What advice do you give people when they tell you they want to start a business or launch a product?
Title says it all.
What feedback do you give people?
What pushback do they give you?
Title says it all.
What feedback do you give people?
What pushback do they give you?
Depends who is asking...but assuming they haven't started a business before I always say it's 100 times harder than you think, but 100 times more rewarding.
I also don't like to bring people down, but try and get it in there that an idea is less than 1% of the success, it's all about execution. This chat normally comes when someone claims they have the best idea of all time after 10 beers at the pub!
Thanks @huttie - this is another one that rings true for me as well on the execution front.
I’m still amazed at people who get excited about an idea they have but have already mentally jumped to step #50 where there’s visible success and they haven’t even started step #1 of planning or understanding if it’s useful.
I’ve found bringing people back around to execution and how they’ll get started usually stops them dead in their tracks. Never my intention, but people want to be successful but don’t want to start. It’s quite a conundrum.
And yet, we'll still be the bad guy when it doesn't happen!
Having done this , these are some of the important things , first don't do it by yourself , it takes more work than you think , when you are building a product , you are essentially building a system , not just the product itself , which means you have to do other things like doing marketing , having websites , providing customer service and etc . Second , do something that is simple and small instead of something big and complicated , especially if you are a solo founder or only a small team , it will take too much time , energy and resources to develop it , especially if you have limited expertise and experience . Third , don't quit your job and work it full time . A lot of people do this , thinking that if they focus on it , they can progress must faster , but things turn out to take much longer than you think , things don't work out as you expect , when time is running and these happen , you will develop anxiety . I realize that it's a much better way to just keep your job and work at it after , yes it will take much longer , but you will have an infinite time period to get your project going . So these are the 3 things that a beginner founder needs to know before starting. Hope that helps .
These are great point @jttop, thanks for sharing!
No problem , remember the rule of 2 , almost everything will be at least twice as hard and take twice as long ( due to errors , distractions , revisions etc ) , people with less experience usually underestimate the scope of the project . They think everything will go exactly as they plan , that they will progress fast , finish on time and everything they do will work out , more often than not , this is not the case , doing your first business is like walking in the dark , you don't really know where you are going , that's it's more like a gradual step by step process , you can only go fast once you have clarity
Do not listen to advice from people that don't understand what you are doing, what your current situation is, because it'll be generic advice and it's worthless.
Can you elaborate on what you are asking?
Thanks @pupeno, this feedback is one that has rung true for me personally.
I’m hoping to collect these anecdotes in some meaningful way into shareable advice for people who want to start a business. I’ve not quite figured out exactly what or how yet, but that’s what sparked this post.
Speak to potential customers first, and in the right way. I've mentored 100's of early stage startups in recent years, and I'm always amazed at how many (hint: almost all of them) start spending time and money before they've done any customer interviews.
They fall completely in love with their solution that they forget about solving the customer pain, which is 100x more important.
Got off a mentoring call about 15 mins ago with someone who has got a genuinely world-changing idea, but if they can't get their ego out of the way, they'll end up wasting years of their life building something that doesn't achieve product market fit. And all because they're convinced that their way is the right way to solve it, rather than listening to customers.
I designed a simple process for my clients literally to solve this problem - https://neilcocker.com/2020/08/22/how-to-validate-your-startup-idea/