I coached over 250 startups and these are my 2 biggest lessons learned. AMA!

In the last ten years, I have coached over 250 startups, in accelerator programs, as an angel investor, and as a consultant helping larger organizations with their corporate startups. I also started four startups. I sold my first for a million and failed the other two. Currently, I'm trying again with GroundControl.

My biggest takeaway is that focus is key (duh), but what should you focus on?

Many lean startup and innovation experts will tell you to focus on what is currently most risky, but that is usually focused on the short term.

Working with so many startups made me realize there is a certain order in what currently is most risky. You need to:

1. Prove there is a problem worth solving
2. Prove you can solve that problem
3. Prove your customer will pay
4. Prove you can scale

When you understand in what step you are from a great idea to a working business model, it also makes it easier to answer: What is currently most risky.

For example, it doesn't make sense to run several experiments on your acquisition channels when you don't understand who your customer is. Or trying to come up with the perfect price point, when you don't know what your customer will pay for.

My second lesson is that you need to create a process of validating your most risky assumptions. Otherwise, life will get in the way, and you fall back into focusing on what you think is most risky in the short term. (And this is hard, I still lose focus all the time and ask other founders to keep me focussed).

My process currently looks like this:

1. In what step am I on my journey?
2. What do I need to learn to take a step forward?
3. What experiment can give me these learnings?
4. What have I learned from this experiment?
5. What decision comes out of these learnings?
6. Can I take a step forward

Rinse and repeat. I try to go through this loop every two weeks.

Okay, that intro is much longer than I anticipated. But I wanted to explain my biggest lessons in a bit more detail.

What do you want to know? How can I help? Ask me anything!