margins (GM). As we grew, our burn rate grew too. We were losing money on every meal. If only we could get to critical mass.
STARTUPS

You May Also Like

Lu_lu\U0001f498
Lu_lu💘
@luciame16
Some thoughts on episode 53 of #Hercai

Love,that is not real,has no passion. Its fire turns into embers, it doesn’t not smell. The day, the night, the moon&year burn without sun, light, comfort&sleep.
Ömer Hayyam

#Reyyan #Miran #ReyMir #EbruŞahin #AkınAkınözü
#HercaiThoughts


1
PRAISE
The praise in this episode goes foremost to Ebru because she portrayed Reyyan so realistically like a woman who truly lost her unborn child. I was in awe and pain watching her along the episode, all her breakdowns and tears were so real.
#Hercai

2
Of course also Akın took his part and did his part masterfully, but he rightfully was the one who stood aside in this specific episode that needed to be about Reyyan’s pain and thus concentrated on Ebru.
#Hercai

3
And last but not least, if I say thank you to something that B gave us this year, then it’s to have Ali as our director. Also in this episode we saw the artistic eye behind every shot and I loved it.
#Hercai

4
OVERALL COMMENT
I don’t know who wrote ep. 52 but ep. 53 was going strong once more on symbols: roses, stones, fire and trees were incorporated and especially the ReyMir dialogues were written very well. I truly loved every ReyMir scene.
So let's get into it.
#Hercai
CULTURE
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.


See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:
SOCIETY
Advertisement
Bharadwaj
Bharadwaj
@BharadwajSpeaks
Hinduism is a minority religion in Punjab.

During the Khalistan movement, the minority Hindus and Jains were subjected to several attacks. Hindu and Jain temples were frequently vandalized and desecrated. This thread documents a few instances.

Thread

Durgiana Mandir is one of the oldest temples of Amritsar. According to the regional Hindu tradition, the temple was built on the spot where Lava and Kusha bound Hanuman. The temple annually attracts millions of Hindus from all over the country.


Amristsar has a very ancient Hindu history.

According to the regional Hindu tradition recorded in the "Survey of Amritsar", Amritsar got its name from Amrit immersed by Lava and Kusha in a pond.


Durgiana Mandir was rebuilt in 1921.

It was used to house the Murtis of Vishnu and Durga which were thrown out from the Parikrama of Harmandir Sahib in 1905.

Because of its presence in Amritsar, it became a frequent target of radicals during the Khalistan movement.


In 1982, in what was a completely unprovoked attack, the Dal Khalsa "activists" threw a severed cow head inside Durgiana temple.
RELIGION
Anu Satheesh \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
Anu Satheesh 🇮🇳...
@AnuSatheesh5
Neyyattinkara Krishna Kshetram
#Thiruvananthapuram
#KeralaTemples 🚩

Neyyattinkara Krishna Kshetram is considered as the Guruvayur of Trivandrum. Thrikkayyil Venna (butter) is main offering to Neyyattinkara Unnikannan. Kshetram is supposed to be built by Marthanda Varma.


Sthala Puranam says that, Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma was surrounded by his enemies, Ettuveettil Pillamar, while he was near the place where Temple is situated now. The king prayed to Padmanabhaswamy to protect him.  At that time, a small boy was seen there and he


advised the king to hide himself inside the hollow trunk of a jack fruit tree. The king was surprised to find a small boy in the forest, but agreed to the advice
Thus he was saved from the attack. When the enemies left, king tried to know about the boy, but he couldn't.


He believed that it was krishna himself who saved his life. A temple was built here, which is the present Neyyattinkara Krishna Kshetram. The jack fruit tree where  the king hid himself is now known as Ammachi Plavu. Ashtami Rohini, Vishu are very famous here

Hare Krishna
🙏🕉🙏
ALL
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
RISHI PINGALA:THE ANCIENT INDIAN SAGE DISCREDITED FOR HIS MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MATHEMATICS & PHI

Have you ever heard about,"The Golden Ratio"?
The Golden Ratio or Phi(Greek) is a mathematical ratio of nature. Mother Nature is the most exquisite artist in herself.


&Its this Phi she uses to create all the beauty in World.
If anyone uses this ratio correctly in their art,it can turn into a spell-binding piece of work.Such is the significance of'Phi'.But my thread isn't about it.Its about somethin called'Fibonacci Series'&who actually made it


Phi is related to Fibonacci series(0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34...)
&this series is responsible for everything dat is beautiful on this planet. Just try to calculate the ratio of any 2 successive numbers ÷ each of them by the number before it in above infinite series.

E.g. 3/2=1.5, 5/3=1.666, 8/5=1.6, 34/21=1.61904 and so on. Did you notice something? The ratio is coming almost same every time. This ratio is called 'Phi 'which is numerically represented as 1:1.618. This Golden Spiral is made in exact proportion of 1:1.618.


The thing I want to emphasize here is that we always find only those things appealing and attractive that have Phi. It's in our subconscious. Isn't it some revelation? We are the part of this Divine proportion of the God or the Mother Nature. Check these:
ALL