BC STARTUPS
Saved by @zmbnski

1/ The first 18 months of starting a company is often life or death. I must've made 5 different companies that each failed within 9 mo. 😭 Each time the company failed I figured out what I could do better. Eventually startup #6 got to $40K/mo by month 18. Here’s what I learned...

 2/ Stay focused! Ignore things that are a waste of time: meetups & conferences, meetings with no clear agenda, fundraising if you're not fundraising, reading lots of tech media articles, etc. Every week should feel like significant progress in the first year.
3/ Your first 5 hires will be the difference between life or death. Choose carefully. Be picky. Many of the things we do at the company still are a result of those early hires' legacy. Have fun as a tight knit team. It will change & evolve as you get bigger so enjoy this moment.
4/ Growth may be flat for the first 9 months. It's gonna be okay. Almost every company has experienced this: Airbnb had to sell cereal in-between, Slack failed as a gaming company first, Tesla sold only 147 cars after 6 years! You probably won't be an overnight success either.
5/ In the beginning, do customer support yourself. You will learn a lot about why your product sucks. I did 5,000+ support tickets when it was the two of us. Delight customers & fix things fast while you learn. It will help you build an amazing intuition about your customers.
6/ If your competitor made something your customers love: remove your ego & build it. But, make sure you understand why. Don't blindly copy things either. Learn why first. This was invaluable for me & helped us win critical battles over the years. Nobody cares who built it first.
7/ Positioning matters. Spend time figuring out how to explain your product. If it's easy to do, figure out how to explain why it's different as simply as possible. If not, keep experimenting. We bombed this in the first year. It can often be the diff between success & failure.
8/ Your mantra should be: "Be scrappy." Save money. Don't waste. Ignore status. Focus on building. Make people think you're bigger than you are. Do things the larger company won't do because they move slow. You don't need ping pong tables to win, you need grit & resourcefulness.
9/ Pick roles as co-founders to divide & conquer. You both can't be in charge of all engineering, product, design, & business decisions. This often blows up companies! Debate vigorously but make a call. Opt to test ideas vs throw them away though--especially if it's cheap to do.
10/ Truth is, you're going to be using your gut a lot because you lack data. To compensate: talk to customers, meet people who will play a devil's advocate, & understand the tech from 1st principles. Meet people live tho. It will make a meaningful difference in what you'll learn.
11/ Research the history of your market. It will help you identify old & long-standing assumptions, challenging obstacles you too will face, and critical features it took old players a decade to realize to build. I failed to do this until we were 6 years in & it hurt us.
12/ If you have bad customer retention, you're probably not ready to scale the company. Fix that first, then focus on growth. The #1 reason I've seen 100s of companies fail is by becoming addicted to a clever distribution strategy before their product was good. It's a trap!
13/ If this is your 1st time, consider something like @ycombinator. Having a crew of ppl to commiserate w/ in the early days can help you overcome existential moments. During the '09 recession, we all struggled to raise money. Going through it together made us more resilient. 💪
14/ Stay laser focused on solving a narrow set of problems. I failed to do this around the 18 mo mark & got behind because shiny new things excited me. It hurt us & we lost customers. We spent the next 2 years focused on 3-4 major things & significantly surpassed our competitors.
15/ Finally, realize that this is one of the most exciting phases: building the company from scratch. Figuring out what works & what doesn't. Building things that haven't existed. You're starting to cement your company culture too. Have fun, excerise, & take a pic of the team 📸.
If you haven't read it already, here are lessons I learned when becoming "CEO" for the first time: https://t.co/m77U25VDbg

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Naval
Naval
@naval
How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):

Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.
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Nomadic Jake \U0001f30e
Nomadic Jake 🌎...
@NomadicHustler
~ Thread ~

On this lovely Black Friday…

I wanted to breakdown a quick, profitable mindset shift for any and all trying to make money online.

What’s that?

→ How to turn your problems/hardships into cold, hard cash

¡Vámonos!

Here’s the mindset:

→ Every problem you have in life can be converted into cold hard cash on the Internet

Because you are NOT unique.

If you have a problem, there’s thousands of others out there who are having similar issues.

Solve your problem.

Solve their problem.

Make cash.

That’s the equation.

But enough of the got damn fluff, let’s take a look at specific examples:

#1.

I wanted to learn how to speak better Spanish.

I’d been traveling for years, but never took the time to study.
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Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson
@mijustin
Yesterday, I wrote about how easy it is to sell ice cream on a crowded beach: https://t.co/a9z2ZTixb7

Today, I’m at the local fair.

There are hundreds of vendors.

But there are also huge crowds who are hot and thirsty; lots of demand for cold drinks!

Go where the crowds are!


Again, this is just a metaphor!

But it’s a good reminder:

🍋 If you have a lemonade stand, it’s better to go somewhere hot, where there are a lot of thirsty people.

💻 If you want to make software, it’s better to go where there are a bunch of potential customers.

BTW - targeting a good market doesn’t mean you’ll automatically win!

There are a TON of factors that influence a business’ success (or failure).

But choosing a market that has a lot of demand (and good channels) is essential for future success.

In business, nothing is guaranteed.

You might be in a good market today, but tomorrow it could fall apart.

Markets are fickle.

Some days they want 🍦, other days they want 🥤.

The economy can go up, or it can crash.

A good competitor can come in and grab market share.

But this reinforces the point:

“Business is already hard, why make it harder?” – @asmartbear

Why try to enter a niche where there’s no demonstrable demand?

Why try to serve a total addressable market of 500, when you could go after 500,000 potential customers?
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Tom Hirst
Tom Hirst
@tom_hirst
How to create a freelancing website that makes money.

Everything I've learned.

A thread.

As a freelancer,

Your website is everything.

First, prioritise its existence.

Second, prioritise its improvement.

The technology you use is irrelevant.

- WordPress
- Notion
- Carrd
- Wix

It doesn't matter which you choose,

What matters is you have a website.

Pick a platform that you're comfortable with.

If you can:

- Capture leads
- Add content easily
- Have a clear design

You're good.

If your website doesn't get leads,

It's not working.

Don't rest on a website that doesn't work for you.

Improve it until it does.
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Mac the VC
Mac the VC
@MacConwell
1/ I feel like breaking some rules today. Let's get transparent and have an open discussion about management fees in VC to help other emerging managers. The standard fee structure is 2% the size of the fund every year for 10 years or the life of the fund.

#vc #startups #funding

2/ This means if you are an emerging manager raising a micro/nano fund of let's say $10M, then you get $200K a year for operations. That $200K pays for legal, fund admin, accounting, expenses, and your salary. basically that 2% doesn't go very far

#vc #startups #funding

3/ This is in contrast to a larger fund, let's say $100M fund where 2% is $2M a year. This is why some LPs (those who invest in funds) are looking for smaller management fee which is unreasonable for micro funds which many diverse managers are raising

#vc #startups #funding

4/ Now at RareBreed Ventures we structured our fees to be 2.5% for the first 5 years and 1.5% for the last 5 years. This comes out to the standard 2% but front-loaded in earlier years

#vc #startups #funding

5/ This means when we hit our target of $10M (if you want to be an LP our min investment is 10K and you can go to https://t.co/dm6ywrNFnU). We'll have 250K for the first 5 years giving a little more cushion for operations and allowing me to bring on a hire

#vc #startups #funding
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