The hardest part of running a startup is?
I'm a 6-time founder on a mission to help reduce the % of startups that fail.
I'm curious to get your thoughts on what the hardest part of running a startup is for you.
I'll try to reply back with comments/input based on my experience if I can be helpful.
Grateful for any knowledge / opinions / thoughts shared.
This is interesting.
I think the hardest part is figuring out if the idea/startup actually solves a customer need that they're willing to pay for.
Also - I think innovation is overrated. Most successful companies I see started out as copies of existing established businesses, and then innovated along the way.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks @thebigk for a thoughtful reply. The whole aspect of finding a solution to a problem that is acute and in a large enough market is hard. Agree with innovation. Many "category creators" are simply not creating categories, but instead use that as an excuse to not market what they've built. 99% of the time new products are derivative’s of something older. And there's nothing wrong with that!
Still early stages but getting into the "focus/just do it" zone is the hardest part at the moment
That's a hard one for sure to get out of. Can you de-scope at all?
The hardest part, for sure, is to keep going when everything doesn't go as expected.
Thank you @SeaCat for your perspective. Especially early on, running a startup is super bumpy. We're well into growth mode at my company now and at that product market fit point, and it's still day to day. But we have clear growth channels now, so there is more of a straight line. But then once you think it's all working out...something big breaks. That's part of the game, staying in it, knowing when to push harder or iterate.
I would say it is getting out of the comfort zone, finding users that would actually talk to you, and persisting at it time and time again until you figure out what your product should be.
Great insight, @nirshub. It's actually quite hard to even have those conversations once you find folks who care enough to talk to you. And even then, those conversations often just validate what the founder wanted to hear in the first place because we tend to ask leading questions. The magic in discovery is objectivity. It takes a lot of practice.